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Sunday, January 01, 2006 |
Congratulations to DHS, etc..
I would like to congratulate the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service, Police, and any other Federal, State, or Local agency and private enterprise that successfully prevented EVERY SINGLE attempted terrorist attack on U.S. soil in 2005. Congratulations and job well done.
[Spire Security Viewpoint]
11:51:51 AM 
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PJM-Barcelona on whether US planning a strike against Iran?.
The speculation that a military strike against Iran might be in the works is growing after the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article in which it also quotes reports in the German and Turkish media.
[PJM - Top Stories]
The post includes a valuable roundup of analysis from around the 'sphere. Follow the link to read it.
9:53:19 AM
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Project Shamrock.
Decades before 9/11, and the subsequent Bush order that directed the NSA to eavesdrop on every phone call, e-mail message, and who-knows-what-else going into or out of the United States, U.S. citizens included, they did the same thing with telegrams. It was called Project Shamrock, and anyone who thinks this is new legal and technological terrain should read up on that program.
Project SHAMROCK...was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. Operation Shamrock lasted well into the 1960s when computerized operations (HARVEST) made it possible to search for keywords rather than read through all communications.
Project SHAMROCK became so successful that in 1966 the NSA and CIA set up a front company in lower Manhattan (where the offices of the telegraph companies were located) under the codename LPMEDLEY. At the height of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages a month were printed and analyzed by NSA agents. In May 1975 however, congressional critics began to investigate and expose the program. As a result, NSA director Lew Allen terminated it. The testimony of both the representatives from the cable companies and of director Allen at the hearings prompted Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was "probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken."
If you want details, the best place is James Banford's books about the NSA: his 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace, and his 2001 book, Body of Secrets. This quote is from the latter book, page 440:
Among the reforms to come out of the Church Committee investigation was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which for the first time outlined what NSA was and was not permitted to do. The new statute outlawed wholesale, warrantless acquisition of raw telegrams such as had been provided under Shamrock. It also outlawed the arbitrary compilation of watch list containing the names of Americans. Under FISA, a secret federal court was set up, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In order for NSA to target an American citizen or a permanent resident alien--a "green card" holder--within the United States, a secret warrant must be obtained from the court. To get the warrant, NSA officials must show that the person they wish to target is either an agent of a foreign power or involved in espionage or terrorism.
A lot of people are trying to say that it's a different world today, and that eavesdropping on a massive scale is not covered under the FISA statute, because it just wasn't possible or anticipated back then. That's a lie. Project Shamrock began in the 1950s, and ran for about twenty years. It too had a massive program to eavesdrop on all international telegram communications, including communications to and from American citizens. It too was to counter a terrorist threat inside the United States. It too was secret, and illegal. It is exactly, by name, the sort of program that the FISA process was supposed to get under control.
Twenty years ago, Senator Frank Church warned of the dangers of letting the NSA get involved in domestic intelligence gathering. He said that the "potential to violate the privacy of Americans is unmatched by any other intelligence agency." If the resources of the NSA were ever used domestically, "no American would have any privacy left.... There would be no place to hide.... We must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is an abyss from which there is no return."
Bush's eavesdropping program was explicitly anticipated in 1978, and made illegal by FISA. There might not have been fax machines, or e-mail, or the Internet, but the NSA did the exact same thing with telegrams.
We can decide as a society that we need to revisit FISA. We can debate the relative merits of police-state surveillance tactics and counterterrorism. We can discuss the prohibitions against spying on American citizens without a warrant, crossing over that abyss that Church warned us about twenty years ago. But the president can't simply decide that the law doesn't apply to him.
This issue is not about terrorism. It's not about intelligence gathering. It's about the executive branch of the United States ignoring a law, passed by the legislative branch and signed by President Jimmy Carter: a law that directs the judicial branch to monitor eavesdropping on Americans in national security investigations.
It's not the spying, it's the illegality. [Schneier on Security]
9:35:07 AM
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the Implacable logic of DRM
When I posted my 5 short arguments against DRM:
- Computer Users: DRM turns your computer against you
- Computer Scientists: DRM will fail through emulation
- Corporations: DRM has to be undone to be used
- Lawyers: DRM makes machines judge, jury and executioner
- Media Companies: DRM destroys value
I got some responses that said these looked contradictory. In fact, the DRM industry seems to see the implications. The logic of point 2 — that a general purpose computer can emulate any digital, and many analog devices — for them means that outlawing general purpose computers makes sense, and that is what they are trying to do, thereby fulfilling points 1 and 4.
At the same time as they are demanding that law enforcement hand over our phone, email and web browsing histories to them, they are continuing to install hacking software on our computers.
This isn't even new behaviour - they tried to amend the USA PATRIOT act to let them hack people's computers with impunity.
Howevr, they do need to remember point 5. How much has the recall of their malevolent code-carrying CDs cost Sony so far this Christmas?
Technorati Tags: digital rights, DRM, music
[Epeus' epigone]
Further details in his post: Response to the UK Parliament's DRM Inquiry
9:09:01 AM
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The best downloads of 2005. Twenty fantastic free tunes that made our year, including songs from Dwight Yoakam, Animal Collective and M. Ward that you can't download anywhere else. [Salon]
8:51:03 AM
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Distorted Tunes Test. Ever wondered if you are tone-deaf? The Distorted Tunes Test can help you ascertain, by seeing if you can distinguish tunes that are played off-key from those rendered correctly. (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders) [Follow Me Here...]
8:49:35 AM
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Laura Secor understood Iran.
Having finally finished Laura Secor's wonderful piece in the New Yorker about Iran and the future of reform last night, I have to say, it was one the deepest and most insightful pieces by an American, I've ever read. She's really grasped the bigger picture and has done a great job in conveying it to her readers. This is where Western journalists usually fail. They provide great personal stories, but they don't go much beyond cliches, when it comes to bigger picture. (Read more by her) The funny thing is that the piece starts with the Moin supporters gathering in...
[Editor: Myself (English)]
8:49:07 AM
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Random links (yearend clearance dept.).
## The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: Peter Daou's cynical but depressingly accurate precis of how the Bush administration and its allies shrug off and spin away scandal after scandal. Peter predicts the current cycle of outrage over the government's flagrantly illegal domestic spying will pass like each previous cycle. He might well be right.
## David Edelstein says Munich is the best film of the year: "Today, saying our enemy is 'evil' is like saying a preventable tragedy is 'God's will': It's a way of letting ourselves off the hook for crimes committed in our name. Not incidentally, it's also a way for our enemies to let themselves off the hook." Guess I'll have to see it now!
## Doc Searls continues to advance the conversation on the "unbundling" of media (my small contribution, on the unbundling of the newspaper, was here):
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What will happen, I wondered, when Toyota does the math, realizes how inefficient local TV advertising is, and drops its dealer advertising co-op program? Is this not inevitable? Why don't we have better ways for sellers and buyers to inform each other? Terry puts the onus on advertisers, who are on the supply side; but why not equip demand to notify markets about what it desires? Why should I not be able to publish, selectively, and in a private yet usefully exposed way, that I would like to rent a 4+ bedroom house on Younameit Beach for the last week in April? Why should I have to go hunting among sellers for the same thing, ignoring all the promotional crap that goes with the seller-controlled nonconversation we call marketing? |
## Salon readers know Laura Miller as a co-founder of the site, our one-time books editor and longtime book critic, who has shone a bright and steady light in all her work. Years ago she recommended Philip Pullman's magnificent "His Dark Materials" trilogy to my wife and me, and they were the only books I can remember being able to finish -- indeed, being compelled to finish -- in the months of harrowing sleep deprivation I experienced during my twin sons' infancy. Now Laura has written a beautiful profile of Pullman for the New Yorker, "Far From Narnia" -- which his work truly is, in the best possible way.
Meanwhile, The Guardian also has an interesting profile of Ursula Le Guin, another great fantasist of our time. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]
8:47:25 AM
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Google Groups filtered in Iran.
I just realised that all discussion groups at Google Groups are filtered by the government of Iran. This is really frustrating, since I just managed to move email subscribers to my blog from another service to Google Groups. If they could use other domain or sub-domain names for Groups, it'd be an amazing solution. The problem now is that although they can receive email from Google Groups, they can't join it or confirm their invitations, since the process is done on groups.google.com, which is apparently filtered in Iran. Dear Google! We really need you help....
[Editor: Myself (English)]
8:44:35 AM
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Social Networks: Another Look.
Posted at Howard's request:
Human social networks as viewed through
other eyes.
[Smart Mobs]
The "other eyes" and summary (there's more detail on function, origin, duration, size, and so on there):
1. Machine's-Eye View: Human social networks cultivate a rich meat, metal and asphalt topsoil along the Earth's surface that promotes the gestation of digital life.
2. Corporation's-Eye View: Human social networks provide a food supply, a bloodstream, a nervous system and muscles needed by Earth's giant multinational corporations.
3. Meme's-Eye View: Human social networks constitute a habitable environment and a giant playground for memes.
8:39:39 AM
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Mike and Glenda Carmichael of Alexandria, Indiana have spent the past 28.5 years painting and repainting an ordinary baseball. The ball now weighs 1,700lbs, measures 119" around, and sports 19,100 coats of paint. 
