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"So what is the purpose?"

Its probably not the primary purpose but it is a pretty effective way to flaunt that you are above the law, all laws including the constitution and to flaunt that you have power.

In reading the U.S. Criminal Code on computer intrusions Section 1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers it is interesting to note that Congress went out of their way to exempt various 3 letter Federal agencies from laws against hacking computers while everyone else goes to Federal prison for it:

"f) This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States"

Someone is also flaunting the fact that they can leak apparently classified information and get away with it. If its being done with the knowledge of people like Obama it is especially arrogant because the Obama administration has been one of the most aggressive in going after people for leaking stuff that they don't want leaked, while they are one of the most prolific leakers of classified information they see and advantage in leaking. Thomas Drake, formerly of the NSA, being one of the sadder cases of a whistleblower being abused by Obama and Holder.

I don't know if I would mod this up or not. Here is a little more info on the program. There are a lot of obvious holes. For one, gaming national security is always a downside, and markets can be gamed. Another is the fact that government intelligence agencies would have great sway over which way the market went. With that in mind, think about how often cronyism and nepotism crop up in government. There would be huge risks in such an investment. In the end, it may be a unique idea, but I don't think it would have worked.

The important point in all of this though is that, for all the pork and excess, DARPA does foster innovation. Bringing new ideas to important problems is a good thing. If only we could create a DARPA project to lead to a solution for cutting government wastefulness.

Why are most suicide bombers Muslim?

BTW, I already knew this because I have nearly been bown up by the main user of suicide bombs (although that particular attack was not an outright suicide one, they tried to fight their way out after crashing the truck bomb into place).

... if laws such as this are passed.

Market forces and government requirements will take care of ensuring RFID chips become implanted.

The financial benefits and incentives of voluntarily getting chipped will far outweigh not being chipped.

I'm reminded of a speech given by Michael Chertoff about the role the private sector can play in traveller screening:

There are number of ways in which the private sector can really add value and play a major role in this process ... you've got a lot of people traveling almost always for private business, as we talk about trusted traveler programs getting more of the kind of information that allows us, for example, to let people move freely through airports, as we talk about biometric types of identification which maybe become available on a voluntary basis, the private sector can create a marketplace for this. If people, in fact, see value in having a biometric card and volunteering some information for it in return for getting some kind of trusted traveler status, that will create a marketplace for the technology and a marketplace for the systems that we need to drive that forward.

Once you have a sufficient number of people embracing the technology and reaping certain benefits, it's a small step from there that business can say, "Well, these people that have these chips have better chances of promotion" or whatever.

Besides, the government shall surely love the idea of having a wonderful surveillance mechanism such as this, and they (along with corporations) will continue to propagate the myth that privacy = data security, which it doesn't, in order to still use RFIDs at some point anyway.

This is demonstrated in the SM Daily Journal article when it says:

They also include measures that would bar use of RFIDs in driver's licenses and student identification badges before 2011 and set privacy-protection standards for RFIDs.

A fifth bill by Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, is also on the committee's agenda. It would require companies that issue identification cards or other items containing RFIDs to disclose the personal information that would be revealed by the RFID and what steps they've taken to protect that information".

In other words, we'll let them use it anyway, as long as they protect the data, not your privacy (and they're doing such a good job of protecting our data already, of course). From there, it's just a short step to say, "Well, you've got RFIDs in your ID cards, why not get a chip in your arm to speed up time at airport check-in, or purchasing items at the counter, or 0% interest for the next year on purchases ..."

You're not required to have a mobile phone, but market forces and social pressures are pretty damn persuasive.

You're not required to get an implant, but hey, it surely helps.

Nonillion said:
"however some people still balk at this as 'science fiction'. I can assure you it's not. It's this kind of thing that should be waking up manufactures to the perils of shitty RFI design. Spewing broad band spectrum pollution not only causes radio interference, but also opens you to security problems."

Amen, Brother.

And when it "science fictions" across your purview - if you catch it, it becomes pretty real.
Because these techniques aren't at your favorite |-|ol3 'r US exploit sites. (Why do you think they call them elite?)

These guys "get it" -

"The Air Force [US] now dominates both air and space above a theater of operations, so it has "cross-domain dominance" there. But the Air Force must gain dominance in cyberspace as well, because cyberspace superiority is now a prerequisite to effective operations in all other warfighting domains."

The "electromagnetic spectrum" is pliable, a Faraday cage is your only refuge.
Attacks involve using RF in ways not usually used; for data over RF or VHF etc. - Packet radio, "radio modem".
It IS rocket science.
It appears they understand that.

This is Key:

"According to Dr. Kass, cyberspace is neither a mission nor an operation. Instead, cyberspace is a strategic, operational and tactical warfighting domain -- a place in which the Air Force or other services can fight.

"The domain is defined by the electromagnetic spectrum," Dr. Kass said. "It's a domain just like air, space, land and sea. It is a domain in and through which we deliver effects -- fly and fight, attack and defend -- and conduct operations to obtain our national interests."

The cyber domain includes all the places an electron travels. The electron, which is part of the atom, can travel from one atom to the next. This concept is key to electronic communication and energy transmission.

An electron may travel from a cell phone to a cell tower, for instance. The path the electron takes, the shape of its path, the speed it travels, and the direction it travels are all critical to ensuring the cell phone works and that a usable signal is received. As part of a signal, an electron can travel from a handheld computer to a reception tower, over a wire to a telephone, to a television through an antenna, from a radio transmitter to radio, and from computer to computer as part of a network.

The electron can also travel, as part of energy transmission, from a microwave oven to popcorn seeds to make them pop, from generators over a wire to a light bulb, and from an X-ray machine through bone to a detection plate to make an image for a doctor to review.

The places where the electron travels is the cyber domain, or cyberspace. And the ability to deliver a full range of cyber effects -- to detect, deter, deceive, disrupt, defend, deny, and defeat any signal or electron transmission -- is the essence of fighting in cyberspace."

http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2006/10-05.htm

Faraday Cage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

FCC ID, FCC level B emissions

http://www.austinlinks.com/Crypto/tempest.html

Your phone company or telephone manufacturer may be able to supply you with free modular filters, although the design frequencies of these filters may not be high enough to be effective through much of the EMI spectrum of interest. Keep telephone lines away from power supplies of computers or peripherals and the rear of CRTs: the magnetic field often associated with those device can inductively transfer to unshielded lines just as if the telephone line were directly electrically connected to them. Since this kind of coupling decreases rapidly with distance, this kind of magnetic induction can be virtually eliminated by keeping as much distance (several feet or more) as possible betwe

This was predicted in the past, but here's one of the roadmaps:

http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/treatise-on- iw/iw.htm

Quite a lot of reading, but its not too bad. Seems like all that is happening is that the crooks are catching up with the research faster than the commercial people are.

I recently read this article stating how the UK government was considering implimenting a GPS (or Galileo) tracking system for road vehicles, in order to track their movement and tax the car according to the distance driven and where the location.

I know that my phone is monitored for keywords and randomly tapped (You think you have it bad in America) and I know my ISP is required to keep all my internet logs.
 
But this isn't just worrying, this is scary.

My movements are tracked by the government, in real time, with a spatial resolution of a few feet. Wherever I drive.

This is ridiculous. Given that there are few objections to the current UK taxing model, what is the motive for implementing this system?
In fact, recen

237paDfF%^&*HJN [NO CARRIER]

They already have a department. Its called PSYOPS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operati ons_(United_States)
http://www.iwar.org.uk/psyops/

Some of thier articles are quite interesting.

The point is that the US military already spout/counter proproganda. The only reason I can think of that they are claiming they are creating a new office is to distract from the fact that PSYOPS are doing the same thing they claim to be fighting.

Seeing it happens in Israel a small but very well technological developed country, the question is what is happening in places and big economic regions like US, EU, Asia? May be they are not as fast and developed as Israel finding trojans. And it's very common to silence this things in private rooms, a common practice when a Bank hacking happen.

More information at: IWS The Information Warfare Site

I located two other government sources here and here.

Another poster also found it here.

I'd like to point out that while there is no direct mention of Trusted Computing, it calls for a "fundamentally different architecture", some sections mostly later in the paper apprear to describe Trusted Computing functionality, the experts they cite all appear to be Trusted Computing speciallists and proponents (in particular David Spafford was the author of the semi famous WHY_TCPA and TCPA_REBUTTAL papers), at least some of the committee members appear to have Trusted Computing ties, and an earlier Cyber Security Advisor gave a speech at the Washington D.C. Tech summit calling for Trusted Computing and for ISPs to eventually make it a mandatory part of terms of service for internet access. A call to fight worms and viruses and to Secure the National Information Infrastucture against terrorist attacks, to defend against Osama bin Laden himself. Yes, he actually cited bin Laden by name. chuckle.

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maybe. But at least you [Zadr] mentioned "staff"

Many comments speak up for the "kids" or "students" whom the writers seem to presume were the targets.

Uh, ... not necessarily.

See, for example, another recent schoolhouse raid and aftermath, in this case involving a university:

Two employees (emphasis supplied) of the State University of New York at Albany have pleaded guilty to copyright-infringement charges after federal agents accused the pair of running servers that collected pirated sound and movie files and software. (10/9/2003)

...and further (excerpted from: infocon

NewsBits for October 3, 2003...
Four Plead Guilty in Online Piracy Ring
Four men have pleaded guilty for their roles in an online piracy ring that illegally distributed tens of thousands of copyrighted items through the Internet. Federal prosecutors said Thursday that the guilty pleas were part of a national probe into pirated video games, movies, music files and computer software. Some of the file servers were located at the State University of New York at Albany.
(omitted: AP, CNN, etc citations and links)

The article DOES say, afterall, that the "computer command center" was the target.

Postscript is actually an interpreted programming language, oriented for display, and it is powerful enough that it is entirely possible to write viruses for Postscript documents.

Do a google search and check out the rationale for ghostscript's -dSAFER option, etc.

For example, we have here the following:

Even in PostScript files there may be problems similar to those encountered with macro viruses. In PostScript display programs there are interpreters which process the PostScript language. Above level 2.0 of the PostScript specification there are also PostScript commands for writing files. As a result it is possible to generate PostScript files which, during processing by an interpreter, can modify, delete or rename other files as soon as they are displayed on the screen.

Specific problems exist in the ghostscript (gs) program. In the Unix versions it is possible to switch off the write facilities on files with the -dSAFER option. However this is not the pre-set option. This option is similarly named in versions for other operating systems.

Won't Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Bill Gates III KBE be surprised when the Queen summons them to fight for Great Britain in her next war.

I guess the British are concerned with Information Warfare, after all.

No it WAS Jager

Stop spreading misinformation.

looks like it.

Seems to have written a book on it.

I got the paper the other day...I thought it was 58 billion?

Now I only hope they put it into thier google toolbar.

On another subject. Before news.google.com I used exclusively ThePaperboy. I still do although not as much. But unlike paperboy google is more a portal to news, which in itself allows the url's to appear to be more subjective. Certainly something Psyops would like to play with.

Don't get me wrong its a great site but nearly all news sites are biased (truth is subjective), the secret is to read both sides and form an opinion between the two. When you control the portal though it allows you to slant your other side of the argument.

Here is a Link for the ones like me that didn't know what PsyOps is.
Quote" Definition of Psychological Operations: 'Psychological Operations: Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator's objectives. Also called PSYOP. See also consolidation psychological operations; overt peacetime psychological operations programs; perception management. ' US Department of Defense