Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Nothing can be done?! Nonsense. The National Security Act could be used to simply seize the entire operation, if it's that important.
Uh-oh!
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.
But good luck, they're behind 7 proxies.
kgb c u but usa no c u!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A peer-to-peer architecture would be better for IM - no single point of failure at a server that impacts all conversations, end-to-end security rather than client to server, server to client, and no man in the middle attacks by government agencies or anybody else who chooses to record the conversations going through the servers. I sometimes wonder whether all the public IM servers are run by the "Air America" airline. The only use of a server in IM should be as a directory and participant availability service, not to carry the conversations, unless both participants are behind NAT. If one of the participants have a public IP address the conversations could go direct between the end-points. SIMPLE
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I dunno what's more shocking, that the government thinks ICQ has any relevance with anything anymore or that someone thought the network was worth $186 MILLION dollars. That's just insane.
Seriously, where did they get this claim:
"The US said it is sure that most criminals use ICQ"
Who actually said that? The article claims "US law enforcement bodies", but doesn't say which ones. It doesn't even say if they are federal, state, local, or private law enforcement bodies.
"Most" criminals is probably too broad. Maybe they meant terrorists. Maybe they meant spies. Who knows? But I doubt that every drug dealer and pimp out there is using ICQ.
And why would criminals all congregate to the same service? There are lots of great ways to disseminate information (text messages, email, phone calls, etc). Why would criminals use only one particular version (ICQ) of a particular method (IM)?
First off, if the 'US' is 'sure' of something (for example weapons of mass destruction), then you can be 100% certain the US is up to no good.
Second, "The US is sure that most criminals use ICQ and..." ---- really?? I will happily plunk down a $1,000,000 bet and walk down to the nearest prison and ask a random sampling of 'criminals' what they know about ICQ. Rest assured, almost none of the criminals will have a clue about ICQ. Kids however, would be able to tell you all about it. ...maybe the US is referring to kids who download shitty music as 'criminals'? If keeping ICQ in order to track a bunch of pimply-faced kids downloading music is 'National Security', then America is truly fucked.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
And why wouldn't they develop their own protocols for communication?
I can think of various ways to communicate, most of them rather narrow-banded but still useful for key information.
If you are into big time crime you can even get news media to communicate for you, but that means that you must have exchanged some protocol first. Let's say that you agree that news reported in a certain newspaper online can contain some key information - like where a bank heist shall occur. You can then communicate a lot of information through other channels to coordinate the "when" and "how". Then just cause some other happening - like a large fire that will be reported in the news in the area where you shall pull it off.
And even in computer communication you can get around direct tracking, like posting on Slashdot or ping some servers with an incorrect sender address that will cause the ping reply to end up at your expected target system.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
By now they probably posted the link to this article in the criminal forum and are organizing a mass migration to MSN Messenger, GTalk and Facebook.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Actually developing their own probably calls more attention to themselves than just using something where they can hide in the herd.
But ICQ seems an odd choice. Usership is dwindling, twitter and facebook and any number of other im services are eating its lunch.
One wonders who these "criminals" are that use ICQ.
The whole thing sounds fishy to me.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
A warning to people out here: RT is the Russian international propaganda channel - ANYTHING it reports should be taken with a grain of salt and verified through other sources.
RT is a farely new Russian government owned news channel, and has been gaining more and more presence everywhere lately. Their journalism is extremely untrustworthy - fabrications are common and government anti-america propaganda is rampant.
Let me get this right, the US authorities are worried about the ICQ* service going to the Russians.... has the US seen just how much their economic rivals China own of the US economy? Get your priorities in order.
* Does anyone actually use ICQ any more?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
They aren't going to MSN. Criminals don't want to be spammed any more than the rest of us.
ICQ has millions of users in the former eastern bloc. ICQ is for Russia and most of its Slavic neighbors pretty much the same as QQ is for China and their neighbors.
People with these ethnic backgrounds living abroad have usually the same preference for their IM networks, of course, to reach the rest of the family back home. Now no one would ever dare to suggest that emigrants from the Eastern Bloc - those that use ICQ - have a high involvement in crime, but I'm sure there's some people who have more than a hunch on that. I wonder where all these new AK47s used in street crime from Belgium to California come from anyway...
How would you know that unless you were a COMMUNIST SPY?!?!?
The computer is my friend!!!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem