Slashdot Mirror
Passive E-Mail Monitoring Leads To Arrest
www.2advanced.net writes "The world's first arrest resulting from passive monitoring of electronic communications is being reported by Globe Technology. In the article, sources reveal that 'an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. -- 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group.'"
Though it really surprises me that the NSA would actually take responsibility for passing along tips.
Generally they just pass stuff to the other three letter organizations and they take it from there.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
It seems like YRO, I mean, they were monitoring his email, they probably are monitoring ours!
Yeah right, like any terrorists would use unencrypted email.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
That the NSA can just listen in to any/all communications like that. Makes me wonder if they're listening to me right now.
MABASPLOOM!
As long as the monitoring is "passive" and my GMail inbox is only being read by machines...
EOF
sig: sauer
This is the last thing we need - "justification" for more widespread surveillance and other privacy intrusions.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Golly, headlines like these sure make me glad the United States is just as keen as ever on ensuring that every citizen is afforded due process, has equal access to the law, and that all of the constitutional safeguards protecting our civil liberties will remain in full force.
I know I'm relieved. This type of activity might be really dangerous in the hands of a government that didn't believe in its citizens rights and privacies.
The Dalai Llama
I know that I, for one, would certainly sleep better if Ashcroft were head of the NSA...
My sig could be your sig!
For those of you who have no idea where Orleans is in Ontario
You seem to be assuming that the Merkins would have known what "Ont." means.
Well, I've probably got a ton of fans at the NSA due to discussion of privacy issues, security, and how to design systems that disallow monitoring that I've send through AIM/ICQ/mailing lists and other non-secured messaging systems.
Seriously, I'd say that it's a pretty reasonable bet that AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo are routinely monitored. They're easy to data-mine (heck, the commercial data from that *alone* is phenomenal -- if people hear on a show that "Debora Mullins and Sandra Walker will be possibly starring in 'Shredded Metal 2', and there's a mass of messages saying "Debora Mullins sucks", that'd be awfully useful to the production company.
As for the NSA/CIA/FBI, messaging services are frequently used, easy to log and data-mine (no speech recognition necessary) systems that provide no end-to-end encryption that pass through a single point -- in the United States.
Jabber is the only reasonably well-designed IM system I've seen, and nobody *uses* Jabber, sadly enough.
May we never see th
I'm all for catching "terrorists", but I agree...scary.
"'Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic,' said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission."
I've never been under the illusion that internet traffic was private, but could someone tell me what law give them this power? I'm not being sarcastic here, I'd really like the information.
-
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
The quoted article seems kinda wierd to me.
The article starts off with a diabolically, highlighting the boast of a mysterious hacker who works as NSA. No names are quoted. The whole thing is given a hollywood-esque charm (the hacker known only as "Mudhen" (mud hen? duh!), a charming pseudonym for NSA - Puzzle Palace).
After adding sufficient soundbites to attract reader's attention, besides making one thing is it one of those devious secrets about NSA, it suddenly changes tone and highlights the achievement of NSA "spies". Charming. Other gems:
"army of cryptographers, chaos theorists"
"that may have pulled in the first piece of evidence"
"massive investigation in several countries "
And then finally a quick rundown on TCP/IP.
One could almost mistake it for communistic propaganda, if only it hailed the fatherland (or the motherland) as well...
ps: don't forget, there are no facts or figures mentioned anywhere in it well.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
There is no need to fear evil Canadians. There is a very significant need to fear apathetic Canadians.
Our politicians still don't think we have a terrorist problem. Our politicians think the Americans are the cause of all their terrorist problems. Our politicians think that if the Americans would just be nice to everyone all the time, everything would be just fine.
So, while we raise taxes for 'anti-terrorism' the money actually goes into a big pot and is spent on anything but solutions that the government finds unnecessary.
I'd ask anyone outside our borders who actually cares to forgive the average Canadian - we currently don't have a viable center or right-of-center party for whom to vote. Ostriches on the left, and book-burning, bible-thumping fanatics on the right.
In the meantime, the US shouldn't trust any person or vehicle coming across their northern border.
Military technology indeed! What would the Internet be without the military's efforts on the original DOD backbone on which the Internet was founded?
I may be out of date, but last time I checked, the NSA was chartered to only monitor foreign communications. They could monitor communications between the US and other countries only because one end point was in a foreign country.
They get around the restrictions on monitoring US-US communications by having the Brits monitor our comms, and we return the favor for them.
"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Ben Franklin
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
How about this: one country would spy on another countires citizens and that country would reciprocate circumventing any pesky laws and human right issues. I think this is the actual basis of Echilon.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
So when they start caring about something you are doing then you will give a shit, but it will be too late.
They came for the blahs, but I'm not a blah so I did nothing.
They came for the foos, but I'm not a foo so I said nothing.
Then they came for me, and no one was left to do anything.
Or something along those lines.
So yeah, terrorists today, guys named Jason Straight tomorrow.
You've been warned.
US law applies to Americans and those who commit offenses within America. Unless the USA *is* the world, I object to it thinking it may police the world. If you want to change the world, first change yourself. If you don't like that idea, then close your eyes and ears and live in solitude.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Apathetic Canadians are no worse than apathetic US Citizens. US politicians have no problem with terrorists, as it only creates more jobs (defense spending == jobs). More jobs means less to complain about, and (finally) less to complain about leads to apathetic citizens. The US voting system allows far more control and granularity on whom we put in office, and frankly I think US citizens (in general) are far less likely to pay attention to important issues and vote along issue lines.
Already the US presidential race is about taxes. What makes taxes more important than international policy? And if someone starts talking about international policy, someone else will start bringing up the abortion debate again. (( Note Ralph Nader, while not officially running, is trying to talk about international policy, but is doing it in such a confrontational way, that he is easily marginalized as a zealot. )).How are Canadian polititicans different? Less population to try to lull into a sense of contentment / less active military force in countries where people feel they need to retaliate? Basically the same issues on a slightly smaller scale, with a higher per-person tax base. Oh, yeah, and they have to know two languages.
I feel for you, but your problems are not unique - after all, you are in North America, too.
I'm Allen Zadr, and I approved this messageKinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
My guess is that encrypting your email makes it easier for the NSA -- only a tiny fraction of email traffic is encrypted. Outside of the tinfoil hat community, very, very few people bother to secure their email, so the simple act of sending an encrypted message (which can be spotted due to the low information content of cyphertext, or due to specific comments in the message header) probably flags you for attention.
And if that message is routed from an IP address in England to a cybercafe in Pakistan then so much the better. And if mail from the same address was sent to a known bad-guy last week then better still -- and before you know it, your door gets kicked in and several burly men are asking you questions about the half-tonne of fertilizer you just purchased.
"and being part of a terrorist group."
Does this scare anyone else? Who determines if the group I belong to is a terrorist group?
It's convenient that the first instance of e-mail "bugging" resulting in action is against a terrorist. Right now, for the most part, the Average American (tm) is totally commited to giving up freedom for security (which conjures up the quote about said person deserving neither). Basically, since it stopped a terrorist, it completely validated this breach of privacy. I'm pretty sure that new initiatives like Carnivore will be openly embraced by said Average American (tm). The damage the terrorists have done is far beyond the deaths of Americans.
Tricksy hobbitses tries to takes away our privacies! Must protect the precious...
I do not know if the guy is guilty or not. A trial will tell us, in due time.
...etc. all these are misused terms in these confusing times.
However, the media coverage of the whole thing sucks.
His father, Mahboob A. Khawaja, has been detained in Saudi Arabia, where he is a professor at some university. The media reports that the father wrote articles critical of the West's meddling with the Muslim World's affairs. He wrote a book called Muslims and the West.
How is that relevant to anything? Is it an attempt to tie genuine legitimate criticism to terrorism somehow?
I did some searching on the father, and found quite a few articles, most of it critical to the Arab rulers than anything else. Seems he places blame where it belongs, whether in the West or in the Arab world.
This reminds me of the terms "terrorism", "anti-Americanism",
This whole thing about "guilt by association" got to stop.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The NSA is not permitted to monitor communications within the US. You will notice that the arrests were in Britain and Canadia.
http://www.nsa.gov/sigint/sigin00003.cfm
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Well, considering the public nature of all internet services, I'd have to say there probably isn't a law and probably shouldn't be. If any machine has to be able to deliver a packet to any other machine, that every router has to have the rights to read the information in that packet. It's trivial to put a sniffer to one of these routers and smell around for shit going down.
Of course, if what you're transmitting is encrypted data, it becomes harder to figure out what you're up to. If your encryption is based on keys that only you and the recipient have, it becomes nearly impossible. Which is exactly why you should be doing that with any data more personal than, well, a post on slashdot.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I'm not sure which part is worse, email monitoring (sure, they SAY it's passive...) or the terrorist activities.
You're not sure? I am. Terrorism is worse than reading someone else's email.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
I'm sure that's a great comfort to the people living in England, France, China, Japan, Israel, Italy, Macedonia, Comoros, The Philippines, Cyprus, Antigua, Nicaragua, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Germany, Serbia, Cuba, Belize, Peru, Lesotho, Hungary, Barbados, Mali, Ecuador, Chile, Romania, Gabon, Mauritania, Greece, Laos, Seychelles, Korea, Tanzania, Russia, Argentina, Tunisia, Yemen, Georgia, Denmark, Fiji, Croatia, Thailand, Sweden, Jamaica, Australia, Malta, Uganda, Iceland, Cambodia, Namibia, Barbuda, Guatemala, Myanmar, Maldives, Austria, Burundi, Finland, Poland, Ghana, Norway, Congo, Dominica, Somalia, Egypt, Benin, Uruguay, Palau, Congo, East Timor, Slovakia, Sudan, Rwanda, Tuvalu, Latvia, Mauritius, Yugoslavia, Suriname, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Iran, Oman, The Bahamas, Iraq, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Zambia, Vietnam, Cameroon, Canada, Mozambique, Malawi, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gambia, Bhutan, Vanuatu, Turkey, Taiwan, Brazil, Afghanistan, Madagascar, Turkmenistan, Guyana, Mexico, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Andorra, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Chad, Tajikistan, Grenada, Morocco, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Togo, Guinea, The Netherlands, Paraguay, Armenia, Slovenia, The Czech Republic, Honduras, India, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Swaziland, Ukraine, Kiribati, Angola, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Liberia, Zaire, Spain, Bosnia, Monaco, Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Belgium, Singapore, Albania, Micronesia, Nauru, Eritrea, El Salvador, Belarus, Panama, Nepal, Libya, Samoa, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Algeria, Burma, Kenya, Tonga, Qatar, Indonesia, Jordan, Lithuania, and the other countries of the world.
-- this is not a
opensource this- a program designed to pass messages via spam, undetectable without the key...if 50,000 people get the message, and only one can read it....
release it.. BAM! the government (homeland security) will suddenly find a way to stop spam.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
when exactly did a religious/ethnic minority become exactly equivalent with a group of individuals participating in a plot to mass murder as a first step down a slippery slope?
See, not all Muslims have been rounded up. You can even preach militant islam in the US. Had plenty of time. Not a whole lot of goodwill towards Islam standing in the way. And yet it isn't done.
The funny thing is when you say everything is the begining of the end of freedom, who's going to believe you if you happen to be right. Dial down the hyperbole.
That's easy, if you're an ACLU member, the e-mail monitoring is much worse. Everyone knows we should let people commit the murders, then arrest them. This is because no government official would ever act in the public interest. They're all nefarious little people hell-bent on harrassing innocents. After all, if you're trying to be safe, you don't deserve liberty. I think Bob Dylan said that.
Yeah, mod me troll -- I just couldn't resist the beautiful sarcasm.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
I got a better idea. How about we stop terrorism by fixing the problems that cause it? Turning the world into a police state is obviously not the solution anyone wants and, so far, has only led to more terrorism. People are not born wanting to fly planes into buildings, so what has driven these people to such a level of desperation that they're willing to sacrifice their lives to kill thousands of innocent people?
1.) expect to be evesdropped on for EVERYTHING that is not encrypted, wether you're IN the US or outside of it. Use STRONG encryption whereever possible.
2.) expect weak encryption to be easily broken--it's prettymuch a given that the NSA has hardware *specifically designed* to break or brute force crypto. they employ many of the worlds greatest mathmatic savants out there, do not underestimate their capabilities.
3.) All your base ae belong to U.S.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Yes, RSA is potentially insecure, as there is no mathematical proof guarenteeing that there is no polynomial-time algorithm for solving NP-complete problems.
However, what makes you think that terrorists would use public key encryption? Presumably, these people meet in person, in secret, to discuss illegal activities. In such a scenario, they could give each other their passphrase by word of mouth. Public key encryption is only relevant when the medium for transmitting your keys is insecure.
If I remember rightly, there are other encryption schemes which are not public key, that have been mathematically proven to be secure.
As for quantum computing; I think you're giving the RSA a bit too much credit. Quantum computing is quite far off; all the current methods we know of can only handle a handle of qubits.
Consider the number of Arabic people who have the first name Mohammed and who aren't conncted to a terrorist organization.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
It's all well and good when the bad guys get caught...right up until the definition of "bad guys" gets changed. Yesterday there was an article about the DOJ labeling pornographers as "bad guys." There's no logical end. What's to stop someone being labeled as a bad guy for not going to church, or not supporting the government, or not going along with whatever intrusion-of-the-day on your privacy? It's not that big of a change from where we are now.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You have to dump the bombs in storage before you order new ones. And the amount of weapons being built and ordered is generating revenue - and jobs - more in some sectors than others.
Why does the senate refuse to Ratify the Land Mine Treaty? Jobs in the Land Mine manufacturing facilities.
Why does the senate refuse to Retify the Kyoto accord? Because companies threaten that they would close or have to lay off workers if they had to pay for the environmental protections being requested.
Yes, I know that this is a simplistic view - but I believe it makes a valid point. Apathy is bred through contentment.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Actually, if you look at the Palestinian suicide bombers a lot of them are well-educated and middle class (by Palestinian standards). Some were not even particularly religious. In fact I believe some of them were even university students studying subjects like law. The 9/11 suicide bombers - quite a few of them were well educated and came from relatively rich families. Despite the hatred they nutured for the West they spent years studying in Western universities, getting Western friends and even girlfriends. This takes as much intelligence as any good spy in a foreign country. To hide your true self, blend in, become one of the enemy. They even learnt how to fly planes. A suicide bomber has to be smart to succeed. They have to be someone who can act on their own. Once they are set loose they are on their own. They have to negotiate their way to the target. They have to be able to act well enough to blend in to the crowd to do the maximum damage. If something goes wrong they have to negotiate the obstacles by themselves with no one to help them. Of course there is a lot of psychological preparation as well (brainwashing) but that's nowhere near the same thing as stupidity.
Of course there are stupid ones as well but that's true for everything.
- Suspected terrorist, who's been watched by UK anti-terrorists for months, buys hundreds of kilograms of Ammonium Nitrate
- Task force raids suspect's home
- Suspect's computer found on premises
- Task force opens Outlook, looks in Inbox, Sent Items
- Incriminating email to or from Mohammed_Momin_Khawaja@?????.ca discovered.
Sounds to me like someone is trying to spin this as justification for email surveilance.All I hear is "planning a terrorist act".
These days, planning a street party can be a 'terrorist act'. Handing out pamphlets in Washington, despicting GWB as a sheep, explaining why he's such a nut, could be a terrorist act.
Mooning the traffic on an interstate could be a terrorist act.
Anybody know?
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Sad that you don't understand what it really means. What you are doing is giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives in ten or twenty years time are completely unknown to you. Just think about that for a while. Or are you really naive enough to believe that the US government not only currently has only pure motives, but always will, for hundreds of years to come, long after you've already given them the powers to prevent you from doing against their interests? You'd have to be clueless about the history of man's activities on this planet to really believe that is a good idea.
"The" economy now measures corporate profit more than citizen welfare. The numbers have been cooked so mightily for so long, that only the numbers which make those politicians in power look good are counted. For a simple example, "unemployment" does not count those who have stopped looking for work, which of course means all the spongers, nor the 1M military staff, who produce very little (and destroy a lot), and many other discounted people who are not employed. Of course, jobs are essential to citizens' welfare, but they're only indirectly linked to the economy, filtered through the crooked government accounting.
"The ship of the Sun is steered by the Grateful Dead."
--
make install -not war
While the terrorist threat to the US mainly emanates from the White House through its terror-amplifier, Canadians are threatened by attacks on the US. The economies, cultures and communications are as intertwined as head-conjoined twins (or maybe conjoined head-to-back :). While the actual sabotage might take a while to ripple across the border, the terror itself is a media virus, disrupting the management of society. And the White House trade and foreign policy components of the unified mediasphere is especially threatening, as it wrenches out of control in the terror winds. It's better to work with the US to fight the terror itself. Especially because, as much more reasonable people, with much less directly in harm's way, Canadians help keep the US sane, which we are obviously incompetent to manage without help. Our kinder, gentler nation to the North is *the* essential partner to dispel terror, especially when considered in its own interest.
--
make install -not war
Well, I'm glad your genetics knowledge is no reflection on the education that I paid for, or your ability to defend me from military enemies. But that's what it was: an education. Sure, it produced you, for which I am very glad. I happily pay for the best trained military that keeps America an giant oasis of peace among the wartorn world (although the political snakes are a real problem) - and the pensions (and every other benefit) that keepy *you* safe, even when you're out of uniform (even permanently). And I admire your bravery, and the ability to go out and get that sense of responsibility that keeps our society as safe as does the warfighting. But we don't count students as "workers", regardless of their achievement *within* their skulls, until they make something, or do something for someone else. Like teaching assistants, or researchers.
The military is valuable, despite (and because of) its destructive utility. But it is a jobs program out of necessity, not out of its utility. I'd be safer if you'd been trained in a civilian university or corporation to learn you nonmilitary skills. The military skills, of course, including those you apply later, are best trained by, and in, the military. But the military's focus on defense would be better preserved by focusing its training there, and leaving the base technology to academia which is focused on that. And our economy, and maybe even your sense of responsiblity, would be be better developed with your training oriented in/to the private sector, with a maybe something like a "master's" degree from the military.
--
make install -not war
Awesome. I was waiting for the alarmist 1984 reference. That is what you were getting at, right? The personal attack suggests you're pissed by my post. So, you take it personally that a bad guy was caught by the good guys? The terrorist foolishly believed that his unencrypted emails wouldn't be intercepted. But, they were, and he was caught.
BTW, received is spelled with the 'e' before the 'i'.
sig: sauer
Too bad I was wrong. "'That's the first admission I've actually seen that they [NSA] actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it,' Mr. Farber [an Internet pioneer and computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh] said." So, did the NSA have a warrant for this? If not, why won't these arrests be thrown out of court? Or don't Canadian and Brittish courts care about search warrants? Or don't warrants apply in international law?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.