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US Fears Loss of ICQ Honeypot
AHuxley writes "US law enforcement bodies view the sale of instant messaging service ICQ to a Russian company as a threat to homeland security. In spring 2010, Russia's largest Internet investment company, Digital Sky Technologies, agreed to purchase the service for $187 million from AOL. The US is sure that most criminals use ICQ and, therefore, constant access to the ICQ servers is needed to track them down. As the system is based in Israel, American security service have had access. The article concludes, 'Lawyers [of unspecified nationality] say that to block the deal the US Committee on Foreign Investment needed to cancel it no later than within 30 days after the deal has been announced — so unless the rules are broken, nothing can be changed.'"
As the system is based in Israel, American security service have had access.
While ICQ was founded in Israel, it's been owned by AOL for over a decade. The ICQ network has been integrated with AOL's AIM network many years ago and the servers are located in AOL's network supercenter in Virginia.
AIM has supported this for years, it's called Direct Connection. Trillian and Pidgin both support IM encryption as well.
Another option is to run your own XMPP server, which can at least guarantee that conversations on that server are safe, but not necessarily those with people on other servers.
In Soviet America government seeks you!
Direct Connection has been removed more recent versions of AIM because its risks outweighed its benefits. Disclosing your IP address to somebody you barely or don't know is risky. Disclosing your IP address and the fact you're using an certain versions AIM is an invitation to hackers.
How exactly will the US (ie, my country) block the sale of one company based in Israel to another company based in Russia? On what grounds do we [sic] have the authority to do this?
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Wrong I'm afraid - ICQ uses OSCAR, is backed by AIM's servers and uses an AOL proprietary library to connect just like AIM used to (COOL). AIM now uses a further abstracted client (AIMCC) which uses COOL itself.
The Israeli company (ICQ) has been a subsidiary of an American company (AOL) since 1998.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The U.S. Constitution explicitly acknowledges the federal government's authority to seize property for public use, so long as just compensation is paid.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The real question is why to the Russians want it?
Its because ICQ is the most popular IM program used in Russian speaking countries.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
No, it isn't, and no, it doesn't.
There is no "British Constitution of 1689". The "British Constitution" is not a written document but a set of traditions. You may be thinking of the 1689 Bill of Rights, which certainly did inspire similar enumerations by states and eventually by the federal government, but it's a far stretch to say that our Bill of Rights is based on that document.
And the U.S. Constitution does not have any passage about a "right to engage in commerce without interference". (Nor, from my admitted quick scan, does the 1689 Bill of Rights) The Constitution does, though, explicitly stipulate the power of the federal government to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" (Article I, Section 8). As AOL is an American company, and the buyer is Russian, the feds have legitimate Constitutional authority to regulate the transaction as they wish.
May I suggest you read the document in question before you make statements about what it stipulates?
I tell ya, conservatives and propertarians remind me more and more often of that old Star Trek (TOS) episode where there's a barbarian tribe that worships the Constitution but has no idea what it actually says. ("E pleb neesta...")
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Casinos in the United States are gaming organizations set up and established by the Indian Tribes, not the White man.
The genocide of Armenia, Greeks and Kurds was far more organized than the American Indian Wars that lead to the conquest of the United States.
Example, the Northern Great Plains Indian Wars from 1850-1890 lead to about 3,000 white deaths and 8-11,000 Indian dead.
600,000 Armenians "died or were massacred during deportation" in the years 1915–1916.
Okay, seriously. People who claim or think ICQ is barely used by anybody nowadays obviously have their heads too far up their ass. You do realize that there exists a wide, grand world outside of the glorious US of fuckin' A, right? Just because ICQ isn't popular in the US doesn't mean it's the same way everywhere else. ICQ is very widely used in Germany, for example. Some other comment mentioned the ex-USSR countries as well. Even if you say it as a joke ... it's not funny. Those of us who know otherwise just facepalm and remember that the internet is full of blithering idiots like you.
Bzzt! We do not, and never have had, a formal written constitution. If you have citations to refute this, I'd love to see them.
There is no British Constitution, in the sense of a piece of paper that William of Orange could have signed. It's uncodified, famously so. What you are speaking about, in a somewhat confused and uninformed way, is the British Bill of Rights, which is one of the things that make up the Constitution. And while it is an important document in the development of constitutional theory, in no way is "EVERY national constitution is based on the 1689 British Constitution".
""The US said it is sure that most criminals use ICQ""
They know this because ICQ is really the main communication system of the CIA. It was all the NSA would let them play with.
No, it's a known fact in information security circles that a lot of criminal stuff goes down, or at least has gone down, over ICQ. Why beats me, maybe it just got widely popular in Russia? It sounds stupid, but consider that until recently, most large-scale botnets where controlled via IRC channels.
Emotions! In your brain!
It used to be that you could get +5 informative simply by RTA and giving some facts from it, now even quoting something from the summary gets you +5 informative.
Laughable. What about the fact that "Palestine" was actually carved out of Israel first?
Historical Israel (and Judea) was renamed to "Palestine" as an attempt by the Romans to crush a local Jewish rebellion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine#Origin_of_name
They named it Palestine after the Jews' ancient enemy Phalestine, which has absolutely no relations to modern-day Arabs calling themselves Palestinians.