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.'"
For those of you who have no idea where Orleans is in Ontario, its very close to Ottawa (minutes away), and about 2 hours from Montreal and 3.5 hrs from Toronto, making it an ideal spot to plan terrorist action in Canada. Ottawa is a couple hours from the US/Canadian border, and for those of you who have never driven the distance, it's a very somber drive, with extremely easy access into the United States. I knew a rum-runner once who would move liquor out of the states at an alarming rate through the St. Lawrence River border; a hardly monitored area concerned more with tourism than security, then. Today, it's a different story, I'm told.
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!
Today, we must FEAR those EVIL Canadians and their rum-running abilities. In fact, we have to use our "army of cryptographers, chaos theorists, mathematicians and computer scientists" to defeat just one of those crazy canuck masterminds.
As long as the monitoring is "passive" and my GMail inbox is only being read by machines...
EOF
sig: sauer
Would the NSA investigate if PGP or similar encryption was used?
Whatever the NSA is doing to monitor all the traffic, I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA are drooling at the prospect of using this technology to catch so-called copyright violators. Civilian applications for a military technology, natch!
It is so easy to monitor InterNet plain text communications, that I ALWAYS presume its been done since the start of the Net.
A computer hacker who allowed himself to be publicly identified only as ''Mudhen'' once boasted at a Las Vegas conference that he could disable a Chinese satellite with nothing but his laptop computer and a cellphone
That is so cool if it is true. Have the phreakers been hitting comm satellites? Anyplace to find overviews of how they do it?
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Although this news is probably bad for YRO issues, there may be an upside. If the NSA is packet-sniffing e-mail traffic, then maybe they will be motivated to find a way of reducing the amount of Nigerean printer cartridge enlargement spam messages. If we are really lucky, they may even share the solution with us all. Of course, it is also possible that the guys at the NSA may all suddenly become hung like donkeys, NOT!
No wonder these guys keep getting foiled, if they're stupid enough to use unencrypted email. I'm assuming that the NSA doesn't yet have the ability to routinely brute-force all encrypted mail passing through its doors...
Ydco co
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!
Finialy people might figure out that email is trivialy easy to monitor it's sent clear test to a well defined port. Switching gear can creat a span based upon that easily enough. This is why all email should be encrypted and with strong encryption.
As to finding out the terrorists great, just remember that the US was founded by people that could be called terrorists.
No sir I dont like it.
Apply American laws to events occuring in America. The United States is big, but it's not everything in the world. How DARE they presume to police the world and its communications.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
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 know this story is probably going to get a lot of people riled up. However, it is still my understanding that the NSA goes to great pains to avoid intercepting any communication that comes from a U.S. citizen. They are strictly prohibited from doing so.
If you are a U.S. citizen, your main privacy concerns should be with the FBI and the DoJ with their powers granted by the Patriot Act.
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.
No no no, people with guns are good patriotic guys who elect Bush.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Right...we'd rather have it the other way around. Don't snoop, don't find bad crap like this going on, don't stop them before it happens... then when it does (because it will) have independent and congressional inquiries to determine blame - and ask "Why didn't you know about this beforehand?"
So this is the first thing we need. You want privacy? I want security more...
NSA is not the enemy - they are protectors. A bunch of dedicated professionals, even IF some of them need to get out into the sun more often...
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code...
We need a group of people to start discussing how cheap Viagra, a larger penis, and low-interest home mortages can be used for terrorism. Blip! Suddenly all the spam vanishes off the internet. I always hoped the NSA could be used for good as well as evil.
when the most interesting thing to you about the entire story is the fact that there is now an IT job open in Ottawa.
Several years ago I taught some workshops to teachers to let them learn the joys of email. I made apoint to show them that email was not sure and anything written can be read by anyone with some knowledge. After sending some emails back and forth as a class, I logged into the mail server and showed them what they had written to each other. Even though they were upset that I could see the email, they walked away remembering the message:
Don't send anything in the email that you don't want printed in the classified ads of the local paper. Because sending email is like sending a postcard. Every postman between here and there can read what you've said.
What makes me wonder is that these "terrorist" were sending email that was unencrypted? [tinfoil hat] Or maybe, the NSA were able to get backdoors to encryption technology and that what what is passively being listened to. [/tinfoil]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
OTOH, if the NSA has a good spam filter they use before reading my mail, i'd be happy if they could share the technology with the rest of the world.
Just look at this guy's name.
Mohammed Momin Khawaja
Consider the number of known Al-Queda operatived who have the first name Mohammed. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the NSA, FBI, and CIA routinely monitored the communications of everyone in the western hemisphere who has an Arabic name.
They can't have that much spam to weed through.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"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?
My favourite in devious encryption is currently Spam Mimic
If you were scanning all e-mails, would you put your resources on mails that looked encrypted or those that look like junk mail?
I find the slashdot reaction funny... when the NSA is sniffing packets that basically pass through their networks, it's bad, but some guy driving around with a computer and wireless gear is cool.
And that's on top of all the arguments about whether broadcasting information through the Internet is/should be/isnt/shouldnt be private.
Can you be accused of being a voyeur if the person you're looking at is walking around in public naked?
The article says it took an army of cryptographers to put the message back together. I'm thinking this is more of a journalist fudge given the rest of the article.
Was this guy using SSL for his mail (end to end)?
Better yet GPG?
I don't think the NSA could crack a 2048 bits GPG key. Not in a million years.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
OK, everybody should look up Echelon and read about it. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has heard of it.
Also, the Canadian agency responsible for signals intelligence (equivalent to the NSA) called the "Canadian Security Establishment" is known to be a participant in Echelon collection.
You are being watched.
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.
Headers also pick up the numeric or Internet Protocol (IP) address of all the computers a packet touches as it travels from its originating machine all the way to its destination. Every computerized device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP number.
Investigators could program their supercomputers to flag packets of information that met certain criteria, such as a certain IP number, a certain traffic pattern or a certain kind of content. As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents.If we are to believe the NSA, they don't necessarily read contents. They analyze routing, then get a warrant to read the contents.
If we assume that they can crack PGP, etc., then using email encryption may be false security. They don't have to crack every encrypted email, only the ones that get flagged based on routing.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Actually... it has apparently been declassified:
s ting-people/200110/msg00157.html
From http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/intere
Out of curiosity I went hunting for info on the United States Signals
Intelligence Directives (USSIDs) I had to be aware of in a former line of work.
Much to my surprise, USSID 18, which outlines procedures for the NSA's
collection of data on "U.S. persons" was declassified just over a year ago.
I thought the document might be of interest to IPers, especially at this time.
An introduction, and links to the archives can be found at:
http://cipherwar.com/news/00/nsa_surveillance.htm
(From the site above:)
In the aftermath of revelations in the 1970s about NSA interception of the
communications of anti-war and other political activists new procedures
were established governing the interception of communications involving
Americans. The version of USSID 18 currently in force was issued in July
1993 and "prescribes policies and procedures and assigns responsibilities
to ensure that the missions and functions of the United States SIGINT
System (USSS) are conducted in a manner that safeguards the constitutional
rights of U.S. persons."
(And a bit from USSID 18, itself - any errors in transcription are my fault:)
SECTION 1 - PREFACE
1.1. (U) The Fourth Amendment ot the Unites States Constitution protects
all U.S. persons anywhere in the world and all persons within the United
States from unreasonable searches and seizures by any person or agency
acting on behalf of the U.S. Government. The Supreme Court has ruled that
the interception of electronic communications is a search and seizure
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. It is therefore mandatory that
signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations be conducted pursuant to
procedures which meet the reasonableness requirements of the fourth
amendment.
1.2. (U) In determining whether United States SIGING System (USSS)
operations are "reasonable," it is necessary to balance the U.S.
Government's need for foreign intelligence information and the privacy
interests of persons protected by the Fourth Amendment. Striking that
balance has consumed much time and effort by all branches of the United
States Government. The results of that effort are reflected in the
references listed in Section 2 below. Together, these references require
the minimization of U.S. person information collected, processed, retained
or disseminated by the USSS. The purpose of this document is to implement
these minimization requirements.
1.3. (U) Several themes run throughout this USSID. The most important is
that intelligence operation and the protection of constitutional rights are
not incompatible. It is not necessary to deny legitimate foreign
intelligence collection or suppress legitimate foreign intelligence
information to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. Persons.
1.4. (U) Finally, these minimization procedures implement the
constitutional principle of "reasonableness" by giving different categories
of individuals and entities different levels of protection. These levels
range from the stringent protection accorded U.S. citizens and permanent
resident aliens in the United States to provisions relating to foreign
diplomats in the U.S. These differences reflect yet another main theme of
these procedures, that is, that the focus of all foreign intelligence
operation is on foreign entities and persons.
One of the big pushes after 9-11 was for all of the intelligence agencies to "cooperate."
When I was in the navy we conducted counter narcotics patrols off the coast of Colombia and Panama. Since the military is not allowed to engage in law enforcement (that pesky Constitution and all) we simply had a Coast Guard team (they're Dept of Transportation and not Defense, so they *can* do law enforcement) that took care of the actual boarding of vessles and law enforcement. In fact, it had to be the Coast Guard person on watch who initiated the request to investivate/board a vessle. There was no "official" cooperation between the military and the Coast Guard on this, but when you get orders on the secure circuit to "think about getting to these coordinates in exactly 12 hours" which result in the Coastie on watch saying "Oh hey -- there's a boat... let's board him!" can you deny that there is unofficial cooperation going on?
(There were further stories about SEALS and other special forces folks who were officially discharged from the military and transferred to "another agency" for two weeks at a time in order to engage in "direct action law enforcement" before "deciding to reenter the military." It's call "sheep-dipping" and is just one more thing for the tin-foil-hatters to worry about...)
I suspect that this is probably what's going on with the NSA et al. If the agency in question either thinks/knows they're looking at a US citizen, they can just drop a pointer to the intel in the inbox of an agency who *can* legally handle it (Oh geez -- I wonder where *that* lead came from?). Or there are teams of "not officially NSA folks" who just happen to be working at NSA alongside the others who are legally allowed to investigate US citizens (similar to Coasties on US Naval vessles for counter-narc activities).
Take your pick as to the method in use or make up another, but I am pretty sure it's going on and will not be going away anytime soon.
= 9J =
Oh for ALLah's sake! I can't believe the waY OUR governments spy on us. Any AraB, AS Ever, is a suspect. This is going too fAR Even for Bush. It won't BE LONG before they'll be trawling slashdot looking for hidden messages. I certainly won't be moving TO the US any time soon.
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.
Fess up! Canada's insideous evil OOZES down over the border like Maple Syrup!
Eat at Joe's.
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.
I've often wondered just how fast their turn-around time was once you started using words like Great Satan, infidels, chemical, Bin LaCARRIER LOST
That's why emacs has the "M-x spook" command. It prints out a string of phrases likely for the NSA to be searching for. The idea is to put it into all the emails you send. Increases the noise ratio for email-sniffers. Of course, you wouldn't wanna use it if you really were a terrorist.
Acronyms Obfuscate
Did you bother reading the somewhat brief article?
The people picked up were in Britain and Canada. It said nothing about them being US Citizens. It did, however, state that the nature of discussions was of terrorist activity (presumably against the US or US interests).
Conveying this to the Canadian and British authorities is a reasonable activity for our National Security Agency. If you want to talk about due process, perhaps you should watch to see what Canada and Britain do with them.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
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.
It's convenient that the first instance of e-mail "bugging" resulting in action is against a terrorist.
Is it convenient, or does it make perfect sense? Email, which we all know is completely insecure, is monitored until they find something worthy. Some terrorists turn up, and they are arrested.
Basically, since it stopped a terrorist, it completely validated this breach of privacy.
Exactly.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Pay these guys no mind. They don't understand the failsafes involved that take care of their kind quite handily. They see an exploit that works on desktops and assume it can be applied to spy satellites. My guess is he's got a few dozen zombie machines and thinks he can SYN flood some telecom satellite with an IP from a chinese block.
These people are idiots. Don't encourage them.
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.
2. What makes you think that the encryption systems available to the general public aren't easily cracked by the boys in Virginia and Maryland?
1. You can not brute force a 256+ bit encryption. It'd be like every atom of earth (2^171) solving at 1THz (2^40) for a million years (2^45). So it must be an algorithm attack.
2. A lot of encryption theory is developed outside the US or in academia as theoretical mathematics. They do not have a monopoly on intelligence, or on trying to crack them.
3. Most encryption protocols rely on well published, well researched topics, like difficulty of factorization as opposed to multiplication. For them to have it would imply that a) such a solution exists and b) that they, but not anyone outside of their community would find it.
4. Most encryption protocols are vastly overengineered compared to the threats. Like, e.g. an opponent with a million times more computing power (-20 bits) or capable of instantly rejecting 99% of the keys (-7 bits) would have nearly no influence on the difficulty.
In short, there's every reason to believe that your favorite three-letter agency will capture the input before encryption or after decryption, due to a flawed implementation, unsecure handshake or through a man-in-the-middle attack than breaking the encryption/algorithm itself.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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)
There are in many key types, such as RSA which relies on prime number factoring difficulties, where there is no published proof on how hard it has to be to crack the keys, (and no proof on how hard it has to be to find a previously-unknown weakness).
No one has published how to easily crack RSA for long key lengths. A smart mathematician working for NSA could have solved the problem years ago if they can keep a good secret.
And quantum computing seems to be on the horizon as well, and I would not put it past NSA to be ahead of the pack on this, and with quantum computing, you may find all existing key lengths falling to brute force attacks, because problems that were previously solved in exponential time may become linear, and the world may have to move to a completely different scheme if increasing key length only linearly increases the time to crack the key with a quantum computer.
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
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.
I realize that the real answer may be classified, but I'm interested in informed speculation as well.
Is the monitoring with the cooperation of the ISPs who control the gateways/routers? Is it mandated that they have the monitoring taps? Or is it unknown to them (NSA are tapping into the signal unbeknownst to the ISPs)?
(I think this has a known answer.) Is is true that pretty much all intercontinental traffic goes through the USA? ARe there any routes eg, Europe to Asia, or other continents that are just direct routes not passing via the USA?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
- 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.No, I can't deny that cooperation is going on, because it is, and it's perfectly legal. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from conducting law enforcement operations itself, but it specifically permits the military to SUPPORT law enforcement agencies to conduct LEO, especially drug related ones. See the link for more info.
By the way, I was in the Navy as well, and participated in many, many of these operations. The fact that the Navy was actively cooperating with the Coast Guard was widely known and unclassified.
Sean
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."
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make install -not war
Hey, it was 1993. The skies were still blue, love was in the air, and everybody and his dog was starting a death cult of one sort or another. We had to do something to set us apart from the average wild-eyed UFO priest. Osmium tetroxide was going to be our mark of distinction.
Besides, we were going to be safe, and try it out on an eyeball we didn't need before we all started doing it. I volunteered my left eyeball because it's a good deal weaker than the right one.
Thank God kids today have the Internet to keep them out of trouble.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
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make install -not war
first off, the method you outlined has some decent merit to it. it looks tremendously tedious, but it would work pretty well.
:end generic rant, sorry for the slideways on some issues
Here's another method--just use file sharing and put your seekrit msg inside some songs/videos. Stego on steroids. It won't matter who else downloads, only you and your email recipient friend know to even look for it. I think between the video part, the audio part, and the ability to insert some random data that will only show up as artifact noise, that this might be possible. You could create particular artifact noise and have it referenced to your normal alphabet/language of choice, then encrypt that. And even the unencrypted words could be within the context of a one time pad.
I'd like to see anyone krak that.....
The other way is what they have been doing anyway for millenia in muslim countries, they use trusted couriers and word of mouth. They keep it inside their religion, and family. Not fool proof, but so far it's been giving the spooks fits. The other thing they have done is gone to the independent cell method, there IS NO terrorist "central command" anymore, not anything of note. That's one thing that any agency can't deal with, very small independent cells down to the ultimate, the cell of one. It cannot be stopped, and no need therefore for messages, encrypted / obfuscated or not..
Begin generic rant just cuz I can:
Now, too bad that NSA (who I am sure actively monitors every single post on slashdot, so they will read this in the clear) won't reveal the identities of all the white guys in suits who had prior knowledge and involvement in 9-11. Like, hey NSA, remember the airline PUTS? RING A BELL DOES IT? Yas know, the ones that paid off for some millions yet NO ONE CAME TO COLLECT THE MONEY YET BECAUSE THE OPTION BECAME PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE? How about THE FATCATS WHO GOT WARNED TO NOT FLY THAT DAY? AIN'T THAT A TAD SUSPICIOUS? How about THE CONNECTED FATCATS WHO DIDN'T SHOW UP FOR WORK THAT DAY IN THE TWIN TOWERS? WHO ORDERED NORAD TO STAND DOWN, WHO CHANGED THE RULES RIGHT BEFORE 9-11? WHY WERE PILOTS ALLOWED TO BE ARMED FOREVER UNTIL JUST A SHORT TIME BEFORE 9-11 AND THE LAW WAS CHANGED? WAZZUP WITH THE COMPANY RUNNING AN "EXERCISE" OF ' HIJACKED PLANES SMACKING INTO BUILDINGS ON 9-11", WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE IT'S A COINCIDENCE? HUH?
Stuff like that, there's dozens of interesting un answered questions out there, that seeminly no one in our glorious government "intel" agencies seems to be able to figure out.
Scuttlebutt has it that entire small obscure "connected" companies seemed to take the 9-11 day off, but it's hard to find that story anymore... hmmm.. gee whiz...hmm..wonder why that is...
Who bought 'em NSA? Who put in those orders? Why not make that info public? Oh? what's that you say? It's VERY IMPORTANT WHITE GUYS IN SUITS WHO GIVE YOU YOUR ORDERS WHO BOUGHT THEM?
thanks, we knew that
US intel=paid off and scared hypocrites. Most of them honest and patriotic, I don't intend to demean them on that score, but I will call a spade a spade here, because it don't stop them from being scared - scared into "going along to get along". A lot of them know there's serious high level treason-yes, I said treason- going on, yet only a small handful have had the balls to come forward. Non-boat rockers almost entirely. I have yet to meet anyone connected to any civilian or military agency in the government who isn't aware of serious malfeasance occuring, usually on an ongoing basis. To a man (and woman) they say you "don't rock the boat" about crookedness you might become aware of, because at a minimum it's a career buster, all the way up to you get disappeared, and everything in between.
You won't get em to say it on many internet forums,not too often anyway, no one will admit to being scared at work, etc, but you will hear it sometimes in meatworld if you are persistant and can build some trust.
9-11 = the modern reichstagg fire
Evidently they are confusing packet headers(envelope, as they call it) with e-mail headers.
And the counterexample to the second statement is NAT(Network Address Translation).
You could definitely miss something if you blinked at 10 Gbits/sec or whatever it runs at...
Lots of Ostrich genes in your DNA?
MY military job directly made me a electronics tech and got me 67 college credits; it indirectly broadened my horizons and gave me a sense of repsonsibility that I had been seriously lacking. (it also got me a neat disability pension, but I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, fred).
I'm not saying that it's good that we HAVE to have military forces to assure the peace of our families, and it's definitely not good what those forces are doing right now (or what I did in GW1, for that matter), but that doesn't make the basic concept any less viable.
You have to have someone defending your families, and in order for those defendors to be able to do their job, they have to have equipment that will be effective; it was true in the days of gilgamesh, and its true now.
The problem is letting idiot politicians deciding what those defendors do.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
There is no further privacy invasion needed to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks. The intelligence failure that allowed 9/11 to be carried out should be addressed. The security measures that were already in place should have been properly implemented. The reason for the additional laws is to make us feel safer. It is simply politically expedient for new laws and "overhauls" of the system to be championed.
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.
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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