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Van Eck phreaking is not a fantasy. It may rarely be a practice risk, but it is a real technique. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/pet2004-fpd.pdf http://jya.com/emr.pdf Warning pdfs

"After the USSR went down, the NSA downsized"

No they didn't, security efforts were redeployed in industrial espionage, with the help of our own GCHQ

As a HAM, I have met a few who have nifty gear able to tune into cell phones and their 'pings' or tower replies (from post-911 US cellphones) and a few of them have told me that there seems to be more than just pinging or tickling the towers going on. More than is needed to keep up the TX/RX channels open or for simply switching towers based on cell tower capacity and range to the handset.
Others hinted that the removal of the battery does not fully prevent (post-911 US cellphones) from receiving radio frequency energy and replying uniquely (just like RFID tags do but cell phones have Much better antennas).
Links that touch some on this topic:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=8068
http://jya.com/cell-track.htm
http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/37748res20081112.html
http://allgpstracking.net/gpstracking/index.php/gpstracking/2006/03/12/how_gps_works_gps_tracking
http://ezinearticles.com/?Cell-Phone-Location-Tracking-Information&id=782355
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21442821-Cell-phone-location-tracking-without-telcos-help
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081116-foia-docs-show-feds-can-lojack-mobiles-without-telco-help.html
http://www.danbrown.com/secrets/digital_fortress/cell_phones.html
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3945496.ece
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but because RFID tags cost only a few cents each, why would similar capability NOT be incorporated into the chips of modern cell phones. Tear down an RFID tag, it is just a very very small semiconductor chip paired to a set of antennas between layers of opaque plastic tape an a sticker backing.
(NOTE: In college, we had fun by carefully removing discovered RFID tags and 'repatriating' them onto different and unrelated merchandise at our local Wal-Mart Supercenter... good times..... not to be confused with the old tried and true bi-metallic strips that loss control departments use which set off the door antenna loops that we all walk through. But sticking one of those to your buddy's jacket made for a good laugh...)

Thanks for the term. I was having trouble finding relevant information. After more searching witht he term you provided and associated terms like EMR, the closest information I could find for monitoring data cables is this pdf covering the eavesdropping on EMR from RS-232 cables. From the paper:

"Eavesdropping experiments showed that RS-232 data signals can be intercepted several meters away from a target system, even when a shielded data cable is used."

"A PC-modem connection placed in a living room could be intercepted in the bedroom of an adjacent house!"

It did not fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because, at the time, there were no stipulations for physical searches only electronic. Secondly, Ames himself chose not to pursue having any evidence thrown out based on the issue of warrents as you seem to be claiming. Here is the Criminal Complaint form from Ames' Case. I'm going to highlight some important areas:

"Paragraph 11: As a result of information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, searches authorized by the Attorney General pursuant to section 2.5 of Executive Order 12333, trash covers, and other investigation which is detailed herein, I believe AMES has traveled abroad to meet surreptitiously with KGB/SVRR."

So they had what was necessary to aquire the evidence.

Here is a link to and specifically Section 2.5:

"The Attorney General hereby is delegated the power to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant would be required if undertaken for law enforcement purposes, provided that such techniques shall not be undertaken unless the Attorney General has determined in each case that there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. Electronic surveillance, as defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, shall be conducted in accordance with that Act, as well as this Order."

They had probable cause which allowed them to go warrentless. The next three instances, again pulled from the Ames Criminal Complaint form referenced above, we see that FISA was used throughout the investigation.

"Paragraph 18: Based on information acquired in an electronic surveillance of AMES' personal computer and software within his residence, which was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on or about October 9, 1993, along with other information obtained through electronic surveillance and other means, I believe "B" refers to Bogota, Colombia. From electronically stored documents located in AMES' personal computer, "North" has been identified as a signal site used by the SVRR to contact AMES, and "Pipe" is a dead drop used by the SVRR to pass messages, instructions, and cash to AMES. In this message, AMES indicated he could not be contacted from the 13th through l9th of September. I have been advised by CIA officials and learned through electronic surveillance that AMES traveled to Turkey on official business on or about September 13 and returned to the U.S. on or about September 17, 1993.

Paragraph 28: Based on several factors, including but not limited to the following, I believe AMES signaled his assent to the November meeting in Bogota by placing a chalk mark at the mailbox, "SS Smile", on or about October 13, 1993:
        a. First, on or about October 12, 1993, FBI Special Agents monitored, by means of electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a discussion between AMES and his wife ROSARIO AMES, substantially as follows:

Paragraph 48: Based on information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, I believe AMES also owns two condominium apartments and a farm in Colombia. The condominiums are in Bogota and Cartagena; the farm is referred to as the "Guajira.""

As you can see, FISA was involved and the case itself never came down to contesting the gathering the evidence. So you see, everything was in order and our government was able to find a spy on our soil without gross violations of our Constitutional rights.

You may be right ;)

(and this tacit defense of Koresh and other anti-government loony-tunes is quite interesting)

I knew someone would attempt to mudsling this way, because the world is full of people who are concrete-bound in their thinking.

An American can write angry letters to his Congressman any time he wants.

Step out of your fantasy world for a moment and consider reality. China is not an absolute dictatorship where its citizens have no freedoms whatsoever. A chinese could write a letter to a politician demanding reforms, and this happens quite regularly, any time he wanted to without repercussion.

He can write nasty letters to newspapers.

But not TOO nasty...

There are a whole host of political activities which an American can partake of if he wishes to denounce US government policy.

Within "Protest Zones" and "Free Speech Zones", of course.

If we don't like our government, we can vote them out.

"We" means nothing. The only collective entities that make coherent decisions are private corporations, not voter blocs.

You as an individual have exactly as much power to affect the US government as any random Chinese citizen does of affecting their own.

If Chinese don't like their goverment, they go to jail.

You mean like Jim Bell?

...have had their freedom taken away in the United States (or Guantanamo) in 2004, for:

- prostitution
- drug use
- gambling
- writing stuff the Man doesn't like
- being Muslim

Okay, so China has different standards for what it considers "vice crimes". But does that make them worse than the USA?

• Assassination Politics by Jim Bell
• The American Holocaust
• Anarchist's Cookbook
• Icky, unpatriotic, morbid beheading videos and such
• Bias to balance U.S. news bias
• Map of the White House
• Location of NYC water resevoirs
• Alex Jones loves progress!
• Economic terrorism #1 - buy nothing day
• Economic terrorism #2 - evil ad-skipping Tivo
• Economic terrorism #3 - running out of oil isn't a conspiracy theory.
• Economic terrorism #4 - the top 10 most fuel efficient cars of 2005 :)
• The widening wealth gap
• Paper trails make it much harder to steal elections
• Hamster dance!

If jackboot thug out there wants to arrest me for "implicitly supporting" the content of any of these links, feel free to abuse the PATRIOT ACT in order to force slashdot.org to reveal the IP address associated with this post, and in turn my ISP will reveal my name and home address associated with the DHCP lease (because I didn't bother to post through an anonymous proxy(s)). tinfoil_hat_mode off.

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for the moment i thought the autor of this Echelon was taking measures agains piracy...

Even in jest. Even in part. It's neither funny nor reasonable to suggest sending an assassin after your political or financial enemies.

I take it you've never heard of Assassination politics?

Second, that letter couldn't have come from Jim Bell, he has much better grammar.

From here

Unlike the CIA, whose basic functions are clearly outlined in the 1947 law that created it, NSA, created in 1952, simply gathers intelligence.
...
All intelligence agencies are tasked with producing a particular product. NSA produces -- that is, collects, analyzes, and disseminates to its consumers -- Signals Intelligence, called SIGINT. It comes from communications or other types of signals intercepted from what we called "targeted entities," and it amounts to about 80 percent of the viable intelligence the U.S. government receives.

In certain cases, the NSA can look into the activities of U.S. citizens or residents if it believes they are acting as agents for another country. The agency must first get the permission of a special court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then get the U.S. attorney general's consent.

Pages 14 and 15 note methods "a, b, d, and m" sanitizing fixed drives, and continues:

"d. Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify. THIS METHOD IS NOT APPROVED FOR SANITIZING MEDIA THAT CONTAINS TOP SECRET INFORMATION."

Note this applies to DOD contractors, and other rules probably apply to DOD, military, and the CIA/NSA/NRO/etc intelligence community.

The obvious implication is that the 3 verified passes are sufficient to render the information not worth recovering for Confidential and Secret, but that Top Secret info is still potentially recoverable within cost/benefit constraints for the opponent. Remember - for many things (except possibly some weapons systems info) you don't need to guarantee the opponent can't recover the information, you merely have to make the cost of recovery greater than the benefit they gain from the secret.

Oh, and the Canadian RCMP TSSIT OPS-II says: "Must first be checked for correct functioning and then have all storage areas overwritten once with the binary digit ONE, once with the binary digit ZERO and once with a single numeric, alphabetic or special character, " and again, not for Top Secret - for that, they recommend contacting somebody for special instructions/handling.

Assassination Politics combines the free-market mercenary idea with added bonus of using cryptography, anonymous digital cash, and the distributed nature of the internet. All the things a geek would love;-)

Well, I'd rather be able to read the source at all, than to blindly trust.

You know, we had that, the NSA getting companies to put backdoors into products. Here in Switzerland:

http://jya.com/nsa-sun.htm
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How about a dollar into the pot for Assassination Politics?

The whole sordid story care of Cryptome

Funnily enough the idea has already been used for Bin Laden and Saddam.

Assassination Politics

Assassination Politics

http://jya.com/nsa-sun.htm

If anonymous transferable digital cash becomes a a reality it can be used for other useful purposes. The future is bright.

That idea (paying predictors of bad people's deaths) has been fleshed out before, in much greater detail, as Assassination Politics But it's extreme. Practical permanent solutions

Hey man, give credit where it's due. The first is called Assassination Politics.

Have a look at this site they say, much about Mach 3 razorz and RFID,

they claim "Gillette shelf photographs unsuspecting shoppers!" and they have some pdf files here, and here to prove that Auto-ID Center is invading your privacy. There is also a (mirror) Video here which is currently on auto-id website here.

Art Bell wrote this in 1997. It didnt make him too popular with the Feds, he was jailed for tax evasion. Now the Feds are stealing his idea?

"A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death."

A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

bshanks writes "apparently, markets are the best way known for large groups of humans to aggregate their information and make predictions. Information markets are (i think) markets designed to elicit various types of predictions. Successful information markets include the Iowa Electronic Market, which predicts political events more accurately than major news polls, and the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which predicts box office revenues and Oscar winners." Paul Johnson appears to have verified this experimentally (if informally):

A number of years ago a colleague at Columbia Business School, Paul Johnson, created an exercise to demonstrate the exquisite capability of markets to discern value. The game is based on the Academy Awards-the highest accolades handed out in the film industry. The basics are very simple:

*Each student receives a single piece of paper with a listing of 12 Academy Award categories and the nominees for each. On the front of the page are relatively well known categories, such as best film, best actress and so on. The back page has more obscure categories-best adapted screenplay, best cinematography and such. The forms are distributed roughly three weeks in advance of the actual awards event.

*Students are asked to select the winners in each category. In order to play, students must contribute $1 to a pot, with the student with the most correct answers winning the pot. Hence, there is a modest economic incentive to answer the questions right.

*About 125 students participated in 1998. All guesses were generated independently, as students were forbidden from consulting with one another. The results were impressive in 1998. Similar results have been generated year-in and year-out:

*The "consensus," defined as the most popular selection for a given category, correctly identified 11 of the 12 actual category winners. Remarkably, the only category the consensus missed, it missed by only one vote.

*The best individual accurately picked 9 of the 12 category winners.

*The average individual only picked 5 of the 12 winners-less than 50%. The message from this exercise is that lots of agents and independent errors in their judgements lead to efficient results. The market tends to be much smarter than the average person. In fact, the standard error in equilibrium prices declines with roughly the square root of the number of investors.

This observation is not particularly new-in fact Francis Galton made the same point in the late 19th century-but it is often overlooked. Further, this simple model does not include meaningful economic incentives or learning. If incorporated, these elements would make the results even more robust.

So it

Why does this sound eerily like a government-sponsored version of Assassination Politics, the piece written by cypherpunk/crypto-anarchist Jim Bell, who is now suing the government under RICO to get his freedom because they conspired against him?

Basically, his idea is the same thing, except people would be buying futures on the death of political personalities. It's strange, it's a bit fringe, it's not liked by the government except for when they use it for their own plans.

It is called Assasination Politics and was initially put forth by a fellow named Jim Bell. Fedgov didn't much like Mr. Bell after he started talking about this idea for obvious reasons. John Young's excellent site, Cryptome, has a lot of information about AP and exactly what happened to Jim Bell.

Read the above links for more info.

an experiment in information markets, using anonymous message pools for exchange of instructions and items. Tim May's experiment in guerilla ontology.

Does anyone remember Assassination Politics by Jim Bell?

A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death.

Read more

So, perhaps it *is* time to implement Assassination Politics.

In addition to the U.S. military base and Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, I seem to recall that there is an NSA/CIA/DIA electronic signals intercept and listening station at Guantanamo.

From the book ''The U.S. Intelligence Community''
At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are more than 100 members of the Guantanamo Naval Security Group Activity. Employing an AN/FRD-10 antenna system, the unit intercepts Cuban and Soviet military communications in and around Cuba and the Caribbean Basin.

It seems more likely that jamming an Iranian satellite signal would come from the American dishes at the Guantanamo installation than from Cubans.

The Soviets/Russians also had a major electronic signals listening station at Lourdes, Cuba (its largest foreign military base) that was aimed at intercepting American telephone calls and computer communications, but the Russians shut it down in 2002 after pressure and inducements from the USA. The base was set up after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Sadly, it tends to result in another idiot taking the incumbant idiot's spot. What we really need is something like Bell's Assassination Politics.

As proven by the German CCC

The Post article refers to a similar project initiated by John Young, a New York City architect.

They are speaking of Cryptome, which is indeed offline. It is redirecting to this nearly blank page http://jya.com, which I can only assume stand for John Young, Architect.

Cryptome did indeed contain a ton of interesting information. I was a fan for years, but I hadn't visited recently. It's a shame to see the spooks finally got to him, if that is indeed the case.

See Jim Bell's Assassination Politics. Beware, the government does not have a sense of humor. Jim Bell is currently in federal prison, serving a 10 year sentence for "stalking" an IRS agent. For details, see here.

But the big floating-point applications that NSA has are likely to be signal-processors like Echelon which are trolling for voice signals and such, which is a good match for large numbers of scalar processors. How tightly they're integrated depends on the conveniences of signal collection, which is beyond my ability to speculate credibly :-)

Ever heard of Assassination Politics?

You make an secure guess on which day you think a certain person (politician, natch), will die. If the said person does die on that day, you collect all of the money currently bet.

All set up to be anonymous and secure and it might work. You're effectively putting a price on someone's head and when the price is high enough another someone will try and collect by ensuring the death occurs on the date they specified.

The idea is that it would suddenly breed a race of super nice politicians (in all countries!), as after all would you risk being a slimeball if this would hang over your head?

I'm not saying that I condone it, just thought you might be interested. It is a long read, but certainly thought provoking.

Cheers,

Roger

I'll probably get added to some list just for mentioning this... but... Assassination Politics is one solution to keep assholes in check (and as an added bonus prevents millions of soldiers from needlessly dying for their leaders' stupidity when a few well placed bullets can often do the job).

As long as the perception remains that we can change a system from within, and as long as the majority people are reasonably happy, a 'revolutionary' will be thought of no differently than a terrorist... just as our founding fathers were considered terrorists by the powers that used to be.

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That would make Jim Bell happy.

emp hemp tempest

In theory this is interesting, but would be practially useless in real life. What if someone was sitting in front of the computer, and there was no convenient white wall a metre away? Where would you hide your "special light sensing device"?

Again, an interesting piece of theory, but I can't see many situations where this could be applied in real life. On the other hand, the concept of "Van Eck Phreaking" (using a tv, antenna, & tuner to pick up electromagnetic radiation from a monitor and duplicate the picture from a distance) is quite old now. It's a much more realistic approach, but even still, it hasn't been explored very well.

if this inneffective light-and-reflection approach interests you, perhaps you'd like to check out some information on a more likely way to watch someone's monitor remotely like tempest, or the original paper on electromagnetic radiation as a security risk, by Wim Van Eck, the paper being written about tests he conducted in 1983.

Anyway, my comment isn't even close to approaching Jim Bell levels, or that dude on Howard Stern who wouldn't back down in seriousness and got a visit from the NSA.

Besides, I don't think many people could argue that things are bad enough yet to warrant fixing corruption with murder. Voting still works... sortof.

(I think I've prolly set off more echelon red flags in this post than the previous :)
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That the source code is capable of such compilation, however, does not destroy the expressive nature of the source code itself. Thus, we conclude the trial court's preliminary injunction barring Bunner from disclosing the DeCSS can fairly be characterized as a prohibition of "pure" speech.

The French don't trust their citizens and for years banned all encryption (except some businesses, with them having to hand over keys). They may have, as you allege, used the intelligence in an underhand way. However, I think your reason for 'relaxing' their stance on encryption is mistaken, or only part of the reason. Upon discovering all about Echelon, and the extent to which the USA have been gathering intelligence on French business (and allegedly lost billions due to NSA handing key data for US businesses), it brought about the greatest 180 degree turn in crypto politics seen to date. From a complete ban to full support of strong encryption, with the encouragement of open-source software. To think things had steadily been improving since this article 2 years ago. It would be a blow to the memories of those lost if their sacrifice failed to make the world a better place.

Phillip.

Well, this happened in the past to DigiCash as many of you might remember. The point there was not that the company was really out of money, the point was to get rid of Dr. David Chaum. Look here for details. Today eCash Technologies is a successful company with continuing support from the PREVIOUS Investors (the ones that pulled the plug). So, I do not think that this is the end for Loki. If they focus on their successful business and have patient Investors PLUS MANY customers. But that shouldn't be a problem, should it?