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The analog POTS system fully disconnects the microphone and speaker when on hook, as per design standards going back to the 1870's

I think it is very clear that very intelligent people knew that allowing phones to be used in the way described in this article is an unacceptable abridgment of privacy. I do no think it is any coincidence that the judge who ruled in this case in favor of the surreptitious "roving" (i.e., non-specific) surveillance is none other than Judge Lewis Kaplan of anti-DeCSS fame. It sucks when a Federal judge neither believes in Free Speech nor in basic privacy.

how is this really news? Every approach to qc that I'm aware of uses spin setting/reading (via NMR in every case that's coming to mind). Bringing this back to the g33k/slashdot crew, check out the work done around 2001 to implement Shor's Algorithm at IBM (by Vandersypen et. al.) The wikipedia summary is a bit dense, but the original paper (cryptome appears to have a mirror) is a bit better.

(NB: I'm far from being an expert in this field, it's just something I was interested in a while back when I was wrapping up my chemistry bachelors. There could also certainly be something newsworthy in the present article that I can't presently see.)

You could also check out some of the stuff here:

http://chomskytorrents.org/
http://www.cryptome.org/
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews.htm

• The article is in Australian IT, connected to The Australian newspaper.
• The report in question is a draft of a confidential briefing. So it hasn't been published, and so can't be "cited" in the conventional sense, by The Australian or anyone else.
• It's quite common for newspapers to mention that they've seen unpublished material that they're writing about, usually with the phrase "seen by"
• However, in Australia/NZ the phrase "sighted by" seems to be more common in this context.

So Saddam is convicted of killing 148. The toll post-Saddam is 100,000 and counting (Iraqis) and 3,041 US military personnel. Beheadings don't count. If you ask me, I'd say 100,000 is not a bad number of casualties and we (GOP'ers) can justify the 3,041 Americans based on actionable intelligence that shows that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist.

We can all forget about Darfur now its obvious there could never be a more evil tyrant than Saddam.

America, we're (GOP'ers) asking you to forgive our sins, they're nothing more than political tricks by dems to sway the vote. We've brough gasoline prices down, we're bringing the troops home, we've got the largest unemployment ratio in five years. All is well. If you don't vote for us now, the dems will allow Rosary beads of mass destruction into America. They're (dems) secretly colluding with Osama, Kim Jong Il, and Idi Amin. And as God is our witness (keep in mind dems are really Satan worshipping sinners), if you don't vote for us terrible things will happen.

I'm sure it'll turn up on http://www.cryptome.org/ before long...

More about the satellite mentioned in the wired article. Seems it might be undetectable by radar too. Cryptome has more info about the patent mentioned in the wikipedia link.

http://cryptome.org/atm/atm-passwords.htm

Can you say "fucking ludicrous scare campaign"?

The fact that you've included the made-up and utterly nonsensical word "Islamofascism" (used exclusively by people who do not know anything about either fascism or Islam) should be enough to clue everyone in that you're a pants-pissing hysterical idiot. Well, that and the fact that you seem to think there's a "d" in the word "urban".

http://cryptome.org/tomlinson-mi6.htm

It isn't a matter of honest vendors. It can generally assumed that most/all cryptography companies are owned and run by the various security services. For decades a US/Swiss/Israli firm Crypto AG sold a cryptology machine with a secret built in backdoor. At least until Pres. Reagan announced on television that they were reading Gaddafi's coded messages.

There has also been speculation why Windows requires three unique signing keys. The disengenious reason given being that in case the first one got lost in a fire.

I'm afraid you're totally wrong here. I've seen a number of TV programs showing how you can 'tune in' to the EM radiation from a Computer's CRT (I even have a clear mental image of a rather wobbly spreadsheet displayed on the 'spy CRT' in a van sitting outside an office). This is why sensitive government installations use TEMPEST shielded CRTs ref: http://cryptome.org/tempest-time.htm
Exactly the same spying is possible on CRT TVs - i.e. they can see what channel you are watching.

However, what the British autorities probably are afraid of people finding out is that the detector van technology (I would assume) does not necessarily work with non-CRT TVs, which are rapidly replacing CRT TVs.

As always with this sort of thing, it's on Cryptome:

http://cryptome.org/nyt-ukterror.htm

Perhaps not control, but certainly influence. After all, RFID tags would certainly enhance our airport experiences and it's not a far cry from Pet-ID for tags to be implanted in children at the same time they're finger printed..

Cryptome had a related article...

http://cryptome.org/western-union.htm

ok let me make a few corrections....

You cannot clone a GSM sim - Not Correct
A GSM phone has a unique IMEI number - correct
Each GSM phone has a unique sim card with a unique sim number, This sim number is attached on a central computer to your account - Mostly correct
Although the sim card does not contain your number is is mainly for informative, and not for operational purposes. - Not correct
The IMEI number is used to identify the user - Not correct
you cannot use a phone in an airplane as it will sign onto every cell site it sees breaking the network - Not correct.

First of all the sim number printed on the sim is just the serial number of the peice of plastic. its an inventory number. Sort of useful but in reality not very.

The Sim is actualy an extremely sophisticated computer in its own right. it has ROM, RAM and EEPROM. It has its own operating system, and holds some applications, the security algorithms A3 and A8, The Keys to the kingdom - KI, and the subscriber identity IMSI.

The subscriber is identified by IMSI, MSISDN, TMSI and MSRN
Only the handset is identified by IMEI

Two ways to clone a GSM sim:
1) break it over the air:
Adi Shamir, Alex Biryukov and David Wagner wrote a paper on Cryptanalysis of A5/1 which shows you one way.

http://cryptome.org/a51-bsw.htm

unfortunately it is flawed. Ill give you a prize if you know how. .....However if you know how it is flawed, you can easily work out how to make the attack viable...

2)Brute force the SIM. If your sim is protected by comp128 and it hasnt been programmed to suicide after a finite number of brute force attempts then using a "phoenix" type smart card reader and some readily available software you can brute force the sim after a couple of hours. Once succesfull you can take a copy of the IMSI and KI to store as you see fit.

One amusing educational exercise when you do have a copy of your KI and IMSI is to write a copy of the application "sim menu" to a programmable card and add your sims identity to it. Then repeat this exercise with a few additional sims until you have a home made "multisim". When you start the phone you will get a menu asking you which simcard identity you wish to use. Which ever one you activate is the one that receives and sends calls.

No its not possible to have more than one sim identity active at the same time.

This is not possible with the sims for pretty muchg all the major operators in the western hemisphere. For the simple reason that the sim has been programmed to suicide after a certain number of attempts to access it. You need more than this number of guesses (or lots of luck) to crack the sim.

So anyway, the chances of you being cloned are slim. its possible but not likely.

Its far more likely the network operator made a mistake, or that you ahve roaming charges that are only just being applied to your account. When roaming, operators tend to get inconsistent data and sometimes this can take a month or more to appear on your bill.

Of course theres the other possibility that your partner made the calls.

Last but not least thye myth that using a GSM phone on an aiplane will crash a network becuase it tries to sign onto too many cells. This is exactly that. A myth.

A GSM handset will lock onto the single strongest signal. If a stronger one comes along then it will hop onto that one.

anyway its likely we will have mobile coverage on planes by the end of this year or early next.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/16/planes_cel lphones_boeing/

just like in the case of hospitals, the main reason for banning cell phones was paranoia (though they did interfere with some types of fire system).

cj

Heh - that's all you are to us, too:

http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm

Actually that page contains links to the names and death reasons of soldiers...

> god damn right. ive known a few enlisted men and women, a number indeed.

Heh - that's all you are to us, too:

http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm

• August 2000 UK criminal inteligence paper arguing for indiscriminate traffic data collection ("data retention")
  
• May 2001 G8 discusion paper arguing for indiscriminate traffic data collection ("data retention")

128-bit encryption: 0.25 sextillion years. That's barebones SSL. PGP with a 4096 bit key? Right...

as usual, it's on cryptome.

http://cryptome.org/klein-decl.htm

mass surveillance of the entire population is logically plausible if NSA's domestic spying is not looking for terrorists, but looking for something else, something that is not so rare as terrorists. For example, the May 19 Fox News opinion poll of 900 registered voters found that 30% dislike the Bush administration so much they want him impeached. If NSA were monitoring email and phone calls to identify pro-impeachment people, and if the accuracy rate were .90 and the error rate were .01, then the probability that people are pro-impeachment given that NSA surveillance system identified them as such, would be p=.98, which is coming close to certainty (p_1.00). Mass surveillance by NSA of all Americans' phone calls and emails would be very effective for domestic political intelligence.

But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible, and NSA certainly knows that. The Politics of Paranoia and Intimidation

mirror of Mark Klein's ATT/NSA documents:

http://cryptome.org/att_klein_wired.pdf (1.67MB)

Source: http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/att_klein_wired.p df

It's also available from Cryptome:

http://cryptome.org/zfone-agree.htm

I was skimming around trying to find more information on the whole MAE East and West facilities. There's not a whole lot out there; they seem to not like to disclose a whole lot about them.

Anyway, I did find this page on Cryptome, which provides some interesting maps and aerial photographs of the various sites.

What interested me most was the area adjacent to the MAE East facility marked "CIA SAIC ET AL". Interesting; not particularly suspicious, given that the CIA HQ isn't far from there, but still interesting placement.

At any rate, regardless of what you think of that unexplained mark on the photo, it's worth looking at the photos. I wonder what (if any) signs they have on the doors. I rather suspect that somewhere in that building is another "secret room" as well.

http://cryptome.org/maee-birdseye.htm

I was skimming around trying to find more information on the whole MAE East and West facilities. There's not a whole lot out there; they seem to not like to disclose a whole lot about them.

Anyway, I did find this page on Cryptome, which provides some interesting maps and aerial photographs of the various sites.

What interested me most was the area adjacent to the MAE East facility marked "CIA SAIC ET AL". Interesting; not particularly suspicious, given that the CIA HQ isn't far from there, but still interesting placement.

At any rate, regardless of what you think of that unexplained mark on the photo, it's worth looking at the photos. I wonder what (if any) signs they have on the doors. I rather suspect that somewhere in that building is another "secret room" as well.

http://cryptome.org/maee-birdseye.htm

Citing a November 1997 story in the Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, the report said that "Lotus built in an NSA 'help information' trapdoor to its Notes system, as the Swedish government discovered to its embarrassment."

http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep.htm

*Lotus built in an NSA "help information" trapdoor to its Notes system, as the Swedish government discovered to its embarrassment in 1997. By then, the system was in daily use for confidential mail by Swedish MPs, 15,000 tax agency staff and 400,000 to 500,000 citizens. Lotus Notes incorporates a "workfactor reduction field" (WRF) into all e-mails sent by non US users of the system. Like its predecessor the Crypto AG "help information field" this device reduces NSA's difficulty in reading European and other e-mail from an almost intractable problem to a few seconds work. The WRF broadcasts 24 of the 64 bits of the key used for each communication. The WRF is encoded, using a "public key" system which can only be read by NSA. Lotus, a subsidiary of IBM, admits this. The company told Svenska Dagbladet:

"The difference between the American Notes version and the export version lies in degrees of encryption. We deliver 64 bit keys to all customers, but 24 bits of those in the version that we deliver outside of the United States are deposited with the American government".(94) 44. Similar arrangements are built into all export versions of the web "browsers" manufactured by Microsoft and Netscape. Each uses a standard 128 bit key. In the export version, this key is not reduced in length. Instead, 88 bits of the key are broadcast with each message; 40 bits remain secret. It follows that almost every computer in Europe has, as a built-in standard feature, an NSA workfactor reduction system to enable NSA (alone) to break the user's code and read secure messages.

Mule, Donkey:
Usa\ -\ Echelon\ Le\ Pouvoir\ Secret\ -\ Documentaire\ -\ Parties1\&2\ -\ \(Alterdivx\ Free\ Fr\)\ -\ Hanthala\ -\ Doc\ Arte\ Fr.avi

As some of you may remember, there was a scandal in Greece back in February 2006 involving the interception of mobile phones belonging to high-level government officials, including the Prime Minister. The CALEA software on the Ericsson switches used by Vodafone was blamed; it had apparently been surrepticiously turned on and was copying traffic to an equal number of "shadow" phones.

An thorny point in the investigation was the revelation that the "shadow" phones had also been used to make phone calls to Laurel, MD.

An interview with James Bamford on the possible role of the NSA in the "Mavili-gate" was published in last Sunday's (5/8) "To Vima", one of the major Athens newspapers. I contacted the journalist, Alexis Papahelas, asking for permission to forward the article to this list, and he was kind enough to send me the original raw transcript.

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdow d.com/msg06141.html

I believe you would be looking for the Hymn project.

And just for shits and giggles, you could use FreeMe or DRM2WMV for Windows Media 10 DRM'd files.

Trust me, cracking 11 is just a matter of time.

Funny how even though they were actually capturing voice conversations and full email contents under Clinton, it was totally fine. In fact, the NY Times lauded it as a necessary measure during this day and age. But now that Bush is simply watching the numbers we dial and receive phone calls from it's an impeachable offense. Check THIS out: http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm It's a transcript of a 60 minutes segment on Project Echelon from 2000 - which was obviously before Bush took office in January of 2001. Somehow I imagine that people are going to draw the amazing conclusion that Bush is responsible for Echelon as well as Carnivore during the 90's even though he wasn't President...

So with Clinton it's ok... with Bush it's impeachment and all the while people are allowed to show blatant disregard for the law leaking our national secrets with no fear of imprisonment. Apparently it's our wonderful members of Congress who are above the law (yes I'm talking to you Jay Rockefeller) - not the President. In fact I'd be impressed for someone to prove to me that the powers given to the Executive branch don't allow for the President to approve warrantless wiretaps as a matter of national security. And remember - this is not the first time that the President of our country has chosen to impede on individual privacy for the sake of national security. Ask the Japanese Americans thrown into concentration camps during WWII under Roosevelt. Clinton, Carter, Roosevelt, even Washington and others have taken these kinds of steps.

Don't get your panties all in wad... I've read 1984 too. And believe me, I'm not interested in a police state either. I understand the whole "frog boiling in water" premise in that over time things can be eroded to the point that they are totally gone. But let's not take the slightest movement in that direction as doom and gloom. The President is responsible for protecting the security of this country. Not you. He is the one who we will point to if and when terrorists attack us again. From what I've heard of these programs in the NSA, I think they are the best balance we can hope for between finding terrorists in his country *before* they commit another attack and our individual rights as citizens. It's been almost five years since 9/11. I don't think that the terrorists just gave up. I think they would love to continue to terrorize us and our way of life. And I think these NSA programs and whatever else Bush has been doing have obviously led to these discussions over privacy vs security instead of discussions about the latest terrorist attack and when the next one will come.

For those of you who are so scared about the government listening to whatever you're saying on the phone, I suggest the following: http://www.gizmoproject.com/ coupled with http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index.html

If you really really have a problem with the government doing anything to impede on your privacy you can always move somewhere else. Unlike other countries, you are free to leave this one at any time.

The problem with prosecutors regarding cases pertaining to technology is that the prosecution does not understand technology firstly, secondly many are trying to make names for themselves so they're often hell bent on pressing charges. "Technology is hip"... So is it hip to be the prosecutor who stopped that evil little sixteen year old with a 100,000 botnet. I just slapped together a document on how to Break Lojack for Laptops and expect a call any minute now... http://cryptome.org/lojack-hack.pdf

The NSA already has plenty of the business opportunities that especially irk us here at Slashdot: patents. Read any introduction to the NSA's work like Bamford's The Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets , and you'll see the NSA develops plenty of interesting technologies which they then patent. Cryptome often reports on new NSA patents.

Check out More Starfire Pics.

More info here:

http://cryptome.org/sor-eyeball.htm

But don't look if you're at Nasa, as it's apparantly information only suitable for terrorists:

http://cryptome.org/nasa-block.htm

More info here:

http://cryptome.org/sor-eyeball.htm

But don't look if you're at Nasa, as it's apparantly information only suitable for terrorists:

http://cryptome.org/nasa-block.htm

Ridiculous. Free speech is not an absolute...

I understand Free speech has very narrow limits. You should visit Cryptome some time and get idea on just how broad Free speech is. Mildly related & interesting reading is the US case against Phil Zimmerman & PGP.

If you sign a legal document promising not to talk about something and you then go and do exactly that, you can expect to be sued unless you are revealing illegal behaviour,

The problem is the person being sued didn't sign an NDA with Apple or anyone else. They simply wish to keep their source confindental, like any journalist would. Apple is suing to find out who the source of the leak is. A journalist isn't required to reveal their source, Apple's agrument is the blogger isn't a journalist and therefore isn't entitle to protect their source. (did you even read the intro, much less the article?)

I expect to see more of this in the future. It's the new end run around having a real debate in the U.S. or Europe.

Its called policy laundering. The "data retention"* idea dates back to at least 2000. (it predates 9/11 and madrid by more than a year, obiously) A bit later it got discussed at a G8 meeting. This may when it officially crossed the ocean, though god knows in which direction... The idea of "lawfull interception" of Internet traffic went from the US to the EU through "ILETS". ILETS may be mostly the FBI or UKUSA... who knows.

Now if you look at the years of trouble the UK goverment is going trough with getting "entitlement cards" (mandatory ID cards) then you will be amazed at how smoothly it got this policy trough. And not just in the UK but in the entire European union.

The UK didn`t want the EU parliament to vote on this. It just wanted to push it through as a deal between justice ministers. But the EU Parliament desperately wanted a say in this. So the UK set a deadline (before the end of its rotating presidency). Before this the parliament had to admend and vote the legislation. Commision were formed, debate started and then when everyone was just getting to grips whith the idea... Wham...an agreement, a vote, done.

Now if anybody knows why the two big coalition parties in the parliament suddenly agreed to the artificial deadline, throwing overboard work on an compromise, please respond. The deadline was worthless anyway because the Netherlands had blocked voting on this as a justice minister backroom deal. I hope they got something good out of th UK for this, but who knows what these crazy christian democrats are up to.

Now before everyone shouts "just encrypt everything", remember as long as internet traffic isn`t signed the only identity traffic might possibly be linked to is some easy to fake billing information though an notoriously unprotected identification mechanisms (IP address, IRC nick, E-mail addres). That is unless you start signing your traffic, traffic data isn`t explicitly protected agianst forgery which is why this billion dollar plan produces stuff that isn`t worth as much in court as some people might imagine. But hey, think of the children, right...

* More correctly: "data collection, rentention and mining at the providers cost" The internet typically doesn`t really have designated traffic data though.

Anything really interesting is likely to end up on Cryptome.

How Stuff Works

This part is amusing:
"Air Force crews at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland carefully inspect the plane, and the runway, before every flight."

I guess they missed the part where Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team managed to put fake IEDs on Air Force One in the hangar.

Also, here are the anti-missile defenses courtesy of Cryptome, who's really fast on the draw at saving info before it vanishes:
Air Force One Defenses and also here about the Air Force One rescue system (the "oxygen bottles" everyone is afraid some sniper will blow up.)

How Stuff Works

This part is amusing:
"Air Force crews at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland carefully inspect the plane, and the runway, before every flight."

I guess they missed the part where Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team managed to put fake IEDs on Air Force One in the hangar.

Also, here are the anti-missile defenses courtesy of Cryptome, who's really fast on the draw at saving info before it vanishes:
Air Force One Defenses and also here about the Air Force One rescue system (the "oxygen bottles" everyone is afraid some sniper will blow up.)

Horror stories like this one, or this one, both written by Richard Preston.

(The second link has an interview with Dr. Alibek)

Horror stories like this one, or this one, both written by Richard Preston.

(The second link has an interview with Dr. Alibek)

For an instance where Israelis and US government got caught collaborating on using software to spy on allies as well as enemy states look at the PROMIS* / Inslaw scandal:

http://cryptome.org/promis-mossad.htm
(most detailed in allegations, but read critically)

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/INSLAW/

http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/insl aw.html
(First issue of Wired - more on the DOJ's role in attempting to crush Inslaw.)

*PROMIS was and is the super-meta-database software for intelligence-gathering / analysis and prosecution management sold to dozens of different countries. It had a back-door built in which allegedly allowed surveilance of intelligence operations even of non-networked computers through spread-spectrum emissions from the dedicated Prime computers on which it ran. Inslaw made PROMIS but the DOJ tried to put them out of business by not paying for the software as contracted. The back door was not Inslaw's doing, AFAIK.

On the contrary: Jack Valenti Testimony at 1982 House Hearing on Home Recording of Copyrighted Works

To quote: But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright. And that was 1982!

Whether contracts such as Adobe's EULA, often referred to as "shrinkwrap" licenses, are valid is a much-disputed question. A number of courts that have addressed the validity of the shrinkwrap license have found them to be invalid, characterizing them as contracts of adhesion, unconscionable, and/or unacceptable pursuant to the Uniform Commercial Code. Step-Saver, 939 F.2d 91; Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd., 847 F.2d 255 (Sth Cir. 1988).

...

In short, the transfer of copies of Adobe software making up the distribution chain from Adobe to SoftMan are sales of the particular copies, but not of Adobe's intellectual rights in the computer program itself, which is protected by Adobe's copyright. SoftMan is an "owner" of the copy and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software, with the rights that are consistent with copyright law. The Court rejects Adobe's argument that the EULA gives to purchasers only a license to use the software. The Court finds that SoftMan has not assented to the EULA and therefore cannot be bound by its terms.

http://www.cryptome.org/ They archive all kinds of stuff that was being pulled of the Internet in the post 9/11 world.

Last I checked posting a link wasn't illegal.

Tell that to 2600 Magazine.

Many people think that an SSL certificate somehow guarantees a trustful vendor.

It doesn`t, but it could! When are consumer unions going to hand out certs that expire monthly? If a company doesn`t handle complaints satisfactory... then it has to get a certificate someplace else. Crappy new privacy policy? no new cert, disapearing backup tapes with social security numbers and no plan to prevent this heaponing in the future? no new cert....

In case of banks this helps them as well as they often end up with the bill for fraud (if not because of the law then because of lost trust in systems that are cheaper than snail mail and brick and mortar). Banks don`t want certificate authoraties that are happy to *sell* certs to the phishers that steal from them. Consumer umions would happily give out certificates for free... to organisations that take running an e-comerce site seriously. Its either that or having goverment regulatory bodies for the banking industry deal with this. They tend to know the diffrence between a bank and some guy offering "lones" to gamblers who wants to know your credid card numbers.

And when are browsers gonna display the logo of the certificate authority? Early browsers already had these logo`s. It is many times more informative than a plain padlock icon. Browser could just replace the URL field and browser logo with the signed identity and the CA logo. If all people see is a padlock then all they know is that someone is doing some work on security... This tells you nothing if that someone can be a "cheap certs fast" kind of authority doing no work as well as it could be a militant consumer union or, even worse, a regulatory authority kind of group.

If competition between signing authorities is the answer then they should compete on service quality, not certificate price... For that to heapon users should know what authority they are using the moment they open a site. Maybe then authorities can begin to build a real reputation rather then a "cheap certs fast" reputation among the few website operators that care. And if users arent gonna drop the root certs of people who hand out microsoft.com code signing certificates to people other then microsoft, then browser people should be able to revoke root certs for them. Especially if there is no appology and no serious plan for preventing things like that in the future.

Now certificate authorities don`t do anything to earn trust. Everyone knows verisign resells controversial foreign "lawfull interception" equipment as well as selling certificates right? Imagine what this equipment could do with a verisign private key... These clowns don`t care one bit for their reputation. If they did they would at least sell this equipment under a diffrend name. Somehow they still own most of the certificate market though. And verint as comverse is now known does provide equipment that is part of an inteligence trading deal between a european country and Israel.

For users to care about the reputation of certificate authorities logo`s/brand names are all we got. They might help joe six pack deal with reputations. Joe may not know crypto but if they sees the verisign logo on the evening news with the word "scandal" next to it he might recognise the logo the next day when he visits a bank like site.

...after you search for 'mohammed cartoon bomb'.

Also, correct me if i'm wrong, but they are angry cause they cartoons are depicting Muhammad as a terrorist among one of the cartoons correct?

I believe "Do not photograph under pain of severe penalties" was at one point a standard sign on 1950s era train stations and other installations in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries.