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US Military Uses Spam, Internet Explorer
chundo writes "CNN reports that the United States government has been secretly encouraging the defection of senior Iraqi officials via email. Iraq is responding by shutting down some of their internet gateways to prevent these emails from getting through, forcing the US to find alternate means to deliver the message. Maybe they should have enlisted this guy - emails from him keep showing up in my inbox no matter what I do." This story about the growing military network bandwidth crunch shows the U.S. military trying hard to get every soldier online, all the time.
How does this related to Internet Explorer ?
3 words: public key encryption.
Any scientist smart enough that we want him would know how to take an American public key, use it to encrypt details of a defection back to the states, and shit just hand-write the ASCII armor of it and fax it back..
rather near the border of cuba, america has radio brodcasts of pro-america (capitalism, democracy, etc) and anti-castro (cuba, communist, socialist, etc) propoganda including all sorts of subversive songs and talk, all illegal to broadcast in cuba. the stations are rather popular, too.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I get spam from the military all the time. Ever since they got a list of names in high school I receive emails and snail mail letters encouraging me to "Join the ROTC", "Get Money for College", etc. Now that I'm graduating I get "Become an Officer in the US Military" letters. I guess if marketing is aggressive enough they won't have to bring back the draft.
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So they expect Iraqis to take emails seriously of which they cannot verify the source to take action that could cost the lives of themselves and their families. To my understanding, paranoia is very common in Iraq and it's assumed that everybody spies on everybody. Upon receipt of such an email, the likely assumption would be that it came from the government in an attempt to weed out potential defectors.
It's a nice idea, but it again shows a poor understanding of the local situation by the West and most likely little consideration for the lives of exactly those insider people willing to oppose the regime.
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Err ... no. Bush I. chose to retreat from Iraq to have a justification for U.S. troops to remain stationed all over the Middle East. They went there during the Gulf war and never left. As for the press, it was heavily (and voluntarily) censored during that time, virtually all the footage was Army-approved, and in fact provided by the Army.
Anyway, it was expected that Saddam would comply with U.S. interests after his defeat, without having to occupy Iraq and thus remove the need for U.S. 'protection' in the area. After this had proven wrong, the sanctions were put in place. Saddam remained defiant, and that's why the U.S. is heading there again.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
I'd guess it is a safe bet that all communications of Iraqi officers of that level is monitored by the Iraqi government. The act of replying to email from a known U.S. address -- regardless of the subject matter -- would likely bring retribution.
In any case, this is an attempt at pyschological warfare: Stay on the sidelines in a war or you will be captured and tried as a war criminal.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The article mentioned using biometrics as a way of authenticating soldiers who are connected, but doesn't that not solve the problem? If a soldier is capatured, and his retinal scan is needed to sign on, it'd be easy enough to get that. It seems like any biometric solution would be ineffective because the soldier goes with the device.
And don't forget about the extra weight such equipments cause. American soldiers are already carrying 40 kg, and much more will hinder mobility.
I think the system should be strictly one way. Rely on proven technologies like radio for bidirectional communication, but have 1 way data feed to tell commander the situation. 1 way data feeds can include ammo count, health status, etc. This isn't dangerous information if fallen into the wrong hands.
I do not know your education level, but I would guess you are either young, or have not gone beyond basic primary education. You will eventually learn not to beleive everything you see.
#1 The media does not have access to Allied intelligence. Without access to the solid information that Iraq is a problem, they will publish many stories that are questioning the US position on Iraq simply because it's the only thing they have that is interresting to read.
#2 I live in Japan and my friends here as well as some friends I have in China would all disagree with you. Granted, they all have at least college degrees and have spent enough time studying governement and political science to realize that the situation in Iraq is more than just a personal problem with GW Bush....Iraq's actions have negatively affected the whole region and pose a real threat to the stability of trade in the region. This eventually effects us all as it could provide a chain reaction of rising inflation should those trade routes be disrupted. Inflation that outpaces income growth will widen the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" which could potentially unbalance countries with existing unrest.
It's all about being a responsible citizen of the planet. Iraq has taken the attitude that it should be free to do whatever it wants. Unfortunately, personal freedom can only go so far before it begins to conflict with the freedoms of others. The UN is involved in this for a reason. And lacking all the info myself, I will trust that these educated men and women who represent their countries in the UN have expressed an interrest because they have credible evidence that the problem is real.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Of course, there is the perhaps more basic question of whether there is anything to portray at all or whether Christ is just a myth. And if you do believe the entire story, then the issue becomes: given his father, Christ might have had looked like anything, or even appeared differently to different people.
I assume that the hardware/software necessary would fall under UN sanctions, which I assume have been in effect since the end of the first
Persian Gulf War. This is pretty curious to me... where does Iraq hook up to the net -- what countries does it peer up with? What's their total bandwidth?
Can private citizens even get on the Internet at all there?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Whilst the technology changes, using propaganda to sap the enemy's will to fight is as old as warfare itself. A famous (though largely unsuccessful, apparently) attempt at such was Tokyo Rose, one of many female broadcasters on radio Tokyo during World War II who mixed American music with propaganda.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
CNN learned about the operation Friday afternoon, and was initially asked not to report on it by senior Bush administration officials. Those officials later decided the information could be released.
Remember, way back in the 70s, this person called Deep Throat that blew the lid off of the Watergate scandal? Whatever happened to hearing information from a reliable source, then actually REPORTING that information without first consulting the government? How about the press being an independant journalistic adventure, instead of some guy pulling stuff off a news wire that's all pre-approved by the government? What about jounalists who actually investigate stories instead spewing back the same BS they heard 10 minutes before? The press here today is no better then that of the so called "restrictive nations" like many Mid East nations, where all news comes from the government approved facilities. If this is how the entire world is going to turn to, then bring on WW3 so we can start rebuilding a better society.
Excuse me - but you did not come up with this strange argument yourself? Maybe one needs to be educated by the US Marine Corps to understand it.
Some things to think about for you:
- Does decreased trade justify killing?
- What's the US policy on North Korea? Where is the oil?
- How many problems are there in the world which pose a more severe threat to human rights?
A good book for you to read is "Operation Splinter Factor" which is a true account of the early days of the cold war. The SIS used to send coded messages (content did not matter) to people that we wanted dead and the Russians would kill them for us. There was no need for there to be any understanding of what the message meant as the existance of the message was enough to get the recipient killed.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You are truly showing your intelligence with that post. You think 50 people walking/driving around an area twice the size of Idaho will be able to find anything? You are assuming that because they can't find anything, it means that there is nothing, but that is like me saying to you, come to my city and find my house, and when you can't, you assume I don't live there. *cough*dumbass*cough*
A poll from Portugal on a site called rumermillnews.com? You must be kidding. How long did you have to search to find that one.
As for your economy statement, do you honestly think that if Clinton was still president, the bubble would have just kept getting bigger and bigger without bursting? Bush didn't screw up the economy, that was your good friend Clinton. Bush just had the unfortunate luck to inherit it from Clinton, who was too busy getting blow jobs in the Oral Office to curb the runaway economic situation.
You sir, are a dumbass.