Letters to the Editor
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It's napalm? no. It's time for a calm nap.
The neocon is a surge of vile,
surging with atrocities. True.
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Kit (not James) Bond
Just finished watching Bond respond to Dodd on the Senate floor, and all those memories of being embarrassed whenever Jesse Helms took the microphone came flooding back. People of Missouri, as a North Carolinian, I feel your pain.
Did he really say that the telecoms would quit cooperating in any attempt to catch a sexual predator or find a missing child were they not granted immunity?
What a crock.
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Anonymous who?
My blood curdles. My conscience staggers.
My skin disintegrates.
Who put anthrax in my stew?
We have all been very betrayed.
I believe only on the condition,
of outright humility and reverence,
the world of the human species will,
be able to maintain Life. Abandon arrogance!
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What is wrong with this statement ? ? ?
The top American intelligence official said on Tuesday that Al Qaeda is improving its ability to attack within the United States by recruiting and training new operatives. At the same time, he said, the group's affiliate in Iraq is beginning to send militants to other countries.
How in the hell can someone know all this very particular information without knowing "WHO" is being trained and where they are? ? ? ?
This is so juvenile in its presentation that it is shocking how stupid an audience the government thinks everyone must be? ?
My God, Am I so smart as to see this as some type of desperation by the government when most do not apparently? ? ? I know that is not true. I have been called anything but smart by the majority of people I know, but this story about how much these government people know about the training and the threat make me look pretty good! WOW, what delusional and depraved people are running things in this banana republic, for anyone to believe shit like this! ! !
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Almost On Topic
A small ray of hope
From the National Resources Defense Council today:
Last night, a federal judge struck down a waiver issued by the White House that would have exempted the U.S. Navy from obeying a key environmental law during sonar training exercises that endanger whales.
In doing so, the court affirmed the bedrock principle that we do NOT live under an imperial presidency. Both the White House and the military must obey and uphold our environmental laws.
[...]
In last night's ruling, Judge Cooper called the Navy's so-called emergency "a creature of its own making," and reaffirmed that the military can train effectively without needlessly harming whales.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council -
welcome buccaneer.
It's a sad country, and lots of dwarf shrubs around, and we were all naked when we were born. We watch Bush squirrels,
apparently chatter-thinking, and what a bunch of human squirrels have screwed up 'our' country and world.
RMP? Please order: a 'pot au feu'...and a squirrel night bedtime stew? okay. I conked and pooped out. over/gone.
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Fool me once...
Shame on you.
Fool me two, three, four times, I must be a Democratic congressional "leader."
Pathetic...
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Stirred, Not Shaken
Kit (not James) Bond, speaking in public, in front of actual (?!?) people said:
the telecoms would quit cooperating in any attempt to catch a sexual predator or find a missing child were they not granted immunity . . .
Not a peep from the gallery? Nobody laughed at this lame cheney of a human being? He wasn't called out for being a craven spineless whore?
WTF? Time was, a man like Kit Bond would be slapped on his fat smirking face, then issued a challenge. If he had any sand, he'd be there, if not . . .
well, welcome to America, version 2008.
People actually elect these soul-less, cringing, photogenic phuckheads. Shame, shame, shame. But there is no shame anymore. No remorse. America, you are what you is . . .
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ELYDOG: Yes! Fight fire with "Fire!" - - Use fear-laden words. (when they fit the facts.)
ELYDOG:
Emotion rules
Perhaps the reason this country is so mired in problems is that, according to a recent study, emotion rules the majority of people's political choices.
So what emotion can we use against the fear mongers? Ridicule?
Anger? Fear?
- - ELYDOG 01:46 PM
Yes! Fight fire with "Fire!" - - Use fear-laden words.
Words like "due process" and "civil liberties" may fail to resonate, except with a few kids who paid attention in Civics class.
So, try also using some other kinds of words - - words that resonate.
The "H" word and the "R" word.
HAZARD!
RISK!
The "DS" words.
DECREASED SECURITY!
Like this:
http://computer.org/security
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE Computer Society
"Security & Privacy" magazine / January, 2008Risking Communications Security:
Potential Hazards of the Protect America Act
A new US law allows warrantless wiretapping whenever one end of the communication is believed to be outside national borders. This creates serious security risks: danger of exploitation of the system by unauthorized users, danger of criminal misuse by trusted insiders, and danger of misuse by government agents.[...] Building surveillance technologies into communication networks is risky. The Greeks learned this lesson the hard way; two years ago, they discovered that legally installed wiretapping software in a cellphone network had been surreptitiously enabled by parties unknown, resulting in the wiretapping of more than 100 senior members of the government for almost a year.[1] Things are not much better in Italy, where a number of Telecom Italia employees have been arrested for illegal wiretapping (with attempts at blackmail).[2]
[...] Surveillance technology is an “architected security breach”[21] into a communications network and thus a risky business on which to embark.
[...] Let’s go back to a point we brought up earlier. The Greek wiretapping case [...] Not only did the intruders turn on the network’s wiretapping capability, they also installed a rootkit that hid any activity of their own software updates. Each time there was a communication on one of the tapped phones, a duplicate communication was sent to one of 14 cell phones in the network, all of which were prepaid, anonymous accounts. While we know private communications at the highest levels of the Greek government were wiretapped for 10 months, who did it remains unknown.
The US, also, has experienced difficulties with communications surveillance systems. Under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (P.L. 100-667), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was responsible for determining technical specifications for wiretapping built into switches of digital telephone networks. DCS 3000, an FBI suite of systems for collecting and managing data from wiretaps for criminal investigations, was designed to meet those requirements. Recently released FBI documents reveal serious problems in the system’s implementation.[22]
[...] Although the NSA has extensive experience in building surveillance systems, that does not mean things cannot go wrong. When you build a system to spy on yourself, you entail an awesome risk. In designing a system to satisfy the needs of the Protect America Act, the risk is made worse by four phenomena:
• removal of a protective role provided by communication carriers in all previous interception programs within the US communication system. This protective role was the result of the specificity required in wiretap warrants.
• placing the system properly within the US rather than at US borders;
• likelihood that the system will be built out of pieces previously used abroad, which runs the risk that opponents are already familiar with the equipment via intelligence-sharing agreements or capture of equipment; and
• use of CDRs, originally built for network development purposes, in an entirely new way involving “customers” outside the phone company.[...] The change from a system that taps particular lines on receipt of a wiretap order specifying those lines to one that sorts through transactional data in real time and selects communications of interest is massive. Where interception occurs and how the data sources (CDRs, traffic, other information) are combined and used will not only affect how powerful a tool warrantless wiretapping is, but will also affect how likely the system is to pick up purely domestic communications. In building a communications surveillance system itself—and saving its enemies the effort—the US government is creating three distinct serious security risks: danger of exploitation of the system by unauthorized users, danger of criminal misuse by trusted insiders, and danger of misuse by US government agents. How should the US mitigate these risks?
Minimization matters
[...] Traffic should be collected at international cable heads rather than at tandem switches or backbone routers, which also carry purely domestic traffic.
Architecture matters
[...]
Oversight matters
[...] While the details might remain classified, there should be a publicly known system for handling situations when mistakes are made. To assure independence, the overseeing authority should be as far removed from the intercepting authority as practical. To guarantee that electronic surveillance is effective and free of abuse and that minimization is in place and working appropriately, it is necessary that there be frequent, detailed reports on the system’s functioning. Of particular concern is the real-time use of CDR for targeting content, which must neither be abused by the US government nor allowed to fall into unauthorized hands. For full oversight, such review should be done by a branch of government different from the one conducting the surveillance.
[...]
The surveillance architecture implied by the Protect America Act will, by its very nature, [be] risking the very national security that the act is supposed to protect. In an age so dependent on communication, the loss could well be greater than the gain.
- - Steven M. Bellovin, Columbia University
- - Matt Blaze, University of Pennsylvania
- - Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems
- - Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems
- - Peter G. Neumann, SRI International
- - Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University