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How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
sundling writes "There are interesting articles here(1) and here(2)
on software espionage against the Soviets.
In the Ronald Reagan era, a Soviet spy network (Line X Network) was looking to steal software to run oil pipelines. The CIA found out what they were trying to steal and fed them bogus versions. This is of course not the only time the CIA has done this.
... An article on the ethics of programming mentions this very topic and the moral implications." Update: 03/02 09:22 GMT by T : Oops -- this is a dupe.
Dupe dupe dupe dupe dupe!
3 24 3&mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/115
Even sent two messages to the 'on duty editor'. Not that it matters, apparently. Considering this is like story 7 in a row or so for him, spanning the last several hours, I suspect it's bedtime for someone...
Not to sound like a broken record (even if slashdot regularly does), but it isn't news a month later, guys....
I'm in the US submarine force and I'll just suggest that the US is pretty good at getting a job done when (1) they want it done and when (2) the doors are closed to the public.
Separately, learn some of the facts surrounding JFK's assassination (and the likes who go to no end to increase their power) and you'll get a feel for what goes on behind closed doors. It's very depressing.
G-Force music visualization
Indeed! How slashdot duped its readers into thinking this one hadn't already been showed!!!!!!!!!
How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
If anyone wants a link to the original New York Times (#include "free_reg") article by William Safire about this incident, here it is. Now you don't have to hunt down the dupe to read it.
If you look at this link, you'll find that, "In its espionage role, the KGB was mostly reliant on human intelligence, unlike their western counterparts, who relied far more on imagery intelligence (IMINT) and signals intelligence."
Bottom line is, the CIA has always had the edge in technology, but the KGB still had an advantage in human intelligence. They had far better human recruitment than the CIA ever did. (And for those who really follow this stuff, you probably already know that human intelligence is one thing that is very sorely lacking in our war on terror today.)
What would the CIA have done if the Soviets sought out OSS software instead of the typical closed-source software to run those pipelines ?
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
Or what else is Windows supposed to be ;)?
- 4r0g
the Soviets *should* have embraced open source.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Some useful material for those investigating the validity of claims about the secret services.
Line X...
Linux...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
...we could have never have got them with this one. So, should I turn this posting into an open source tirade, or say thank goodness that the rotten, evil soviet empire was brought down with virtious closed source solutions?
Think I'll go back to surfing for wombat pr0n...
programming is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. -- J. Bartlett
if one accepts this definition he/she should definitly think that programming is highly ethical activity.
Aure entuluva!
I think slashdot covered something along these lines before, at least involving trojan pipeline control software (and a resulting explosion).
4 3&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/11532
From the article:
including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural-gas pipeline
I find this very hard to believe. *If* you actually made a system so fragile, that explosions could be triggered by software, would you install software you stole from the enemy on that system?
Besides, if it was indeed possible to trigger an explosion, it had to be very proprietary code. Didn't the russians wonder why code they stole from the enemy would run on their own computers?
I'm just wondering, not trying to say that this might not be exactly what happened.
23c. In no way do the authors of this software take responsibility or blame for any pipeline explosions that may or may not occur through the normal use of this software.
Block-in a compressor. I bet the russians had poor use of pressure safety valves.
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
Looks like the GNAA stuff isn't a dupe today. Maybe I'll read that instead.
ediron2:
...
Thanks for sending the notes; it looks like the note-to-editor system is down at the moment, unfortunately. It *is* bedtime for me, but I was actually sitting there waiting, reading email
Sorry, I missed this one the first time around.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The odd dupe is OK, for me at least. I never saw this story the first time round. Some people don't sit and read every single story on Slashdot, all the time, ever, you know. I might have been (gasp) out, or on holiday.
Get your own free personal location tracker
... that to protect us from gangs and thugs and criminals, we have to employ gangs and thugs and criminals.
And don't just say "because, thats the way it is".
Whenever I hear about tactics like this from the very government that is supposed to represent 'higher values', I'm reminded that government is The Perfect Con.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I submitted this story a few days ago, I guess you just answered why mine wasn't submitted =)
I saw it on MSNBC
I liked GrodinTierce (571882) catching the humor of the word 'dupe' in the title, the fact that 30 minutes later it's still not being admitted as a dupe, and my gaffe of saying that a several-years-old story isn't news a month later.
Is 'Daddypants@slashdot.org' *ALWAYS* the mailto for the on-duty editor? That's fscking hysterical!
Oh, and I sincerely hope that somewhere out there is an unruly gang of viking-costumed monty-python impersonators singing 'Dupe dupe dupe dupe' to the 'spam' song.
Alterslash.org is like a nicotine patch for slashdot junkies who realize their addiction and are trying to quit.
If this doesn't prove the case for open source software, I don't know what will.
... at the very least.
Those Russkies should've broken out their debuggers on these binaries before putting them into operation
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
do that on kazaa all the time :(
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
I agree with You. It's lie.
If they had used OSS this wouldn't have happened to them.
And why should the US beleive that Micro$hit doesn't do this kind of thing to them? there is no one that can really be sure of close source software.
Less look fast, more go fast.
If it helps diagnosing the script, I grabbed the mailto tag and emailed 'daddypants@slashdot.org' directly.
obligatory "you must be new here" line....
I have the feeling that someone is trying to feed us a bogus story. I doubt there is a way to determine if any of this has actually happened.
Looks like it is tech that has won.
....but we all know how US intelligence brilliantly prevented the 9/11 strikes with its all tech, no human intellignece approach. It seems to me that US intelligence will have to do some rethinking on the subject of doing completely without human intel sources. If 9/11 and the whole Iraqi WMD mess have proven anything it is firstly, that satilites and other spytechnology no matter how advanced will never completely replace the humble human traitor and secondly that no matter how good you are at running high tech spy gear it does not qualify your to run human spies. That is a very special skill and hard to learn. The CIA cold do worse than to take a leaf out of the books of the KGB when it comes to recruiting human spies, it is a skill the CIA has all but lost.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
there's a bit of information on the CIA's website about it too. no explosion info though
Jeremy Logan's Website.
To be fair, the number of dupes does seem to have dropped off quite significantly in the last month or two.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It was obviously screwed from the beginning.
An "Offtopic" and a "Troll" on the same artical, and a dupe no less.
I'm batting a 1000.
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
I can see it now, kazza dispensing only mislabeled copies of "Feelings"
And I really wouldnt like to be in the shoes of the morons who manage to convince people that they planted that software. If by some weird coincidence that thing was within 10 miles of any of the control rooms of that pipeline which exploded. I can just imagine 400 beraved families suing the Uncle Sam under the Patriot act for ... ahem... terrorist acts.
Oh and to make things more interesting, as this medical journal indicates, the US actually sent doctors to treat the poor burned children...
I thought that was how all software developers treat their customers.
What happened to the software? Is anyone still using it? What other CIA-damaged software is still out there operating power stations, planes, missiles, ...
See!!! I TOLD you guys Linux was communist!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Perhaps the CIA fear that ultimate blame for failures in intelligence before 9/11 will be scapegoated onto them, and they are trying to engage in a little proactive image management.
Why else would the Supreme Court allow him to kidnap and hold foreign nationals indefinitely in Cuba in direct violation of both the spirit and the letter of our constituion, on the grounds that it doesn't apply to people unless they're a citizen of this country (And sometimes not even then.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
CmdrTaco? Is that you? :-p
Vote for a Man, Vote for Bush!
Not a liberatarian flipflop hippie.
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
The U.S. government secretly overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, President Mossadegh. That started a chain of events that eventually continued with retaliation: The destruction of the World Trade Center.
Osama bin Laden cannot be effective in being violent if he does not have support. He is far less likely to have support for his violent schemes if people generally trust the U.S. government.
The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War. That has lowered the level of trust. Those who live in countries that have been bombed do not always think that the violence was "justified".
Old idea: "You shall not kill." New clauses: a) Unless you need to create a distraction to further your political purposes, b) Unless you think it would help you be reelected. c) Except if you fear something that someone might do in the future. d) Except if you want the oil profits. e) Except if some of the people in the other country think that killing some of them and destroying some of their property is an excellent goal.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
.. the Russians never managed to sneak some spy laden software into the US, and UK, software so pervasive it'd work its way into every home in the world. Hey.. why's my copy of Tetris trying to send something past my firewall?
being sued by SCO for trasferring their intellectual property to soviet russia.
And that is the huge clue here. Imagine, this nice little story appears just as the abbreviated agencies need a little boost in confidence having utterly failed to prevent 911 or even the shoe bomber.
It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and chances are it truly is just a newspaper duck. So please mod parent up further.
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
Way to "think outside the box" and see the Cold War for what it really was: unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB! Seriously, it's one thing when you're talking about the USA bullying some third world country, but comparing that to the Cold War is apples and oranges (and a cheap attempt to score some anti-American karma points). And if you want to know which of these two formerly-equally-matched superpowers was the real terrorist regime, put it this way: there wasn't exactly a flood of Americans expatriating to Moscow to flee CIA gulags.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Who modded this up to +5 so freakin fast? Who has unlimited mod points?
Who's going to mod me down to -1 within the next 2 minutes?
For answers to these questions and many more, watch this space.
You will see a purple, yellow-striped ass lemming before you hear of a /. editor with sense.
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
Good point. If you could please dupe all stories between May 1st and may 15 of 2002, it would be much appriciated, as I was 'on holiday.'
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
The USA cooking up bad software to give to the Soviets? Hah. You've been reading too many Tom Clancy novels.
;-) for the ;-) impaired.
The plot you're describing sounds like a conspiracy, and therefore it must be false.
Everybody knows that conpiracies do not exist.
Communists using Line X ? Darl should be able to get a lot of mileage out of this one!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Also at the end of the article:
Tyson Gill is the director of information technology at Alitum, Inc., in San Diego, California. He also teaches Visual Basic and Microsoft.Net programming at the University of California, San Diego. He is well known for his influential presentations on design, architecture, planning, and coding. Tyson is the author of Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering
They teach university level VB????? This is considered ethical?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Thats not the only time USA has fed Russians with bogus information. Detailed plans on the Concorde aircraft leaked to Russia too, and the result was the death of tow highly trained test-pilots.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Some company called Microsoft was trying to steal a government operating system, so the CIA fed them a bogus version....
I suspect that this whole story is an urban myth that may have a grain of truth. I worked through the mid 70's and 80's on Process Control and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that are used to control nuclear, chemical, space and pipeline systems. This was the period when systems moved from largely pneumatic telemetered systems to electronic and computerised control. The old technology had run large industrial systems since the war, and was by and large highly reliable. The new technology was considered cheap and inferior and was not (and is still not) trusted. Such systems were created fail safe, such that computer crashes caused shut downs, not explosions. This was very ingrained into the designers of such systems. Failures such as Chernobyl and Flixborough added to the designers' caution, even though control was sometimes not a contributory factor. Most software systems in this category required very significant source code modifications to make them fit for purpose. It was rare to ship a system without giving the purchaser inspection access to the code so that they could assess the quality for themselves. The designers of this soviet pipeline would have had double cause for concern, and would most certainly have been suspicious of the provenance of the system. In such a case, it is highly likely that they would have built in extra hardware constraints into the system to prevent failure due to malicious software, especially if they could not read and validate the source.
I stole this
Hmm.. wasn't Microsoft also around during Reagan's presidency?
Wasn't there also a blackout on the entire Eastern US due in-part to improper response by the control software to the outages that initially started at First Energy?
Isn't it also possible all these email worms, viruses, and trojans might be some form of espionage by workers planted at Microsoft?
In the book Ethical Decision Making and Information Technology by Kallman and Grillo Kallman and Grillo present a method for ethical decision making and part of their method involves the use of five tests: the mom test -- would you tell your mother what you did; the TV test -- would you tell a national TV audience what you did; the smell test -- does what you did have a bad smell to it; the other person's shoes test -- would you like what you did to be done to you; and the market test -- would your action be a good sales pitch?
So, was Chernobyl really an accident? (It was directly responsible for the fall of the USSR).
Ethics are a professional issue.
Engineers, Doctors, Priests, Teachers and Lawyers all have ethical standards.
Software developers and contractors should also, at least they could have some liability.
As to where to draw the line, ethically that is a question for philosophers, legally it belongs to lawmakers and the courts.
My view is that feeding bad code is just an attack, and of a similar ethical stance to a bomb or similar acts. Making the bad code would be the same as making the bomb. Making shoddy code would be the same as a shoddy bookshelf.
In the second segment of Hafner and Markoff's Cyberpunk, they write about the crackers that Cliff Stoll found, and reveal that they went to the Soviets, saying they could hack into several government and military sites. The Soviets said what they'd rather have is Unix source code. So, while the rest of the crew had fun getting into NORAD looking for the WOPR, the one with a job as a sysadmin cut a couple extra tapes in the backup schedule and carried them through Brandenberg Gate.
Gee, I guess GNU really is communist. B)
BTW, I don't give these stories much credence, there was a simpler explanation for the pipeline explosion.
Not only that, but they cloned our new mars rovers and sent them to the moon a few decades ago.
...at least this one has an accurate (and hype free) headline and summary. The original was all 'exploding chips' and shit.
- I am made of meat.
Think about it: this is a situation where people were actively encouraged to write buggy code! Finally, a way to harness the unique talents of the average Slashdotter.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I missed that. The article claims that there was no loss of life. I don't think we ever successfully assasinated anyone outside of the western hemisphere. Plus what everyone else said about the evil empire. I don't even want to know what the soviets would have done to the internetif they had coexisted. Would have made chna's blocking of Google seem quaint.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Human intelligence, or HUMINT is mostly done by recruiting and operating local agents who are already of the target culture, not by infilitrating that culture (very hard to do) except in Hollywood movies or very very rare cases (sleeper agents etc.)
I will mod you down...
Oh damn I commented. Now I can't...
Sorry someone else will have to help you out...
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
It's not Timothy's fault; the CIA is feeding him duplicate stories.
yea, because as history has shown us, humans are by default an extremely trusting species, they would never do under-handed, sneaky, or other-wise shady actions unto each other, expecialy not their friends.... no... this "un" trustfullness is the work of... the russians!!
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
Trust cannot be ascertained by "not" being sneaky. Trust is for the most part about image and public knowledge, look at how any country or organization is viewed and youll see that your trust comes straight down to how people around you feel about that company/country, and what youve "heard" about them... which leads STRAIGHT into dis/mis-information. For 50 years the US and the USSR have been writing propraganda manipulating the image of the opposing super-power to look as grotesque and evil as possible within the tolerence of their respective populaces. If one friend tells you coca-cola sucks, you might try it anyway, but if 20 friends say they "heard" it sucked... you wont touch it.
The U.S. government secretly overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, President Mossadegh. That started a chain of events that eventually continued with retaliation: The destruction of the World Trade Center.
Defending the actions of any of the world players (US, former USSR, china, France, UK, india, etc...) is an act in futility, every one of them has been acting in their best intrests for years... hell.. hundreds of years. Even the smaller countries without much power have been (iraq, syria, lebanon, israel, libya, cuba, etc..). It is the legacy of man to do so, its the same legacy that prompts us to form companies, and to compete against rivals in our industries... which causes some companies to "cross the line" with corporate espianage... but bottom line... the only point that youve "gone too far" is when you've broken an arbitrary law. I dont condone these actions... but if humans were "trusting" by nature... we wouldnt need laws.
Osama bin Laden cannot be effective in being violent if he does not have support. He is far less likely to have support for his violent schemes if people generally trust the U.S. government.
This is Partialy True, without a moral ground-swell of a great and fearsome foe who is out to "get you"... osama wouldnt have the human resources to draw upon. This is an old tactic we have used along with any other war machine. Osama makes us look bad by pointing at our actions, and HIS OWN bombings... and saying "look what those americans cause by being here". He scapegoats us for all the ills in the middle-east, some of it our doing, and much of it not. Effectivly creating hatred for us amongst a people who dont know our populace. The US has made a regular routine out of demonifying our "enemies"... weve made china and russia look evil for long terms of time, we made fidel look like a monster, and osama out to be nothing more than a rabid american hating killer when he's really a freedom-fighter we trained.... provided freedom means no communism.
The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War. That has lowered the level of trust. Those who live in countries that have been bombed do not always think that the violence was "justified".
I shudder to think how many countries might have been A-bombed had we not taken some of the actions we did. Without a "super-power" or a couple of balenced super-powers in the world, we would have seen many horrendous wars do a lot more damage. Order at the edge of a sword isnt to be applauded, but it better than mayhem and the chaos that comes from a power vacum.
Old idea: "You shall not kill." New clauses: a) Unless you need to create a distraction to further your political purposes, b) Unless you think it would help you be reelected. c) Except if you fear something that someone might do in the f
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Only 2% of Canada's population and 4% of Britain's population are black, compared to 13% of the U.S. population.
the whole thing is a total hogwash and "feel-good", "ain't we just the cat's ass" type of drivel for the gung-ho right wing "hawks" in the US public.
A partial accounting of this story of counterespionage appeared in 1996 in "The Farewell Dossier" by Gus Weiss in the journal Studies in Intelligence.
It refers to more than just this, but if you are correct that the whole store is just a lie (which I seriously doubt), then the lie was begun back in 1996.
A few quotes:
"In the summer of 1981, President Mitterrand told President Reagan of the source, and, when the material was supplied, it led to a potent counterintelligence response by CIA and the NATO intelligence services."
"I met with Director of Central Intelligence William Casey on an afternoon in January 1982. I proposed using the Farewell material to feed or play back the products sought by Line X, but these would come from our own sources and would have been ''improved," that is, designed so that on arrival in the Soviet Union they would appear genuine but would later fail."
"American industry helped in the preparation of items to be "marketed" to Line X. Contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory."
Since this is an unclassified report from the CIA, it's reasonable to expect that many important details may have been changed, left out, or completely invented, since the operation was classified.
But it seems that, at the least, a very similar operation did in fact happen. (And it was before 1989.) It is certainly not something with "no factual basis" dreamed up by "gung-ho right wing 'hawks'".
It is possible that the Trojanned products were turbines or chips rather than software. It may even be that 1989 explosion was conflated with this operation. But to say that this is "a total hogwash" is not supported by the facts.
Wow! And editor graces the message board. Not only that, he acknowledges a mistake. Good showing timothy.
I know the editors take a lot of insults left and right, many deserved, many not. But here is a true compliment. Good job.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
It may have more to do with the composite makeup of the special paper and inks on the bill itself.
You can scorch a dry carrot to a charred pulp in a microwave if you leave it in there long enough (about three minutes in a glassful of water)... I've done this by accident.
The government doesn't need to embed chips in 20 dollar bills to track us, anyway. They're getting far more dirt on us by reading all our emails with Echelon/Carnivore.
I, for one, would like to see more stories like this, even bring back the old ones for review every couple of years. Technology in espionage may be it's highest use.
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
It is a known fact that the Classic American cars in Cuba from the 50's are using Russian Engines. Why? Because that is what is availeable in Cuba and back in the 50's the Soviet's copied American Engines rather then waisting engineering time creating their own.
having the source didn't do them any good.
There were a number of reasons why the US Navy thought Pearl was safe.
1: Range. Japanese ships were not thought to have the range to come all the way to Pearl. Much less undetected. They developed refueling techniques to make this possible.
2: Bombs vs Battleships. Conventional bombs of the day were *not* able to affect a Battleship ( the ship used to project power in those days, the day of the carrier was not yet there, they were mainly seen as good for scouting ( battlecruiser replacements ) ). The deck armour was too thick. So, what about Arizona, you ask? Good question. They converted 16" Battleship shells ( the very items designed to go through the deck armour, *and* the much thicker side ( hull ) armour into bombs by adding fins. Then they dropped them from approx 10k meters so that they would have the KE to do the job. In that day, only torpedoes were thought to have what it took to sink a battleship. Which leads me to:
3: Topedoes. The harbor was thought to be safe from attack by torpedoes, as it was only about 40 feet deep ( just a bit deeper than the draught of the ships, IIRC ). This is important as the torpedoes of that day usually sunk to about 75 feet after being dropped from the airplane. The British had pulled off a similar raid at Taranto against the Italian navy using this, but that harbor was deeper than Pearl. The Japanese attached breakaway fins to the torpedoes to arrest their fall on hitting the water, keeping them from sinking so far, and thereby made the attack possible.
Not to mention that the CIA did not exist in those days.
And while I too would like to see our intellegence agencys perform better, I would suggest that it is altogether too easy to armchair QB what they do. I am sure that you have been through something that you did not see coming, but in hindsight, you kick yourself because it was blindingly obvious ( from that side of the event ). Go try to do that job before you kick them too hard about how they have done it.
emt 377 emt 4
The Nation's Matt Bivens has an interesting take on the state of mind of the folks who would behave like this during the cold war: spooky triumphs. Of course, one could easily argue that this *was* the nature of the cold war.
It figured that Slashdot of all places would know, it's not pronounced "Line X," it's pronounced "Lynn-Ux"! =P
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
He means, "The U.S. government and U.S. weapons makers sell the weapons."
... when you run untrusted binaries.
ps. Seriously, I really doubt Soviets would've not audited the source code had they have it at hand.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Perhaps trust is defined as "saying what you will do, and doing what you said". Perhaps it is defined between nations as the "completely transparent and publicly open negotiation between the nations." I think that the two questions are directly related as the definition of trust largely depends on who is asked. Trust of a government by its people doesn't necessarily revolve around the faithfulness of its dealings with other nations. It depends mostly on how "well off" the populace perceives itself during the time of such government. Trust of a government by other nations doesn't depend necessarily on whether it treats its populace well. Logically, the trust is defined by the historical reliability of a nation to propose something to another nation(s) and follow through on that proposal in good faith. No nation has the mistaken belief that a foreign government will place that nation's own welfare or that of its citizens above the welfare of itself or its citizens. Those governments that have that belief are be short-lived in duration and will be taken advantage of by the process of negotiation.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Additionally it was always an open secret that the KGB and other Eastern-bloc secret services funded and helped the infamous left-wing terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction in Germany and a lot of middle-eastern left-wing groups between the late 60s until far in the 80s. Several long wanted suspected terrorists were arrested in former Eastern Germany after the reunification were they were hiding out.
It is likely that there were comparable activities the other way round like supporting contra-revolutionary groups in East-bloc countries, but terrorism-like acts certainly were no uni-lateral thing.
Of course, someday, we may actually find WMDs buried in the sand, like the MIG squadron found buried last August. It's a very big country...
...-.-
They may be thugs and criminals, but they're our thugs and criminals!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We've seen this before. They gave the Russkies the software that passed the QA tests, but was designed to fail when in operation. How wonderful, they blew up a gas pipeline and killed a bunch of innocent villagers who lived nearby, who probably had never even heard the word "sofware". But then again, one could say it's the Russians that blew it up ultimately. It's not like they didn't have software developers back in the USSR.
Tyson Gill talking about the design process of Applications. Give me a break I used to work with him. He was the worst designer and one of the crappiest programmers I have ever seen. His books are horrible. When I did work with him he was really big on his Ethics though. Ethics abotu everyone in life politics current events. But his favorites was teh ethics of MMPORGS. He was addicted to Everquest. He loved to talk about it. I read his little article and laughed. Remembering all teh times I was stuck late at work or on a weekend testing his code while one of his staff programmers had to fix his crappy code. I would go on but I find I might get really nasty.
unfortunately, you cannot "eliminate" the rest of the world. that would be genocide on a level far beyond what has ever transpire, and for the attempt you would be every bit deserving of the resistance and "espionage games" your government and your people get.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
There are historical precedents for this sort of thing. According to one of my old high school teachers, when the Japanese were building up their war fleet in the years before WWII, they approached an American shipbuilding company about buying plans for old military ships. Smelling trouble, the company alerted the US government ahead of time and the plans were carefully changed. When the first ship was launched it immediately rolled over due to a deliberate weight imbalance in the bogus plans.
I've never been able to verify this story.
While I don't know about this particular case, and haven't researched it, I can say that Safire really lacks credibility.
For the most public example, he published a column where he took Bush to task for not returning directly to the White House on September 11th. Obviously, the administration put pressure on him, and he published a follow-up column where he claimed to have been shown "conclusive" evidence that the terrorists had special codes that indicated they knew where Air Force 1 was (see this teaser. Regardless of the wisdom of Bush going directly back to the White House that day, I don't believe for a minute that al Queda had transponder frequencies to contact AF1.
So you might ask yourself why Safire is talking about how glorious and clever the CIA was "back in the day," particularly when the administration is claiming that the agency is responsible for the whole Iraq mess...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
If we had sold the software to them it would have been sabotage. Instead they stold the defective software and used it. It was brilliant!
Maybe the leak of the Windows source code a few weeks ago was a CIA plot to sabotage our enimes. The upside for them was that they could release the code without modification.
There was a computer control system but all it did was really a glorified remote. You could setup some equations like when opening valve A 10%, close valve B by 1% but it wasn't It would have been non-trivial to insert a bug on the main control computer (it would have been detected) and the remote telemetry cards were always being moved around so you never knew which was where so they couldn't easily be sabotaged either.
Why would a country that can build a space shuttle, fly it around the earth and land it by remote control need to steal software to run an oil pipeline? Pure bull...
For immediate release: According to Darl McBride, Chief Equivocating Orator of SCO Group, "I KNEW there was more to this. They've been planning this for YEARS. Changing the spelling doesn't fool us, and dissolving the Soviet Bloc doesn't protect them. That Torvalds is obviously a COMMUNIST AGENT. Why, just take KDE, and add 3 to the D and subtract 3 from the E, which averages out to no change at all, and you get KGB! What do you say to THAT, Comrade Torvalds! From now on we're no longer wrapping Unix with a shrink-wrap license, we're using a TIN FOIL license, so you can't beam your source control rays into our product. If it works for my hat, it'll darn sure work on CD-ROMs.
It's WHAT? CIA? Not KGB? Are you sure? Oh. Well, let's see. To get from CIA to BSD, you subtract 1 from the C....."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
This is quite sickening. Have the United States no regard for innocent human life at all? We're lucky this little incident didn't cause WWIII.
Time makes more converts than reason
We kept telling you nerds but would you listen? Now the proof is here in black and white: Linex is an illegal communist operating system.
well i did just get dumped. i wonder if i'm hostile to everyone else lately, too.
no i have nothing really relevant to say
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I was just wondering what he was refering to. Asking whether or not we are terrorists is like asking if there are just wars. Its basically a sophomoric question with out a real answer.
As a side note, If that was a defense, its a good one. Sorry your honnor I didn't kill the man that is still alive, so you can't convict me of murder... yet. But if the charge is attempted murder, well then you're screwed. Its probely in you best interests to not try to kill in the first place.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If nothing else, she was an original.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin