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Espionage In Icelandic Parliament
bumburumbi writes "An unauthorised computer, apparently running encrypted software, was found hidden inside an unoccupied office in the Icelandic Parliament, Althingi, connected to the internal network. According to the Reykjavik Grapevine article, serial numbers had been removed and no fingerprints were found. The office had been used by substitute MPs from the Independence Party and The Movement, the Parliamentary group of Birgitta Jonsdottir, whose Twiiter account was recently subpoenaed by US authorities. The Icelandic daily Morgunbladid, under the editorship of Mr David Oddsson, former Prime Minister and Central Bank chief, has suggested that this might be an operation run by Wikileaks. The reporter for the Reykjavik Grapevine, Mr Paul Nikolov is a former substitute MP, having taken seat in Parliament in 2007 and 2008."
I love reading the stories posted by the readership about all of the odd systems found stuck in closets and under desks which nobody knows what are doing.
Specifically... does anyone have any about Wall Street or Congress?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
An iceland parlementarian's twitter account subpoenaed by u.s. government, yet, the operation to spy on the iceland government, for some godfrigging reason, is proposed to be the operation by wikileaks ?
can anyone provide any actual logic for this proposition ?
Read radical news here
So, Wikileaks is SPECTRE now?
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
The Icelandic daily Morgunbladid, under the editorship of Mr David Oddsson, former Prime Minister and Central Bank chief, has suggested that this might be an operation run by Wikileaks.
If nothing else, wikileaks will be valuable to governments as a convenient scapegoat.
--
pass
if it was just an old sysadmin's personal download machine. Given that most computers do not have serial numbers but the ones procurement gives them, it could have been a system that was decommissioned and the sticker peeled off. I've got a couple of those myself although they're not hooked up to my companies' gigabit internet service.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
An unauthorized computer, apparently running encrypted software, ...
Well, object code is cryptic but it's not encrypted.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Stephen Christian, a computer expert at Oxymap ehf, told the Grapevine that ... "Information written to disk can be recovered by experts even after being overwritten several times unless you let the computer run for a few hours constantly 'covering up' its information. Computer hackers know this."
I laugh whenever I see comments like this. Lest we forget that nobody ever accepted The Great Zero Challenge, let alone beat it.
isnt it possible that the third parties, who are extremely irritated by wikileaks, have intended to gather information on them ?
Read radical news here
Gee, let's see. Who would stand to gain by smearing Wikileaks?
Governments, large financial institutions, covert military operations, corrupt diplomats, racketeers... Who among such entities does not have the necessary resources to set up such a smear?
Meanwhile, this "encrypted" system sure sounds like a load of bollocks. It's all, like, secret. Wow. Yet how convenient, considering that it was "hidden", that it showed up exactly where and when it did.
Let's see, there are two possibilities that come to mind since this was done in the proximity of the female Icelandic MP with connection to wikileaks:
Obviously we can throw out #1 because it does not at all fit with wikileaks modus operandi and cannot be carried out by their infrastructure. They're set up to anonymously accept documents and disseminate them, they're not spies. Moreover the icelandic MP in question would be risking much to do this only to access documents she probably already has access to.
So #2 becomes the most obvious culprit.
Liberty.
Are you insinuating that Robby Rotten is guilty of this crime?
They found my CS 1.3 server!
It is entirely possible to encrypt a hard drive that once powered down the data is "lost". It's called TrueCrypt System Disk Encryption. Where the decrypter is a boot loader and the decrypted key gets stores in ram. Power off, no more key. The key is needed again to unlock the drive after reboot. To take it to the next level one would put an encrypted file container inside the encrypted system that requires a USB key to unlock. It would take a very long time to decrypt both keys without some very very heavy computing power
This happened one year ago (see article) and what interesting data could one possibly hope to find within the walls of the Icelandic Parliament? And even if there was any, there are easier ways of looking for it than gaining entry to the offices and leaving a laptop there. It's even more silly to think Wikileaks were involved.
"spam? ohhhhhh iiiiiit might have been a hackkeeerrrrrr!!!"
"ohhhh i have a worm in my apple -- ooh! ooooohhhhh wikileeeaaakkkss!!"
"ooh, ohhh i just discovered there's no way i can look at the contents of my son's computer even if i ground his computer to my room, pull the hard drive out and put it in my packard bell... he says it's PGP and hell i dunno i heard that's what wikileeaakkkss is ussiiingg ... uhhhh hrrrmmmmm i can't believe my son is part of their operation! the government should deeewwww something about this!"
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
This reveals more about David Oddsson than Wikileaks. I bet Mr. Oddsson has some friends who were very deservedly burned by the Icelandic banking scandal that Wikileaks broke the story on. And, of course, that means Wikileaks must be at fault for anything else wrong involving spying or information leakage. It can't possibly be because Mr. Oddsson's friends are nasty people who deserve long jail sentences, no...
It's like a domestic abuse case where the abused refuses to implicate the abuser in anything the abuser has done and it must all somehow be the fault of the abused person or external entities.
*rolls eyes* Get better friends Mr. Oddsson. Accept that you have terrible taste and learn to overcome your shortcoming.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's more like the Kennedy assassination - who wouldn't gain by smearing Wikileaks here? Even Wikileaks themselves* might have planted it as a diversion as opposed to surreptitiously leaving it behind. Or maybe it's a Murder on the Orient Express plot, where either a whole bunch of players conspired together to do it, or else some stranger walked in the door, planted it, and walked out unseen.
*Yes, I do reject any of the conspiracy suggestions that say Kennedy himself was behind it, except the one on Red Dwarf which might have been true, but between several Mafia families, the CIA, Cuba, anti-Castro Cubans, the Pentagon, Military-Industrial Complex businesses, several jealous ex-husbands, Bobby, Jackie, Frankie, Marilyn, J.Edgar, J.Edgar's dress-maker, and the Lone Gunmen, it really was a race to get there first....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So a strange computer was found in a government office...
... which may have been used by someone affliated with an org that discloses government secrets...
... as insinuated by a newspaper edited by the former head of said government...
... as reported by someone who may also have had access to this office previously, as a government official.
Is this representative of the kind of media bias Iceland has to deal with? Don't get me wrong, it's not like any country has it better, but is it always so blatantly obvious?
Finally. Terrorists and pedos really got stale after a while. But I guess "think of the children" isn't gonna work as a catchphrase anymore, we gotta find a new one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Call the MAFIAA, they've been searching for that for ages! If that's true, the money worries of Iceland are at an end, they'll happily pay big bucks for such a technology!
Snideness aside, I guess I needn't mention that no computer on this planet is able to run "encrypted software". The OS has to be able to load the executable, hence it has to conform to standard. CPUs are only able to run instructions that match their instruction set, so that has to conform to that standard. It may be runtime encrypted, but every halfway decent game cracker has been stripping those for ages, and every halfway decent malware analyst for even longer (I sometimes wonder how much these groups overlap, considering how many problems they both have to overcome... but I digress).
Maybe the file system is encrypted (to some degree, the system has to run after all...), but it's hardly possible that the software is running "encrypted".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Other than the hard drive, none of those serial numbers are tracked by computer vendors. Serials are tracked by manufacturers only for parts likely to fail, and only for parts which the vendor has a RMA agreement with the supplier.
Even mac addresses are usually not on record for any longer than it takes to print the required label.
If that information isn't on the order and shipping documents, chances are very good that the manufacturer has no clue what MAC is in what Computer, and the best you get is that it was in a particular batch of 300 computers which were sold to the Reykjavik Radio Shack.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
> But but planting a computer on someone's network is pretty much amateur hour don't you think?
They said the same thing about the mistakes made in the assassination of that Hamas leader by Israel and about the mistakes made in that virus that attacked Iran's nuclear program. "Wouldn't real spies be more professional than this?"
I think we're seeing the CSI effect applied to spies. In other words, people are so used to seeing perfect operations in James Bond movies and they have absolutely no idea what real spy operations are like.
Its probably gone thru three sets of hands since purchased.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It would be funny if it turned out that this is just some licensing server.
then why did it not happen with the censorship law in spain, after all that bullying ?
Read radical news here
Think of the politicians?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
As a side note a spokesman from CCP hf announced today that the EVE Online Tranquility server has gone offline unexpectedly and they are working on the problem...
(PS: Yes I know EVE is hosted from London, but I couldn't resist!)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"A professional would have written any acquired data to a public-key-encrypted disk that would only have been accessible to one who possessed the private key - like with Wikileaks 'insurance' file" This is basically saying that the best way the commentator says of doing it is how wikileaks has encrypted their file. There is not even how the harddrive was encrypted
It's just perl!
#DeleteChrome
Many people have accomplished what they've claimed, but then Randi came up with extra tests, until they failed.
Randi very clearly lays out of the bounds of any tests beforehand, and what is considered proof.
If anyone had actually passed that test, they would, you know, sue him, because they were promised payment of a million dollars if they did that. There is an actual contract with actual winning conditions.
But since you've made that claim, you should be able to demonstrate that Randi has, at least once, laid out a test and winning conditions, and then backpeddled once someone actually won.
Or you are a liar and a slanderer who has accused someone of criminal fraud.
He's not interested in "statistics", but demands "undisputable show of magic", but without magic tricks.
Yeah, you moron, because that's what he's testing.
If he let people win by 'statistics', he'd have a constant stream of people claiming they could predict a coin toss 75% of the time....and eventually one of them would happen to do that. Because that's how statistics work.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, unlike children, politicians are not generally liked by the majority of the population. Quite the opposite, especially recently. "Think of the politicians" could easily be misunderstood a prompt for ... well, for reference see Tunisia.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...Twiiter [sic] account was recently subpoenaed...
I don't use it, but wouldn't one just "follow" someone on Twitter to see everything they "tweet"?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
And don't forget: "Professionals wouldn't have left John Wheeler's body in the garbage. Hey, look over there...WIKILEAKS!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Moderation abuse. Too hard to be able to relate to a different opinion than a preconcieved notion about something I guess.
How "scientific"..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Being one who has actually had Out Of Body experience, seen auras, and experienced that there is more to this universe than the judgement of sciencific-minded people.
Science isn't about rejecting all possibilities. It about accepting that anything could be true or could occur but only being interested in the things that do occur as evident by a physical observation and evidence. That is physical evidence that you can verify repeatedly to other people and it is also subject to our senses we actually have. Even your aura seeing and out-of-body experience had senses involved such as sight, sound, etc., so go try to devise a method to repeat this event and share it with people so they can try it out for themselves. A dream you had or some "precognition" you experienced doesn't constitute physical evidence because there is no way to record these things or repeat them at will so other people can experience it and verify your claim. There have been many other plausible causes proposed for out-of-body experiences and seeing "auras". Why is your hypothesis that its simply "beyond our understanding" the correct one? Prove it. Assholes have come up with all sorts of crap-explanations over the generations and have been proven wrong time and time again. Examples? The Earth is the center of the Universe. Witches exist and should be burned at the stake. Humans were created by god out of dirt. Etc. Etc.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owastand.display_standard_group?p_toc_level=1&p_part_number=1910
I scroll down to "Subpart S"...
General electrical regulations it seems; can you point to which part of the subpart you refer to?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Randi very clearly lays out of the bounds of any tests beforehand, and what is considered proof. ...And then changes those parameters at any time. If you Google this you'll see many independent complaints about this.
If anyone had actually passed that test, they would, you know, sue him, because they were promised payment of a million dollars if they did that. There is an actual contract with actual winning conditions.
No can do, as per the contract, which is designed to benefit James, not the applicant:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/89173/exposing_the_unfair_truth_about_the.html
But since you've made that claim, you should be able to demonstrate that Randi has, at least once, laid out a test and winning conditions, and then backpeddled once someone actually won.
Except it's no contract in the lawful sense. Seek and Ye shall find:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/89173/exposing_the_unfair_truth_about_the_pg2.html?cat=17
Video: James Randi Challenge Exposed - A Lawyer Explains:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1442
Professor Michael Prescott found that James Randi’s million dollar challenge is very much an illusion that have fooled people for decades:
http://torbjornsassersson.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/james-randi-and-his-one-million-dollar-challenge-fraud/
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/challenge.htm
Examples (hard to find these days as SEO or litigations have made sites disappear, they used to be easy to find):
Rico Kolodzey
http://www.rense.com/general50/james.htm
Riley G Matthews
http://www.rileyg.com/pressdir.htm
Serios
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/08/lets_get_serios.html
Or you are a liar and a slanderer who has accused someone of criminal fraud.
These are not my claims, and there are many many more, however hard to find now. Some is to be found in articles, some in books. I'll let the reader make the good judgement wether this is true or false, I don't have the time or interest to investigate it in detail for you.
You missed my point entirely though. Since everything "supernatural" can be explained away with magic tricks or similar mundane tricks, then it is impossible to prove that you just did something "supernatural". If you read more about James Randi, you'll see his argumentation is dismissive of diversity of people, intolerant and arrogant. So the "Challenge" then quickly turns into a fight for survival, and often end up in the courts. Not very nice.
Yeah, you moron, because that's what he's testing.
Wow, where did that come from?
If he let people win by 'statistics', he'd have a constant stream of people claiming they could predict a coin toss 75% of the time....and eventually one of them would happen to do that. Because that's how statistics work.
But how can you ever dismiss statistics? It is crucial to make discoveries and validate them in any field. Nothing is ever as black and white as some people want the world to be..
This has been discussed to death in other forums. If a basketball player misses the hoop 1 in 100 shots, is she no longer a basketball player? This is the way statistics is being misused to dismiss any results in the JRF chalenge. In the
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
How true!
Real science has nothing against religion generally, but yes, we should e.g. always oppose subverting schools to teach ID as "The Truth".. ID can be taught of course, but from a objective bias. If you ponder on this example: How something is done *can* be profoundly more powerful than just What.
How has more to do with the mind and spirit, and What is more to do with the material.
For most people who've had out of body experiences, their understanding and relationship with themselves and the world have changed profoundly. Personally, this can't be explained to anyone who have not experienced something like that. Some who have such experiences, especially when it's often and extreme, can also be delusional, and start to fantasize.
But on the more practical plane: If we finally understand that we may be reborn as the "enemy" in the next lifetime, maybe we'll want to treat other people better? There are numerous benefits, but more subtle than just X amounts of food or Y kgs of materials.
Material and spirit can go hand in hand. I'll leave the discovery as an exercise to the reader instead of spoonfeeding. That's the way it has to be. What I regard as "my truth", may not be in alignment with what other's truth to be, and since both are also always changing, why become stuck with a viewpoint too much?
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Spirituality has nothing to do with "magical thinking" though, and it has absolutely no conflict with science. In fact, any real spiritual path will encourage to go through all your doubts, and not reject them, but really investigate.
Spirituality has more to do with humanism, and knowledge about our very existence, which can elevate neighbourly colloboration to higher levels than "just for the money or convenience factor".
Spirit is that very energy which makes you feel comfortable among friends, makes you want to share something good, help people when they're in trouble etc, that which elevates you.
There's so much confusion and ignorance about it though, and people are so stuck to dogmas still.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
denounce them ( Wikileaks )
The police have apparently given up so it's up to us conspiracy theorists to solve the problem (yet again)!
First of all this is clearly a cover-up involving both the parliament security forces and the police. The computer was discovered over a year ago, but nobody was the wiser until now when the story was leaked. Nobody was questioned and the investigation seems to have dead-ended immediately. Also, the security cameras near the room in question were "unfortunately out of order" at the time.
Keep in mind also that the office where the computer was found was being shared by the Movement and the Independence Party. The former are known around here as the friends of Wikileaks while the latter are known in Iceland as simply "The Party". They are the single most powerful entity in Iceland and have in the last 50 years or so controlled both parliament and government as well as having strong influences over the police and judiciary (and the parliament security forces). During the cold war party membership could guaranty work while not being a member could loose you your job. It's also a documented fact that the Independence Party had a very effective local espionage network during the cold war and I doubt they just stopped such a successful operation when the Berlin wall fell.
Finally the daily Morgunbladid is run by one David Oddsson who is the godfather of the Independence Party; what he says goes. Wrongfully accusing someone to divert the attention away from the Party is just his MO, but because Morgunbladid is widely read it will probably work.
Put the pieces together and we see that this was a botched Party spying operation covered up by the police and parliament security. ... as conspiracy theorys go this one's actually not that unlikely!
Wikileaks lets people deliver info to them, they definitely don't sneak into the parliament buildings of foreign countries to install hidden computers loaded with crypto.
They should really be looking at political parties, both foreign and domestic.
"suggested that this might be an operation run by Wikileaks."
Or far more likely, a Karl Rove type of maneuver, bugging yourself and blaming someone else.
For most people who've had out of body experiences, their understanding and relationship with themselves and the world have changed profoundly.
You mean, their understanding of the world has changed profoundly. It doesn't mean they've learned anything profound.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Out of body experiences have been induced in people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience#Induced . Interestingly enough, the explanation is due to something changing in your brain's operation, not some spiritual occurrence. What even is spirituality? Can you define it at all so that it is distinct from mind? It is simply something that exists as part of a natural physiological occurrence in your mind. Its related to a similar mechanism that convinces people they are possessed by animal spirits or the holy spirit an causes them to to weird shit like speak in tongues or run around in an animalistic rage.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Just when you thought they couldn't treat an icelandic MP like an ordinary citizen of countries where the US would like their own jurisdiction to apply whenever they feel like it, they find a suspicious computer somehow connected to that MP! I guess it's up to the usual media conglomerates now to convince everyone it's just a coincidence and Wikileaks is baaaad.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Yes, and if you can do it 100% of the time, you win.
What Randi doesn't take is people who claim to be able to slightly manipulate probability, who want to do a 50/50 test a hundred times and win 60 or 70 of those times and call it victory.
Because statically, eventually, one of them would succeed just because of probability.
Eventually, someone could succeed with 100% probability via bland chance, too, which why Randi demands the 'undisputable show of magic' the GP was whining about, with enough tests that's extremely unlikely. (But unlike what the GP appears to think, he explains what they are and how many they are in advance.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Professor Michael Prescott found that James Randi’s million dollar challenge is very much an illusion that have fooled people for decades: http://torbjornsassersson.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/james-randi-and-his-one-million-dollar-challenge-fraud/
I VERY STRONGLY urge everyone to read that article, (The first I randomly clicked) to actually see what sort of utter nonsense this poster is sprouting.
In short, apparently you can dismiss Randi because the article hypothesizes that Randi randomly turns away people just because he calls classes of claims 'absurd' (With absolutely no evidence at all he won't test those claims.), and that you can't be an asshat by repeatedly screaming obscenities or delaying the test you scheduled with them.
Wow, it's almost a microcosmic of the goddamn loons, right there in the article, written by the loons and they somehow missed it. Claims that he turns away applicants without proof, absurd behaviors and conditions on their 'powers'. It is truly an epic read.
Another article claims the reason he won't take the test is you have to sign a personal liability waiver. No shit, really? You mean they're worried about frauds claiming injury during the test and suing? I wonder why he'd worry about that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What most people call 'spirituality' is really a combination of mirror neurons, critical thinking (through good or flawed methodologies), and the fact that humans are social animals.
The reason it seems weird and spooky to some people is because to make it in a capitalist democracy, you kind of need to be a sociopath - there is no room for compassion.
mediocrity rules, man