http://50.lycos.com/

Europe votes to end data privacy

Law will allow police to spy on phone and net traffic

Stuart Millar
Friday May 31, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,725204,00.html

European law enforcement agencies were given sweeping powers yesterday to monitor telephone, internet and email traffic in a move denounced by critics as the biggest threat to data privacy in a generation.
Despite opposition from civil liberties groups worldwide, the European parliament bowed to pressure from individual governments, led by Britain, and approved legislation to give police the power to access the communications records of every phone and internet user.

The measure, which will be approved by the 15 EU member states, will allow governments to force phone and internet companies to retain detailed logs of their customers’ communications for an unspecified period. Currently, records are kept only for a couple of months for billing purposes before being destroyed.

Although police will still require a warrant to intercept the content of electronic communications, the new legislation means they will be able to build up a complete picture of an individual’s personal communications, including who they have emailed or phoned and when, and which internet sites they have visited.

From mobile phone records, police will also be able to map people’s movements because the phones communicate with the nearest base station every few seconds. In urban areas, the information is accurate to within a few hundred metres, but when the next generation of mobiles comes on stream it will pinpoint users’ locations to within a few metres.

Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, said: “This is the latest casualty in the war against terrorism as far as civil liberties are concerned. The problem with wanting to monitor a few people is that you end up having to keep data on everybody.”

The British government, which played a key role in driving through the new measures, has already introduced such powers as part of the anti-terror bill rushed through in the immediate aftermath of September 11, although the data retention measures have yet to be implemented.

UK civil liberties groups had hoped that if MEPs rejected data retention, it would open up the possibility of a legal challenge to the British legislation on the grounds that it was incompatible with European data protection law. After yesterday’s vote they now expect the government to press ahead with implementing the act.

The measure is contained in an amendment to a bill originally intended to improve the security of e-commerce transactions. “Looking at the results, it amounts to a large restriction on privacy and increases the power of the state,” said Italian independent MEP Marco Cappato, the bill’s author who tried to prevent the amended clause being added.

Last night, the Home Office welcomed the result. “The UK is very pleased that the [European”> council and parliament have reached agreement on a text that will ensure that the fight against terrorism and other crime will be given the appropriate weight. It is, of course, very important to protect people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, but, as the tragic events of September 11 show, this must be balanced with the need to ensure that the law enforcement community can do its job.”

But critics said the move amounted to blanket general surveillance of the whole population. The communications industry has also opposed data retention, questioning the feasibility and cost of storing such vast amounts of information.

John Wadham, director of Liberty, said: “This violates a fundamental principle of privacy, which is that data collected for one purpose should not be used for another.

“The police and other authorities will be able to trawl through all the details of the communications of millions of innocent people merely because there is a possibility that they might come across something suspicious.”

References: http://www.statewatch.org/

http://www.icannwatch.org/

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/03/cocoa_history_one.html

http://www.netpost.com/articles/

http://www.moonmist.info/

Information Resilience and Homeland Security
Freedom of information may be a double-edged sword, but restricting information has only one edge – and it cuts off the lifeblood of a healthy democracy.
By Richard Forno May 09, 2002

http://online.securityfocus.com/columnists/80

In the current security-conscious environment, many people seem willing to sacrifice their most fundamental democratic rights to support anything that is promoted as good for homeland security. In many cases, an unwillingness to do so is perceived as being ‘unpatriotic’. However, as has been pointed out in this column many times since September 11, we must make sure that we are not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. More to the point, while fulfilling reasonable patriotic duty, we must be sure that we continue to hold our government and corporations accountable for their actions, despite the fact that current challenges may appear to demand unflappable unity in the face of external attack.

Post September 11, there has been a strong push by government security and law enforcement agencies to restrict or withhold any sort of information that could possibly used to engage in or further terrorist activities. Of course, in a society whose primary political and legal principle is supposed to be freedom of speech, this can quickly become problematic.

Particularly problematic is the fact that much of the contentious information is available on the Web sites of some of the large corporations that operate America’s critical infrastructures. Why is this a concern? Because the government is currently proposing laws that will give such companies exemption from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for certain information. In other words, the government is proposing protecting certain corporate information from prying eyes, including yours and mine.

The public has a right to know information that may directly affect their lives.
Sound far-fetched? Remember the weeks after 9/11 when news reports surfaced that the US government was asking libraries to destroy CDs and databases that contained information about various critical infrastructures in America. How about when the Bush Administration asked federal agencies to review and remove potentially damaging information from their Web sites? Or when the government asked watchdog groups like the Federation of American Scientists to remove sensitive information from their sites.

For example, chemical plants and nuclear power facilities removed ‘sensitive’ reports and documentation about public health, environmental safety, and facility security from their websites, allegedly to preclude a terrorist from obtaining information for malicious purposes. Absent many such reports, how will the public, watchdog groups, or regulatory or enforcement agencies be able to monitor for potential problems that affect the public? The fear here is that, under the guise of ‘national security’ the government is actually allowing corporations to avoid scrutiny by and accountability to the taxpaying public that is, in effect, paying for the critical infrastructures. Come to think of it, perhaps Enron was getting a head start by shredding documents in the name of homeland security to avoid anyone discovering how it really operated large parts of America’s critical energy infrastructures?

The attempt to provide national security by obscuring corporate information has resonance in the information security world. It brings to mind the full disclosure debate, which pits the security community’s need to know about problems as quickly as possible against corporations’ interests in maintaining positive public perception and market share. Without the real-time information-sharing ventures that full disclosure enables, system administrators are placed in a ‘holding pattern’, and are kept in the dark until (umm, errr, if…) a vendor decides to acknowledge and address a reported problem.

Both the attempt to circumvent the FOIA and to muzzle full disclosure sound very effective at thwarting evil, but in reality neither effectively enhances public security. The community in general – be it computer users or society at large – must be able to obtain raw information about issues that potentially affect their well-being, whether that means chemical spills or the latest Windows exploits. The general public cannot be solely dependent on any one entity for information. Going down that path creates an environment of security through ignorance.

Despite the sensational management hype calling for this approach, it rarely works in reality. People quickly forget that anything that a person can use (from a knife to airplanes to automobiles and knowledge) can be used to endanger others, provided malicious intent is present. However, dealing with the tiny number of people capable of such malice should not mean forcing the remaining majority into a society in which information of public interest is withheld out of fear. Law abiding citizens in a healthy democracy should not be destined to live in ignorance that is encouraged by corporations and enforced by governments.

In the United States, and elsewhere in the world, the public has a right to know information that may directly affect their lives. If a GAO report says airport security is bad, travelers should know about it. If a safety report says that it’s too easy for someone to break into a chemical plant and cause an accident, the local residents should know about it. If a dangerous vulnerability is discovered in a widely utilized operating system, systems administrators should know about it. The list goes on. The right to self-protection is fundamental to the right to self-determination. By allowing corporations to withhold crucial infrastructure information, the government may be complicitous in depriving its citizenry of its most fundamental right. Indeed, as Paul McMasters wrote in a Freedom Forum article, denial of access shushes the democratic dialogue that is part of what makes America so attractive to its citizens and those wishing to come here.

Terrorism, by its very definition, is unconventional. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no way to guard against every single form of attack. Nor is it possible, or desirable, to withhold from public view all knowledge that could be used for malfeasance. Information – like knowledge – is a double-edged sword. The vast majority of those interested in information regarding America’s critical infrastructures are not terrorists. They should not be branded as potential terrorists or evildoers by government actions that restrict their ability to access such materials. It may be trite to say it at this point in time, nearly eight months after the September attacks, but it is true nevertheless: if we use the events of September 11 to deny the basics rights and freedoms of a healthy democracy, the terrorists will have won.

Commission Hearing Probes Vegas Vice Hacks
Nevada officials have begun public hearings on claims that a shady conspiracy of super hackers rules Las Vegas’ telecom infrastructure.
By Kevin Poulsen, Mar 18 2002 1:48AM

http://online.securityfocus.com/news/355

The only hint that Larry Duke Reubel is 63-years-old is his slow step as he ambles to the witness chair and takes a seat behind the microphone. Once seated he looks fifteen years younger. He’s dapper in a sports coat and a black shirt buttoned to the top, the overhead florescent lights glint off his gold watch, which matches his earring and peroxide hair. In the hearing room in this anonymous Las Vegas office building there’s a trace of weariness etched into Reubel’s sunburned face, as he recounts his story of a high-flying life in the adult entertainment industry — driven slowly and inexorably into the ground by hackers.

Watching from across the room is Eddie Munoz, 43, the plaintiff in the case, who summoned Reubel from Ogden, Utah to testify here. Piled against the wall nearest Munoz is a mountain of plastic document bins stuffed with hundreds of filings, news articles, trouble tickets, police reports, and four thousand pages of call logs from Munoz’s business. It’s a monument to his tenacity; it’s taken Munoz ten years to get this hearing in front of the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUC) — the regulatory body that oversees the state’s electric, gas, water and telecommunications companies.

The PUC is where utilities come to request rate increases or ask for permission to offer a new service. But in this unprecedented hearing that began last week, and continues through Tuesday, the commission is taking a hard look at a bizarre complaint that’s bubbled up from this town’s nocturnal fringe economy again and again for the past ten years, from outcall service operators, bail bondsman and private eyes: that Vegas’ telecommunications infrastructure is secretly controlled by super hackers working for a few powerful players in the vice biz; mobbed-up cyberpunk puppet masters pulling strings right under the nose of the local phone company
If staffers are skeptical of Munoz’s complaint, they’re equally incredulous over Sprint’s assertion that the phone company takes computer security seriously.
That phone company, Sprint of Nevada, is effectively on trial here, accused by Munoz and his allies of turning a blind eye to the abuse. Commissioner Adriana Escobar Chanos, one of three PUC commissioners appointed by Nevada’s governor, is judge and jury in these proceedings; eventually, likely months from now, she’ll make a recommendation to the full commission based on what she sees, hears and reads. She’s guided by the PUC staff, which has its own lawyer and investigator in the room, and by three advisors on her panel. If Munoz prevails, the commission could impose monetary fines and sanctions on Sprint.

Reubel is one of the alleged victims, and his story typifies the complaints. Until he gave up four years ago, Reubel published Show World West, an advertisement magazine distributed by hand to thousands of passing tourists up and down Las Vegas Boulevard each day. Like the other papers, glossy cards and printed magazines competing for eyeballs on the Strip, Reubel’s publication was all about sex, spotlighting a bevy of in-room “entertainers” — blonds, brunettes, redheads — each of them only a phone call and a few hundred dollars away from visiting the hotel room of some randy tourist looking for a private dance. Reubel got a piece of every call, and for years business was brisk.

“Then, all of a sudden, the phones stopped ringing,” says Reubel, gravel in his voice. “There’s no reason for the phones to stop ringing.”

The Long Nothing
The quiet phones are a common thread described by all the alleged victims. Sometimes calls appear to be tapped by competitors, other times they’re diverted outright. More often, they’re simply blocked, and the caller receives dead air or a circuit-busy signal. A 1996 report by a private investigator describes a test call he placed from the Monte Carlo hotel to the “Perfect Bodies” outcall service — an alleged victim of the scheme. “The phone rang 4 times, there was a pause of short duration then a sound similar to rushing air, then a tone and a long nothing.” In 1998, word of the supposed scheme reached mobsters affiliated with the Gambino crime family, according to an FBI affidavit, and six of them were snared by an undercover investigation as they tried to muscle in on the phone racket.

Throughout it all, Sprint of Nevada, the incumbent local exchange carrier, has denied any culpability. Now, sitting catty-corner from Reubel in the hearing room, dressed in business suits, are three representatives of Sprint, which fought tooth and nail to prevent the hearing from taking place: Scott Collins from the regulatory affairs department, Ann Pongracz, Sprint’s general counsel, and outside counsel Patrick Riley, who handles Reubel’s cross examination with the aplomb of an experienced corporate litigator.

“Going over your testimony, you seem to blame Sprint for the loss of your business,” Riley says, with mock bewilderment. “Is that correct?”

“They’re providing a service to me, and they’re not providing the security they should,” Reubel replies. “So, yes.”

Riley counters by carefully outlining all the steps the phone company took to investigate Reubel’s complaint when he first raised it in 1995: Sprint made test calls to Reubel’s numbers, and they all went through. They ran a script at their switching control center that periodically checked his lines for covert call-forwarding, never finding any. They examined his lines for physical taps, and there were none. “Doesn’t it look like Sprint went to an awful lot of trouble to investigate your complaint?,” Riley asks reasonably.

Reubel smiles without humor, leans into the microphone and speaks slowly. “I was making a quarter million dollars a year. I’m making ten dollars an hour now. Whatever they did, it wasn’t enough.”

And so it goes, with a procession of Munoz’s witnesses sharing their own tales of ruin. Former “Perfect Bodies” operator Hilda Brauer, gray-haired and matronly, peers over her glasses and testifies that the entertainers she dispatched to Vegas hotel rooms often found women from a particular competing service already there — as though the competitor was listening in. One of the women even “trick-rolled” a client — stole from him — leaving Brauer holding the bag. Former bail bondman Peter Vilencia says he effectively caught the call burglars in the act, but was still powerless to stop them “I personally called my own phone number and got connected to other bail bonds companies,” says Vilencia. “I feel this hearing is justified, and something needs to be done to correct the problem.”

Finally, Munoz begins his testimony. Like Reubel, Munoz is a publisher. He owns nearly half of the five hundred licensed news racks on the Strip, which he crams with stacks of the Las Vegas Informer — twelve gritty newsprint pages advertising in-room entertainers. Ten years ago, the ads would result in fifteen or twenty outcalls a night; now, it’s more like one or two, and Munoz is having trouble paying his bills. His phone problems are similar to the others’ — callers from outside Vegas, or from payphones and cell phones, get through, he says, but hotel callers frequently get false busy signals, or reach silence, driving them into the arms of competing services. He filed his first complaint with the PUC in 1994. It took two more complaints and an abortive federal writ before the commission staff launched an investigation, which led them a year ago to recommend this full hearing.

Munoz testifies that he’s stayed in business this long by selling ad space to competitors, and by employing his own crude countermeasures against his invisible adversaries. “What I’ve learned to do in order to survive this phone problem is continuously change the numbers, continuously change locations, because after a while they don’t ring any more,” he says.

Munoz isn’t his own best advocate. Commissioner Escobar Chanos frequently has to admonish him for his long rambling answers under cross examination. He often alludes to his personal theory on the nature and methodology of his enemies, which, like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe, seems to pick up bits and pieces of everything he walks through. These days it ties together the New Jersey mafia, corrupt phone company employees, a telco billing company in Los Angeles, several hackers, and a 1999 takeover robbery at a southwest Vegas Sprint office, in which masked gunmen made off with 233 telephone line cards.

The only documented tests that have been conducted weigh against Munoz’s complaint. When AT&T called his lines from Vegas hotels in 1997, the calls went through without incident. In August of 2001, a PUC staffer made several test calls from a Vegas hotel with the same results. And in November of 2000, at the direction of the PUC, Sprint ran three days of test calls from five different Las Vegas hotels. Of 205 calls, all but 23 went through, and none were diverted to competitors. Further investigation of the 23 incomplete calls turned up innocent explanations.

The Phone Cop
Munoz believes that test was compromised, and the hackers cleverly arranged for him to receive the test calls, while still blocking the other hotels. In fact, a switch report he subpoenaed from Sprint includes some mysterious entries during the test period — a dozen calls were placed from hotels not involved in the test, and most of them had a duration of “0 seconds.” But it’s hard not to wonder how a phenomenon capable of crippling Munoz’s business could be so difficult to reproduce.

It’s against that backdrop that the PUC staff — the only players in the room without their own chips in the game — have adopted the position that Munoz hasn’t proven his case, and that no fines or other sanctions should be imposed on Sprint.

But if staffers are skeptical of Munoz’s complaint, they’re equally incredulous over Sprint’s assertion that the phone company takes computer security seriously. PUC staff attorney Louise Uttinger summoned a witness of her own to the hearing — former Vegas phone cop Larry Hill, who, up until his retirement in 2000, was in charge of investigations involving “Sprint’s various internal systems” in Las Vegas, according to a company affidavit.

The gaunt and grizzled Hill is a former NYPD captain, and he testifies like a pro, giving short quick answers and volunteering little. “I remember investigating many cases of this nature,” Hill says. “We would generally check to see that all the programming on the complainant’s line was in order… We determined in every case that there was no unauthorized call-forwarding.”

Under cross examination by Uttinger and Munoz’s attorney Peter Alpert, Hill testifies that when he retired from the company all of his files on those cases disappeared. He also says that nobody was hired to replace him when he left. Perhaps there was no need: in his twelve years with Sprint, Hill never once saw a hacker in the company’s network. “To my knowledge there’s no way that a computer hacker could get into our systems,” says Hill.

If Sprint of Nevada is hack-proof, the achievement would make it a rarity among regional phone companies. But a report written by a technical consultant hired by the PUC staff concluded otherwise. “[W”>hile I have encountered several capable Sprint employees, each an excellent specialist, some have clearly never considered the presence of a sophisticated hacker, the kind routinely found on the Internet nowadays,” wrote Ron Bardarson, a former system administrator at a Reno ISP. “Additionally, I have not yet encountered anyone thinking about ‘breaking into your own system,’ which is the best way to improve a system’s security. If such a person exists, I cannot help wondering why she/he is not a witness in this docket.”

Bardarson says he discovered what appears to be computer security weakness in Sprint’s infrastructure. He’s not the only one. As SecurityFocus Online reported last year, former hacker Kevin Mitnick claims extensive penetrations into Sprint’s Las Vegas systems from approximately 1992 until his February, 1995 arrest — smack dab in the middle of the call diversion complaints. Mitnick’s access gave him the power to monitor or reprogram any phone line in town. Following that story, Munoz retained Mitnick as a technical consultant in his case, only to give him up later. Munoz says Mitnick wanted to run too many pointless tests; Mitnick says Munoz stiffed him and a partner for thousands of dollars in fees and expenses.

Citing Bardarson’s findings and Mitnick’s statements, the PUC staff is recommending that the commission open a new investigatory docket to explore Sprint’s security issues, and to force the company to undergo security audits, and report back to the PUC annually on the results. If the commission follows that recommendation it will set a remarkable precedent — regardless of its action on Munoz’s complaint.

At a time when official Washington is emphasizing the link between the United States’ “critical infrastructures” and national security, it may be a state regulatory body more accustomed to tariffs than cyber terrorists that first takes on oversight of an infrastructure provider’s network security. And all because a ragtag lineup of lost and struggling peddlers of vice wouldn’t fade quietly into the neon glow of the Las Vegas night.

Kevin Poulsen is editorial director at SecurityFocus.

http://www.gazm.org/ptest/WhatBloggerAreYou.aspx

I was/am :

You are a =”http://www.rebeccablood.net” target=”_blank”>Rebecca Blood.
You are worldly, well-spoken, not afraid to share your opinions and are always open to new ideas.
Take the What Blogging Archetype Are You test at =”http://www.GAZM.org”>GAZM.org

“I wouldn’t want to be a celebrity but I’m angry enough to be a politician.”

Mark Cross
http://www.votefornoone.com/
—
April 20th 2002

Click on the photo above to see all the photos.

Q. What is it?
A. A Quantum Sports Cars “Xtreme” based on the Lotus Seven.

Q. Will you write more about Saturday?
A. Yes, I will when I can.

Summary
Amazing

http://www.pythonesque.org/mx/jarchives/00000110.htm

BT tests fast internet satellite service
By Steve Barrett, London, Revolution UK Online, April 15, 2002

Telecoms giant BT is to trial a fast internet satellite product that could hook up areas currently out of reach of DSL broadband and cable services.

The product, which will be available from late-May for six months, will be marketed to service providers by BT Wholesale, with the proviso that these companies are prepared to make it available in non ADSL-enabled areas.

The service will initially be aimed at small businesses and high-use residential customers, but if it is successful, it could be rolled out to the rest of the UK – including rural areas.

The service downloads at speeds of up to 256Kb per second and offers always-on delivery of emails and selected web pages. Higher speed downloads – up to 4Mb per second – will be available on a pay-per-use basis, billed through the service providers. The return path is via a conventional phone line.

According to BT Wholesale, the trial wholesale price is likely to be similar to its existing price for consumer broadband connections of £14.75 a month. Connection, including equipment and installation of the dish, is expected to be “less than £400”.

BT’s wholesale price was cut from £25 at the start of April, since when orders have run at more than 10,000 a week, principally for the self-install product.

BT Retail is set to unveil its “no-frills” connection-only broadband product next week, at roughly £2-3 less than the existing £29.99 a month tariff.

http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/news/view.cfm?r=1&id=87265

http://www.tag-board.com/

If it wasn’t enough with the NSA deving a secure kernel

http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the primary sponsor of Reiser4.

http://www.namesys.com/

Redesigned to provide the Linux community with a modular, high performance journaling filesystem not only strengthened against attack, but designed to enable developers to much more easily create security applications and to reuse their code.

God faces dope wrap
Drugs diary evidence of substance abuse
by Our calm and measured Daily Mail correspondent

London police today announced the arrest of The Lord God following the appearance of a damning document apparently detailing several thousand years of substance abuse by the cult religious leader and his followers.

The crackdown is a result of concern over the impact of the lax drugs policy implemented in the London borough of Lambeth last year, which has seen crime fall and police spend time on the streets.

The guide — called simply “The Bible” — seems to indicate that much of Mr God’s activity was carried out while under the influence of drugs. One senior officer told is: “I’ve never tried drugs myself but this book clearly demonstrates that the author was on a drug-induced trip.”

Areas of particular interest to the authorities include chapters where everyone speaks in tongues, gnashes their teeth, see visions and communicate with burning bushes. “That’s just not normal,” the officer told us. He also cast doubt on one of the main tenets of the book: “Creating the world in seven days is simply not possible under usual sober conditions. My aunt’s bungalow in Croydon took seven months to build and it’s only got one bathroom.” Insiders have also pointed to the existence of the platypus as further evidence of drug-taking.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said that Mr God was currently being questioned over the book and added that he hoped that this wouldn’t jeopardise his chance to gain eternal salvation.

Local Tory MP, Otto Tunist, commented: “I think that this indicates how far the Labour government has failed the people of Britain. Under a Conservative Government, we would increase funding tenfold to address this problem, recruit more police, give all UK citizens a fiver and hang every third refugee.”

Legal experts have warned though that God may get off on a technicality — no one can prove that he wrote the book. “We will be arguing that this Bible was in fact written by a series of individuals working autonomously and without direction from Mr God,” God’s lawyer told us. “As such, there is not charge to bring against my client.”

Theologians also doubt the case will be successful due to considerations of practicality. “Even if they did find him guilty, jailing him would prove impossible,” one told us. “That’s one of the advantages of being omnipresent.”

(c) and full respect to the Rockall Times:

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2002/03/25/god-drugs.html

http://www.herdofsheep.com/

“Dealing with Microsoft operating systems is like having the school president as your best friend. Yeah, he’s pretty popular. But when you realize that you’re just in high school, you realize he doesn’t have the ability to do shit.”

http://www.gamerspress.com/article.php?sid=1709

“Y’see, the Web is full of people like you and me, making links between documents; human beings, making decisions about documents, voting with their links. When I link to some arbitrary document, it’s an indication that I think that it’s in some way authoritative. When you link to a document I wrote, you’re indicating that I’m in some way authoritative. The Internet is already structured in a meaningful way, but that structure is obscured. Google teases out the relationship between the URLs, examining the webs of authority: this person is linked to by 50,000 others, and he links to this other person over here, which indicates that person one is a pretty sharp individual, one who’s inspired 50,000 human beings to take time out of their busy schedules to link to him; and person one thinks that person two is on the ball, which suggests that person two knows what she’s on about.”

http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/03/08/cory_google.html

….In a way, Google has become the Web’s brain, its synapses fired by 3 billion searchable documents and 150 million queries daily. As with HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Google’s smarts can be scary. As the court of first resort for finding information on the Web, Google could exert untold influence over how we think.

With only 300 employees and a modest headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Google seems an unlikely candidate for Big Brother. Touring its offices recently, I was struck by how similar Google is today to other bright, unspoiled tech start-ups of the past, notably Netscape, Apple and Microsoft….

Monday, February 25, 2002 – 12:00 a.m. Pacific – Paul Andrews

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134410682_andrews25.html

The Next Sixty Years —
A Business Perspective
Feb 2002

By Rolf Dobelli, [email”>rolf.dobelli@getAbstract.com[/email”>
http://theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020304/TNSY.htm

· 2004: First global consumer boycott (consumers linked via Internet boycott brands on a global scale).

· 2004: Financial services have become commodities. Banks and insurance companies compete on lifestyle rather than interest rates.

· 2005: Most market research based on virtual (membership and identity in virtual communities) rather than physical properties (zip code, age, sex, etc.).

· 2005: The Internet enables most professionals to choose their residence on the basis of tax rates and lifestyle, rather than the strength of the local job market.

· 2006: The first individuals go public (IPO).

· 2006: Second economic crisis in Asia: Robotic production becomes cheaper than manual labor; Asia looses its advantage in the global economy.

· 2007: Advertising industry collapses: Most advertising in electronic media filtered out by intelligent agents; most private shopping done by bots based on product standards, price and ratings.

· 2007: AI fund managers produce consistently better returns than human money managers.

· 2007: Money-laundering made easy by virtual money-laundering banks hosted offshore using agents that automatically move money in and out of financial markets.

· 2008: Children becoming significant spenders (without parental involvement) as they are able to spend money through the Internet.

· 2009: In U.S., single national identification card is increasingly used for retail transactions (debit card), banking (credit card) and all government services (taxes, etc.)

· 2009: China launches cyberwar against Taiwan, trying to crash its economy.

· 2010: Companies plant first shopping viruses into private shopping bots.

· 2010: Fund management software combining AI investment selection and automated electronic trade execution is cheaply available; decline of brokerage and mutual fund industries.

· 2010: Forced transparency of publicly traded stock and massive increase in program trading equalizes equity returns across industries, companies and time; seeking higher returns, investors flock to venture capital and private offerings, creating a whole new industry of semi-publicly traded stock.

· 2010: 50% of all retail banking in developed countries via Internet.

· 2010: Formation of a global electronic stock exchange.

· 2010: Private money issued by Internet banks, credit card companies, auction sites and e-commerce companies leads to first global hyperinflation.

· 2010: Monetary system managed by private companies and suppliers of computer operating systems. Fed has diminished control over monetary policy.

· 2010: Exponential growth of electronic content leads to development of an information and knowledge-rating industry.

· 2010: Mandatory social competence classes in MBA schools.

· 2010: Info-fasting becomes global craze.

· 2010: Authenticity movement as backslash against VR. First retail chains publish their authenticity policy.

· 2010: Technology-driven unemployment of people over 40 years of age.

· 2010: Synthetic person becomes major role model for global youth.

· 2010: Purpose industry becomes major economic force.

· 2011: First global marketing and sponsoring contracts for synthetic person.

· 2012: Computer virus halts trading at major stock exchanges around the world. Trading flocks to e-Bay.

· 2015: Inequality of income and wealth in western countries reaches level of South America, leading to social unrest.

· 2015: Executive search companies increasingly consider personal network of candidates rather than knowledge and skills.

· 2015: Securitization of ideas and individuals (not only organizations / companies).

· 2018: The last labor union in a developed country is dissolved.

· 2020: Last national currency joins $, Yen, Euro or Renmimbi.

· 2020: Hiring decisions based on DNA.

· 2020: Anti-discrimination laws against synthetic workers.

· 2025: Anti-discrimination laws against human workers – management prefers synthetic workers as they are easier to manage.

· 2025: Paper money taken out of circulation in developed countries.

· 2025: Hiring decisions based on brain scan.

· 2030: US Supreme Court rules that brain scan of employee remains property of employee but can be used by employer even after employee has left the company.

· 2050: Wealthiest person in the world is synthetic.

· 2060: Re-creation of management titans from DNA (Sloan, Ford, Rockefeller, JP Morgan).

Rolf Dobelli, Ph.D.
Founder & Chairman
[email”>rolf.dobelli@getAbstract.com[/email”>

http://www.getAbstract.com
phone: +41.41.367.5151
phone: +1.954.359.4070

As the creator of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software, Zimmermann has for years found himself in the middle of a debate about how much power individuals should have. More good, he has maintained, comes from giving individuals the power to send encrypted e-mails than would come from blocking a handful of zealots from exploiting the tool.

Zimmermann has likened PGP to the automobile in one analogy. When Bonnie and Clyde used the automobile to get away from the scenes of bank robberies and cross state and county lines, no one had ever done such a thing. The initial reaction among some law enforcement groups was to call for the banning of the private automobile. However, what changed were people’s attitudes and laws; for instance, law enforcement was no longer blocked from pursuing suspects across state and county lines.

The same principal holds true with high-tech tools that empower many law-abiding people to protect their privacy for personal, business or political reasons.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Zimmermann said he has no regrets about making his PGP code widely available. He bristles at the idea that he feels guilty that terrorists or anyone else might have used his invention for nefarious purposes.

Zimmermann said he was shocked to see a story in The Washington Post suggesting that he felt responsible for giving terrorists a way to communicate with one another outside of government surveillance.

He went so far as to publish a response to the Post article on his Web site.

http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO65748,00.html

http://www.philzimmermann.com/news-Response_WashPost.shtml

“Microsoft has built a FreeBSD version of Linux, but this is more of a publicity gig than a serious endeavour…”

http://www.cw360.com/article&rd=&i=&ard=110220&fv=1

…still, that’s what we’d hoped about their DOS version of CP/M

—

Well spotted NTK – but as Mickey$oft recently rewrote MS Office to run under Mac OS 10 / FreeBSD. Clearly MS can “Go where they want, when they want.”

MX

The New Craft of Intelligence
Making the Most of Open Private Sector Knowledge
By Robert David Steele (C)

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020311/viewpoint.html

Despite the fact that U.S. taxpayers have been paying more than $30 billion a year for a national intelligence and counterintelligence community to protect it from both traditional state-based threats and unconventional non-state actors, the events of 9-11 demonstrated our inability to detect and prevent bold asymmetric attacks that used our own airliners as precision missiles. Armed with new concepts, money, and suicidal pilots, Osama bin Laden has cost us at least $20 billion in damages.

The problem with spies is they only know secrets
Unfortunately, our spies and our satellites have lost touch with reality, for they collect less than 10% of the relevant information that we must digest to understand the complex multi-cultural world that is now capable of producing very wealthy and suicidal terrorists. We need a “new craft of intelligence” that can access and digest the broad historical, cultural, and current events knowledge that is available openly in over twenty-nine languages — by exploiting these open sources we can create open source intelligence, or OSINT, suitable for informing our public as well as our state and local authorities and our international partners, as to the threats to our nation.

What are open sources? Open sources go well beyond the Internet (3 billion pages of substance and rising) and premium online services (ten times what is on the Internet, with value-added) to include “gray literature” (limited edition publications including dissertations and local directories from around the world); specialized market research, private investigations, and other information broker services; and geo-spatial information services including commercial imagery and Russian military maps for all countries of the world (the U.S. does not have military maps for 90% of the world.) Open sources include experts on any subject, in any language. Shocking as it may seem, our intelligence community does not routinely strive to identify the top people in the world (not just Americans) on the various topics of concern — from terrorism to the environment to human trafficking to corruption to disease and public health — with the result that our analysis tends to be shallow and incestuous, relying on the same consultants again and again.

Where’s the action?
Why is this not obvious, and, more importantly, why is it not being acted upon? Although the bipartisan Aspin-Brown Commission on intelligence reform (reporting in March 1996) found that our intelligence community is “severely deficient” in its access to open sources of information, and also found that the various departments and agencies of government have failed to fulfill their responsibilities for collecting, processing, and analyzing open source information relevant to their missions, nothing has been done to implement the Commission’s recommendations for reform. The Commission specifically stated that OSINT should be a top priority for funding within our $30 billion a year intelligence budget, and that it should be a top priority for the attention of the Director of Central Intelligence.

The DCI then serving, John Deutch, and the DCI now serving, George Tenet, chose to ignore virtually all of the recommendations of this bipartisan Commission.

The Department of State, which is statutorily responsible for the collection of open source information abroad, has abdicated this responsibility and has no funds and no process in place for responsibly collecting relevant information from all the countries where we have taxpayer-funded Embassies.

Just recently, the Department of Defense, about to spend billions and billions of dollars on new satellites that we do not need, closed down the open source information portion of the General Defense Intelligence Program, claiming they lacked sufficient funds and that open source intelligence is not a priority.

The various other departments rely almost exclusively on “free” information that is given to them by parties with their own agenda to pursue.

There are no structured processes for the collection, translation, and analysis of Islamic, Chinese, Russian, Arab, Japanese, Korean, or other foreign language materials.

There is no central coordinating authority for ensuring that open sources acquired or translated by one part of the government are readily available by all the other parts, nor is there a government-wide open source intelligence requirements and acquisition authority.
The rewards of open source intelligence

There are immediate benefits to both national security and national prosperity of creating a government-wide open source intelligence program — preferably not managed by the intelligence specialists, who have repeatedly demonstrated their complete disdain for open sources of information. Those benefits would include the provision of an insurance policy for intelligence coverage of Third World security issues; an immediate increase in the timeliness, coverage and political utility of overtly available information; an immediate increase in open source information sharing across the departments and with the private sector; and finally, the provision of a foundation for a web-based OSINT exchange with allies, other nations and international groups.

I believe that a government-wide open source intelligence executive authority should be established, and a budget authorized and appropriated, to fulfill the following open source intelligence support objectives, and I have advocated this approach since 1992. The goals: to improve diplomatic understanding of foreign perceptions and conditions ($45M); to improve military and law enforcement understanding of emerging and existing threats ($75M) and to improve commerce and treasury understanding of international economic environment ($5M). I have already established that this proposal is acceptable to key Congressional leaders and to the political leadership in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but to my enduring dismay, have been unable to break through the staff barriers to any Cabinet leader in government willing and able to take on this function on behalf of the people of the United States of America — Colin Powell is my first choice for the post. My second choice is the creation of a small new agency.

I would venture two common-sense observations that we must communicate to our government: 1) we cannot afford to ignore the rest of the world; and 2) we need a government-wide open source program right now. In close coordination with the most authoritative experts and retired intelligence and defense leaders available, I’ve created a list of initiatives to achieve these objectives, which appears below. If you think this makes sense, I hope you will write to your Senators and Representatives in Congress. The common sense of the people must come into play on this matter.

Recommended Open Source Initiatives
Digital History Project ($5M) to digitize and translate key Islamic, Chinese, and other foreign language historical, political, economic, cultural, social, and technical materials.

Non-Governmental Organization Data Warehouse ($10M) to provide free storage and network access to the various international organizations whose “local knowledge” is vital to U.S. understanding.

Global Coverage Distance Learning and Expert Forum Network ($10M) that will establish open ethical boards of review for all countries and topics, including distance learning and expert forums.

Generic Open Source Training Initiative ($10M) to create both distance learning modules accessible by our state and local, armed forces and diplomatic personnel and our public.

Public Information Sharing and Collaboration Toolkit ($10M) comprised of a generic set of industry standards and related tools for desktop level exploitation and analysis of digital foreign information.

Regional Open Source Information Networks for Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America ($40M) , each with an open source collection and processing center in partnership with local governments who will provide regional language skills and access to gray literature and local experts.

International Trade and Chamber of Commerce Network ($5M) to establish a web-based network maximizing access by U.S. businesses to foreign economic, regulatory and taxation information.

Digital Marshall Plan ($20M) to provide direct assistance and subsidies to extend the Internet to every corner of the world (including rural areas in America) via wireless delivery means.

University of the Republic & Global Outreach Program ($15M) that will bring together and educate “cohorts” of mid-career subject-matter experts from state and local governments, the federal government, and the business, academic and media communities, as well as foreign professionals.

About the Author
Robert David Steele is a 25-year veteran of the U.S. national security community. He has been a clandestine case officer in three foreign countries, helped program funds for imagery satellites, carried out tactical operations in support of strategic signals intelligence programs and founded the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (now Command). He and his small company have been featured in Year in Computers (2000) and the writings of Alvin Toffler, among others. His first book, “On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World,” sold out in the weeks after 9-11, has just been re-issued. His forthcoming book, “The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political (Citizen’s Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Ignorance)”, will be available in late April 2002. Steele is the founder of Open Source Solutions, Inc., which sponsors an annual conference for intelligence professionals from all walks of life and all countries of the world, and recently founded the Council on Intelligence as a public advocacy forum.

Airports look to biometrics for security
By Brian Fonseca
March 1, 2002 3:31 pm PT (C) idg.net

U.S. AIRPORTS UNDER intense public and legislative pressure to revamp security checkpoints and prove passenger identities following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are examining the role that biometrics and new IT security innovations can play in safeguarding air travelers.

In response, vendors are stepping up with new offerings. On Monday, Chyrsalis-ITS and AiT will announce a partnership to create a cryptographic digital signature and public and private key management solution capable of pinpointing forgery of or tampering with passports and travel documents.

Designed to plug into multiple biometrics templates and platforms, AiT’s GenIE secure document issuance system will correlate certified digital signatures with stored facial, fingerprint, or iris data to confirm that the personal document has not been altered, according to Alan Boat, CTO of Ottawa, Ontario-based AiT.

“We can use a digital signature to authenticate the document, and then we can use biometrics to authenticate the individual,” said Boate. “The idea here is you have an authenticated block of data. It’s protected by digital signatures, and it can be verified wherever you take off or land.”

Boate said Chrysalis-ITS, also based in Ottawa, will provide the boxes to authenticate digital signature requests and manage and store the private root keys to sign biometric and text data.

The call for heightened security at borders and travel hubs is at a fever pitch. For instance, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001, currently before the U.S. Senate, seeks to require countries participating or interested in joining the U.S. Visa Waiver program to institute tamper resistant passports equipped with biometric identifiers.

According to Chris Christiansen, program vice president for Framingham, Mass.-based IDC’s e-business infrastructure and Internet security services, the strength of biometrics lies not as a standalone security tool, but rather as a “human element” cog within a multi-factor authentication system.

“Biometrics will not be the sole technology being used for authentication, and it shouldn’t be. Security is about adding layers, it’s not about substituting technology,” said Christiansen. “The human element [in security”> is extremely important [and is achieved by”> a combination of biometrics, identity, and smart card technology.”

In order to be successful, Christiansen said the visibility of biometrics facial identification technology should be negligible and transparent to the average traveler to avoid inconvenience.

This week, Inforonics ABS (Advanced Biometric Security), Viisage, and DynCorp announced a partnership to provide integrated facial recognition technology for assessment at Logan International Airport in Boston. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) and Logan Airport, the 90-day technology evaluation is designed to demonstrate for government agencies and airline industry the role biometrics can play at Logan and other U.S. airports, said Dave Gabree, managing vice president of Littleton, Mass.-based Inforonics ABS. The evaluation, about halfway toward completion, is being monitored and coordinated by Counter Technology.

Logan Airport has fallen under intense scrutiny and criticism since two terrorist teams were able to bypass the airport’s security screening system and take control of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 on the morning of Sept. 11. The planes struck and destroyed the World Trade Center North and South towers, respectively.

Logan Airport could not be reached for comment for this article.

Gabree said Inforonics ABS, a division of MSP (managed services provider) vendor Inforonics, is combining its plug-in ready enterprise biometrics framework with Viisage’s face recognition technology and DynCorp’s software application management solution.

Designed to work in conjunction with stationed National Guardsmen at airport security checkpoints, the technology lies within a camera located near the metal detectors. Captured images of passengers coming through the magnetic-scanning machine are compared against a database to screen for wanted or suspicious individuals.

Tom Sheehan, chief of police at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, said his facility is considering implementing a multi-factor fingerprint and facial recognition system to secure high priority access areas. He said a combination of biometrics and electronic entry system technology is needed to institute multiple methods to verify someone’s identity.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re looking at putting a biometrics system in to our access to areas. It is difficult to circumvent,” Sheehan remarked.

Currently, the Dallas/Fort Worth airport uses an electronic fingerprint system to perform background checks on employees applying for specific security badges or apprehended criminals.

Christiansen said last week’s merger of biometrics powerhouses Identix and Visionics will significantly enhance product development efforts between the two companies to push biometrics into new realms of functionality.

Joe Atick, formerly chairman and CEO of Jersey City, N.J.-based Visionics and CEO of the newly formed biometrics company, said that after Sept. 11, customers began to ask for total security in the company’s product deployments.

“There is a lot of people who built an impression of biometrics based on old experiences, they were expensive, they were clunky,” said Atick. “We have an opportunity to do airport security right, and to a trusted traveler that status is critical — to feel safe and not hindered but at the same time not compromising protection.”

Brian Fonseca is an InfoWorld staff writer.

—

WOW – no illegal immigration from now on. Your tax Dollars/Pounds/Euros will be wisely spent on those who contribute 🙂

(Source: ITworld.com) Schiphol Group, which operates the Amsterdam airport, is offering its self-service border control system with iris recognition to other airports and airlines, the company said Tuesday.
http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=638115

Airport tests passenger eye IDs – BBC.co.uk Feb 8th 2002

Heathrow Airport is to test a new hi-tech identity system which examines a passenger’s eye, rather than their passport as they go through immigration control.
Heathrow is the first UK airport to carry out a large-scale trial of the iris recognition technology.

The aim is to speed up the movement of passengers through the terminal.

A total of 2,000 passengers who frequently fly from North America to Heathrow on Virgin and British Airways flights are taking part in the five-month trial.

Computer record

Each passenger will have an image of one of their eye’s iris stored on computer.

Instead of showing their passport on arrival they will go into a kiosk where in two minutes a camera will check that the pattern of their iris matches computer records.

If so a barrier will automatically open.

The trial will test the technology and gauge passenger reaction.

Passengers taking part are being asked to carry their passports during the trial period should immigration officials want to check their details.

Security at UK airports remains tight following 11 September.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1808000/1808187.stm

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http://www.pythonesque.org/mx/jarchives/00000111.htm
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http://www.happywomanmagazine.com/