TIA Lives On
Shane Harris
A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.
It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget.
Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.
It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.
Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.
A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion."
Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program.
It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues. Sharkey didn't respond to an interview request, and Poindexter said he had no comment about former TIA programs. But a publicly available Defense Department document, detailing various "cooperative agreements and other transactions" conducted in fiscal 2004, shows that Basketball was fully funded at least until the end of that year (September 2004). The document shows that the system was being tested at a research center jointly run by ARDA and SAIC Corp., a major defense and intelligence contractor that is the sole owner of Hicks & Associates. The document describes Basketball as a "closed- loop, end-to-end prototype system for early warning and decision-making," exactly the same language used in contract documents for the TIA prototype system when it was awarded to Hicks in 2002. An SAIC spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Another key TIA project that moved to ARDA was Genoa II, which focused on building information technologies to help analysts and policy makers anticipate and pre- empt terrorist attacks. Genoa II was renamed Topsail when it moved to ARDA, intelligence sources confirmed. (The name continues the program's nautical nomenclature; "genoa" is a synonym for the headsail of a ship.)
As recently as October 2005, SAIC was awarded a $3.7 million contract under Topsail. According to a government-issued press release announcing the award, "The objective of Topsail is to develop decision-support aids for teams of intelligence analysts and policy personnel to assist in anticipating and pre-empting terrorist threats to U.S. interests." That language repeats almost verbatim the boilerplate descriptions of Genoa II contained in contract documents, Pentagon budget sheets, and speeches by the Genoa II program's former managers.
As early as February 2003, the Pentagon planned to use Genoa II technologies at the Army's Information Awareness Center at Fort Belvoir, Va., according to an unclassified Defense budget document. The awareness center was an early tester of various TIA tools, according to former employees. A 2003 Pentagon report to Congress shows that the Army center was part of an expansive network of intelligence agencies, including the NSA, that experimented with the tools. The center was also home to the Army's Able Danger program, which has come under scrutiny after some of its members said they used data-analysis tools to discover the name and photograph of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta more than a year before the attacks.
Devices developed under Genoa II's predecessor -- which Sharkey also managed when he worked for the Defense Department -- were used during the invasion of Afghanistan and as part of "the continuing war on terrorism," according to an unclassified Defense budget document. Today, however, the future of Topsail is in question. A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., which administers the program's contracts, said it's "in the process of being canceled due to lack of funds."
It is unclear when funding for Topsail was terminated. But earlier this month, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, one of TIA's strongest critics questioned whether intelligence officials knew that some of its programs had been moved to other agencies. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller whether it was "correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several ... projects were moved to various intelligence agencies.... I and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter's programs are going on somewhere else."
Negroponte and Mueller said they didn't know. But Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who until recently was director of the NSA, said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Asked for comment, Wyden's spokeswoman referred to his hearing statements.
The NSA is now at the center of a political firestorm over President Bush's program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don't show that their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn't discuss the matter, the TIA programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of "early-warning system" that the president said the NSA is running.
Documents detailing TIA, Genoa II, Basketball, and Topsail use the phrase "early-warning system" repeatedly to describe the programs' ultimate aims. In speeches, Poindexter has described TIA as an early-warning and decision-making system. He conceived of TIA in part because of frustration over the lack of such tools when he was national security chief for Reagan.
Tom Armour, the Genoa II program manager, declined to comment for this story. But in a previous interview, he said that ARDA -- which absorbed the TIA programs -- has pursued technologies that would be useful for analyzing large amounts of phone and e-mail traffic. "That's, in fact, what the interest is," Armour said. When TIA was still funded, its program managers and researchers had "good coordination" with their counterparts at ARDA and discussed their projects on a regular basis, Armour said. The former No. 2 official in Poindexter's office, Robert Popp, averred that the NSA didn't use TIA tools in domestic eavesdropping as part of his research. But asked whether the agency could have used the tools apart from TIA, Popp replied, "I can't speak to that." Asked to comment on TIA projects that moved to ARDA, Don Weber, an NSA spokesman said, "As I'm sure you understand, we can neither confirm nor deny actual or alleged projects or operational capabilities; therefore, we have no information to provide."
ARDA now is undergoing some changes of its own. The outfit is being taken out of the NSA, placed under the control of Negroponte's office, and given a new name. It will be called the "Disruptive Technology Office," a reference to a term of art describing any new invention that suddenly, and often dramatically, replaces established procedures. Officials with the intelligence director's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
http://nationaljournal.com/about/njw...06/0223nj1.htm
Senators Press For Details Of NSA Spying
Declan McCullagh
U.S. senators on Tuesday accused the Bush administration of "stonewalling" a congressional investigation into the legality of the National Security Agency's domestic spying.
Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary committee, said that the White House apparently believes that "there's no place for congressional or judicial oversight of any of its activities related to national security."
"They're running roughshod over the Constitution, and they're hiding behind inflammatory rhetoric" about the war on terror, Leahy said during a hearing that lasted almost three hours. Because of administration "stonewalling," Leahy added, the committee may have to resort to issuing subpoenas to obtain the information it wants.
The domestic spying program, which was publicly disclosed in December, involves using the NSA and perhaps other government agencies to eavesdrop on international phone calls and Internet activities of people within the United States. Such eavesdropping is done without the approval of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for this purpose.
Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, also expressed concern about the administration's reluctance to disclose even a broad outline of how the program works. The Justice Department sent a letter to Specter saying that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who reportedly expressed reservations at one point about the program's legality, should not be called to testify.
Specter is also readying legislation, called the National Security Surveillance Act, that would force the executive branch to revise its surveillance procedures to bring them under the scrutiny of a secret court created in 1978.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vigorously defended the program's legality during an earlier appearance on Feb. 6 before the Senate committee, but offered no new information about how it operates. Gonzales did offer more details during a classified briefing to a congressional intelligence committee on Feb. 8.
During Tuesday's hearing, former CIA Director James Woolsey claimed that FISA was outdated because of technological developments.
"The operation of Moore's Law has given us the Internet and disposable cell phones that terrorists have access to," said Woolsey, now a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, in reference to the idea that processor developments would steadily boost performance. "That was not remotely envisioned (by the drafters of FISA)."
Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he appreciated the testimony of the panel of witnesses, which included a lineup of law professors, but said their opinions about the law can't be that useful without more facts from the administration.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, on the other hand, said that during a time of war, Congress should be deferential to the White House. "When he makes an argument on constitutional grounds, we have to give him some slack," Hatch said about President Bush.
http://news.com.com/Senators+press+f...3-6044120.html
Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data
John Markoff
A small group of National Security Agency officials slipped into Silicon Valley on one of the agency's periodic technology shopping expeditions this month.
On the wish list, according to several venture capitalists who met with the officials, were an array of technologies that underlie the fierce debate over the Bush administration's anti-terrorist eavesdropping program: computerized systems that reveal connections between seemingly innocuous and unrelated pieces of information.
The tools they were looking for are new, but their application would fall under the well-established practice of data mining: using mathematical and statistical techniques to scan for hidden relationships in streams of digital data or large databases.
Supercomputer companies looking for commercial markets have used the practice for decades. Now intelligence agencies, hardly newcomers to data mining, are using new technologies to take the practice to another level.
But by fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance, high-tech data mining raises privacy concerns that are only beginning to be debated widely. That is because to find illicit activities it is necessary to turn loose software sentinels to examine all digital behavior whether it is innocent or not.
"The theory is that the automated tool that is conducting the search is not violating the law," said Mark D. Rasch, the former head of computer-crime investigations for the Justice Department and now the senior vice president of Solutionary, a computer security company. But "anytime a tool or a human is looking at the content of your communication, it invades your privacy."
When asked for comment about the meetings in Silicon Valley, Jane Hudgins, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, said, "We have no information to provide."
Data mining is already being used in a diverse array of commercial applications — whether by credit card companies detecting and stopping fraud as it happens, or by insurance companies that predict health risks. As a result, millions of Americans have become enmeshed in a vast and growing data web that is constantly being examined by a legion of Internet-era software snoops.
Technology industry executives and government officials said that the intelligence agency systems take such techniques further, applying software analysis tools now routinely used by law enforcement agencies to identify criminal activities and political terrorist organizations that would otherwise be missed by human eavesdroppers.
One such tool is Analyst's Notebook, a crime investigation "spreadsheet" and visualization tool developed by i2 Inc., a software firm based in McLean, Va.
The software, which ranges in price from as little as $3,000 for a sheriff's department to millions of dollars for a large government agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, allows investigators to organize and view telephone and financial transaction records. It was used in 2001 by Joyce Knowlton, an investigator at the Stillwater State Correctional Facility in Minnesota, to detect a prison drug-smuggling ring that ultimately implicated 30 offenders who were linked to Supreme White Power, a gang active in the prison.
Ms. Knowlton began her investigation by importing telephone call records into her software and was immediately led to a pattern of calls between prisoners and a recent parolee. She overlaid the calling data with records of prisoners' financial accounts, and based on patterns that emerged, she began monitoring phone calls of particular inmates. That led her to coded messages being exchanged in the calls that revealed that seemingly innocuous wood blocks were being used to smuggle drugs into the prison.
"Once we added the money and saw how it was flowing from addresses that were connected to phone numbers, it created a very clear picture of the smuggling ring," she said.
Privacy, of course, is hardly an expectation for prisoners. And credit card customers and insurance policyholders give up a certain amount of privacy to the issuers and carriers. It is the power of such software tools applied to broad, covert governmental uses that has led to the deepening controversy over data mining.
In the wake of 9/11, the potential for mining immense databases of digital information gave rise to a program called Total Information Awareness, developed by Adm. John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser, while he was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Although Congress abruptly canceled the program in October 2003, the legislation provided a specific exemption for "processing, analysis and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence."
At the time, Admiral Poindexter, who declined to be interviewed for this article because he said he had knowledge of current classified intelligence activities, argued that his program had achieved a tenfold increase in the speed of the searching databases for foreign threats.
While agreeing that data mining has a tremendous power for fighting a new kind of warfare, John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said that intelligence agencies had missed an opportunity by misapplying the technologies.
"In many respects, we're fighting the last intelligence war," Mr. Arquilla said. "We have not pursued data mining in the way we should."
Mr. Arquilla, who was a consultant on Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness project, said that the $40 billion spent each year by intelligence agencies had failed to exploit the power of data mining in correlating information readily available from public sources, like monitoring Internet chat rooms used by Al Qaeda. Instead, he said, the government has been investing huge sums in surveillance of phone calls of American citizens.
"Checking every phone call ever made is an example of old think," he said.
He was alluding to databases maintained at an AT&T data center in Kansas, which now contain electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls, going back decades. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group, has asserted in a lawsuit that the AT&T Daytona system, a giant storehouse of calling records and Internet message routing information, was the foundation of the N.S.A.'s effort to mine telephone records without a warrant.
An AT&T spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the claim, or generally on matters of national security or customer privacy.
But the mining of the databases in other law enforcement investigations is well established, with documented results. One application of the database technology, called Security Call Analysis and Monitoring Platform, or Scamp, offers access to about nine weeks of calling information. It currently handles about 70,000 queries a month from fraud and law enforcement investigators, according to AT&T documents.
A former AT&T official who had detailed knowledge of the call-record database said the Daytona system takes great care to make certain that anyone using the database — whether AT&T employee or law enforcement official with a subpoena — sees only information he or she is authorized to see, and that an audit trail keeps track of all users. Such information is frequently used to build models of suspects' social networks.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive corporate matters, said every telephone call generated a record: number called, time of call, duration of call, billing category and other details. While the database does not contain such billing data as names, addresses and credit card numbers, those records are in a linked database that can be tapped by authorized users.
New calls are entered into the database immediately after they end, the official said, adding, "I would characterize it as near real time."
According to a current AT&T employee, whose identity is being withheld to avoid jeopardizing his job, the mining of the AT&T databases had a notable success in helping investigators find the perpetrators of what was known as the Moldovan porn scam.
In 1997 a shadowy group in Moldova, a former Soviet republic, was tricking Internet users by enticing them to a pornography Web site that would download a piece of software that disconnected the computer user from his local telephone line and redialed a costly 900 number in Moldova.
While another long-distance carrier simply cut off the entire nation of Moldova from its network, AT&T and the Moldovan authorities were able to mine the database to track the culprits.
Much of the recent work on data mining has been aimed at even more sophisticated applications. The National Security Agency has invested billions in computerized tools for monitoring phone calls around the world — not only logging them, but also determining content — and more recently in trying to design digital vacuum cleaners to sweep up information from the Internet.
Last September, the N.S.A. was granted a patent for a technique that could be used to determine the physical location of an Internet address — another potential category of data to be mined. The technique, which exploits the tiny time delays in the transmission of Internet data, suggests the agency's interest in sophisticated surveillance tasks like trying to determine where a message sent from an Internet address in a cybercafe might have originated.
An earlier N.S.A. patent, in 1999, focused on a software solution for generating a list of topics from computer-generated text. Such a capacity hints at the ability to extract the content of telephone conversations automatically. That might permit the agency to mine millions of phone conversations and then select a handful for human inspection.
As the N.S.A. visit to the Silicon Valley venture capitalists this month indicates, the actual development of such technologies often comes from private companies.
In 2003, Virage, a Silicon Valley company, began supplying a voice transcription product that recognized and logged the text of television programming for government and commercial customers. Under perfect conditions, the system could be 95 percent accurate in capturing spoken text. Such technology has potential applications in monitoring phone conversations as well.
And several Silicon Valley executives say one side effect of the 2003 decision to cancel the Total Information Awareness project was that it killed funds for a research project at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox, exploring technologies that could protect privacy while permitting data mining.
The aim was to allow an intelligence analyst to conduct extensive data mining without getting access to identifying information about individuals. If the results suggested that, for instance, someone might be a terrorist, the intelligence agency could seek a court warrant authorizing it to penetrate the privacy technology and identify the person involved.
With Xerox funds, the Palo Alto researchers are continuing to explore the technology.
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/te...=1&oref=slogin
hey mr. spaceman
NASA 'Shoots' for Crime Investigators with New Technology
What do a NASA engineer and a detective have in common? The answer is a new NASA photographic laser device that helps look for damages on NASA’s Space Shuttle that can also be used to "shoot" more details in crime scenes.
Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Kennedy Space Center, Fla., developed the Laser Scaling and Measurement Device for Photographic Images (LSMDPI) to assist scientists who were unable to determine the exact scale of hailstorm damages to the Space Shuttle’s external tank by viewing photographs of the spacecraft on its launch pad.
The LSMDPI is a half-pound black box, powered by a single nickel-cadmium battery that attaches directly to a camera’s tripod mount. Twin lasers, an inch apart, shoot from the box, and add scale to photographs. In other words, the laser offers the ability for someone to look at these special photographs and have a better understanding of just how big or small objects really are. In the case of the Space Shuttle, engineers are now able to measure the distance from one part of the shuttle to a dent from a hailstorm.
Typically, when you use a camera to zoom in on an object, you lose track of the scale that informs you of an object’s actual size. When a picture is taken with the LSMDPI, the image loads into software designed by NASA electrical design engineer Kim Ballard. The user chooses a set of reference points such as a laser pattern of reference point dots that will appear along with the image of the target object. The user also inputs the distance between the reference points. The software then sets the scale based on that distance. This allows the viewer quantifiable perspective on the size of the object. The size of the object’s features can then be found and measured by using the computer software to mark the laser points.
“I think that the greatest contribution that the Laser Scaling Measurement software offers to law enforcement is it ‘un-cuffs’ the investigators hands with digital image evidence by facilitating fast and accurate measurement analysis of anything in a crime scene photo, not just the intended target,” said Ballard. “This aspect opens up the possibility for serendipitous evidence detection after the fact that may not have been obvious at the crime scene. For example, the software may be instrumental in attaining dimensions of articles or their proximity locations within a room that were not previously part of the investigation.”
As it is useful at NASA, the laser device is very helpful for law enforcement. Contractor Jeffrey Kohler of ASRC Aerospace, a company that supports NASA's Innovative Partnership Office, and his colleagues did an assessment to review the technology and how it could apply to potential commercial markets. “Forensics was at the top of the list,” said Kohler.
Not only can they use it to fully view photos of components from crime scenes such as blood-spatter patterns and graffiti, but can also see the images from different angles (including diagonally, horizontally and vertically) to better analyze and understand the scenes.
In fact, just recently, Ballard was asked by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to add more capabilities to the LSMDPI software to enable forensics experts to zoom in and out of the image to measure blood spatter details across a wall as well as specific areas. At the FBI’s request, NASA has also enabled compatibility of the image files with.tiff, .png, .gif, and .bmp files as add-ons to .jpg images.
Armor Holdings, Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., is a leading manufacturer of crime scene investigation accessories, including the new LSMDPI. They manufacture a variety of instruments used by industries that rely on technology to perform efficient and safe tasks. Through Armor, LSMDPI is not only benefiting crime scene investigations, but also photographers and surveillance personnel. It is also becoming increasingly popular in crime laboratories around the world. Following a recent request from Armor, NASA also included English/Metric units -- millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers -- to support European customers and aerial photography.
Today's crime investigations often rely on the device to scale evidence since its unique laser beams allow viewers to see image components much more clearly than traditional camera images. Similar technology is also useful in oil and chemical tank monitoring and aerial photography.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...echnology.html
Stealth Sharks To Patrol The High Seas
Susan Brown
IMAGINE getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour.
We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark's brain. Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.
That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys. These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis.
More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week.
Neural implants consist of a series of electrodes that are embedded into the animal's brain, which can then be used to stimulate various functional areas. Biologist Jelle Atema of Boston University and his students are using them to "steer" spiny dogfish in a tank via a phantom odour. As the dogfish swims about, the researchers beam a radio signal from a laptop to an antenna attached to the fish at one end and sticking up out of the water at the other. The electrodes then stimulate either the right or left of the olfactory centre, the area of the brain dedicated to smell. The fish flicks round to the corresponding side in response to the signal, as if it has caught a whiff of an interesting smell: the stronger the signal, the more sharply it turns.
The team is not the first to attempt to control animals in this way. John Chapin of the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn has used a similar tactic to guide rats through rubble piles (New Scientist, 25 September 2004, p 21). Chapin's implant stimulates a part of the brain that is wired to their whiskers, so the rats instinctively turn toward the tickled side to see what has brushed by. Chapin rewards that response by stimulating a pleasure centre in the rats' brains. Using this reward process, he has trained the rodents to pause for 10 seconds when they smell a target chemical such as RDX, a component of plastic explosives.
The New York Police Department is considering recruiting Chapin's rats to its disaster response team, where they could be used to detect bombs or even trapped people, and Chapin met them to discuss the possibility last month.
However, Chapin's "mind patch" only works in one direction: he can stimulate movement or reward an action, but he cannot directly measure what the rat smells, which is why he has to train them to reveal what they are sensing. DARPA's shark researchers, in contrast, want to use their implant to detect and decipher the different patterns of neural activity that indicate the animal has detected an ocean current, a scent or an electrical field. The implant sports a small pincushion of wires that sink into the brain to record activity from many neurons at once. The team plans to program a microprocessor to recognise which patterns of brain activity correlate with which scents.
Atema plans to use the implants to study how sharks track chemical trails. We know that sharks have an extremely acute sense of smell, but exactly how the animals deploy that sense in the wild has so far been a matter of conjecture. Neural implants could change all that. "You get much better information from a swimming shark than from an anaesthetised animal that is strapped down," says Atema. "It could open up a whole new window into how these animals interact with their world."
At the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Tim Tricas is using the implant to investigate what information scalloped hammerhead sharks glean from their electric field sensors. Gel-filled pores, scattered across a shark's head connect to nerve endings that make them sensitive to voltage gradients. Sharks can use these electroreceptors to spot the weak bioelectric fields around hidden prey, such as a flounder buried in sand.
For decades, marine biologists have suspected that sharks might also use these electroreceptors for navigation. Tiger and blue sharks can swim mile after mile in a straight line with no view of the ocean floor and only scattered, changing light coming from above. Some researchers suspect they maintain their heading by using the Earth's magnetic field.
When a conductor - in this case the shark - passes through a magnetic field, the interaction sets up a voltage across the conductor. The strength and orientation of that voltage depends on the conductor's angle to the magnetic field. If a shark could detect those changes, it could use its electrical receptors like a compass. The only way to test this, Tricas says, is to monitor electroreception in a freely swimming shark.
Other animal behaviour researchers are setting their subjects loose too. Jaideep Mavoori at the University of Washington in Seattle has developed a neural implant for monkeys that can monitor brain activity while the primates play. "We believe we are the first to record neural activity from a monkey doing a somersault," Mavoori says.
Mavoori's implant can also stimulate one part of the brain in response to activity in another, and has a microchip that can interpret the neural signals and send a message to another part of the brain or a muscle accordingly. He and his colleagues believe such an implant might ultimately help humans compensate for lost nerve function caused by injury or disease.
They have found that when a monkey is free to move around, sets of neurons controlling opposing muscle groups - those that extend and flex a joint - are both active throughout many movements. However, when a monkey is restrained in a chair and taught to extend its hand for a food reward, say, only the neurons that control the extensor muscles tend to be active.
Understanding this difference may be vital in creating a muscle-stimulating prosthesis to restore movement to a limb paralysed by nerve damage. For some loose movements, such as gently extending your arm in and out, sending signals to opposing muscles in turn works quite well. However, for movements that require some rigidity in the joint, such as inserting a book into a bookcase, you need to engage opposing muscles simultaneously. A successful neural prosthesis will need to mimic both patterns.
Meanwhile DARPA too plans to take its shark implants out of the laboratory. Project engineer Walter Gomes of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, says the team's next step will be to implant the device into blue sharks and release them into the ocean off the coast of Florida.
However, the radio signals used to direct the dogfish in the tank will not penetrate water, so the engineers plan to communicate with the sharks using sonar. According to Gomes, the navy already has acoustic signalling towers in the area that are suitable for relaying messages from a ship to a shark up to 300 kilometres away. The team has designed a sonar receiver shaped like a remora fish to minimise drag when attached to the animal.
The scientists will be particularly interested in the sharks' health during the tests. As wild predators, it is very easy to exhaust them, and this will place strict limits on how long the researchers can control their movements in any one session without harming them. Despite this limitation, though, remote controlled sharks do have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...25416.300.html
RSF Claims Yahoo Smoking Gun
Correspondents in Beijing
A GLOBAL media watchdog said court documents proved that Yahoo had collaborated with Chinese authorities in sending a second political dissident to jail.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) said a copy of the court verdict on Li Zhi showed Yahoo and Chinese internet company Sina supplied information to prosecutors.
Li, 35, was jailed for eight years in December 2003 on subversion charges for posting anti-government essays on the internet and contacting overseas branches of the outlawed China Democracy Party.
The verdict, issued by a court in Dazhou city in Sichuan province, was posted on the group's website.
Although the verdict listed Li's Yahoo account as evidence in the trial, it did not say specifically if any of the email sent through his account was used as evidence against him.
Yahoo first came under fire last year when it was revealed that internet records it handed over to police helped to convict another Chinese political activist, Shi Tao. He was jailed for 10 years for subversion.
Yahoo said it was unaware of the case of dissident Li Zhi when RSF first raised the issue early this month, while dismissing what it said were mischaracterisations of its past practices in China.
Officials in Yahoo's Beijing office could not be reached for comment on the latest allegations.
Li used to work in Dazhou city's finance department but was arrested in August 2003 after posting an essay on an overseas website accusing Sichuan officials of corruption.
In the essay, he made references to China's Minister of Public Security, who recently served as communist party secretary for the Sichuan province.
Other major US internet and tech firms, such as Google, Microsoft and Cisco, have also been criticised for complying with or aiding in China's censorship efforts.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html
Mr. Williams, calling Mr. Sherwin-Williams!
Slapping on a coat of silence
Company Says Its High-Tech Paint Will Block Cell Phone Calls
Jon Van
The intrusion of cellular phone rings into theaters, schools and nearly every other nook and cranny of modern life may soon hit a wall.
Playing to the backlash against ubiquitous communication, a company called NaturalNano is developing a special high-tech paint that relies on the wizardry of nanotechnology to create a system that locks out unwanted cell phone signals on demand.
The paint represents a dream to those who seek a distraction-free movie or concert experience, and a nightmare to those who compulsively monitor their BlackBerry phones.
It is also another breakthrough application of nanotechnology, the emerging science of harnessing sub-microscopic organisms for everyday uses, like stain- resistant pants and transparent sunblock. The National Science Foundation has predicted that nanotechnology eventually will be a trillion-dollar industry.
"You could use this in a concert hall, allowing cell phones to work before the concert and during breaks, but shutting them down during the performance," said Michael Riedlinger, president of NaturalNano of Rochester, N.Y.
His firm has found a way to use nanotechnology to blend particles of copper into paint that can be brushed onto walls and effectively deflect radio signals.
The copper is inserted into nanotubes, which are ultra-tiny tubes that occur naturally in halloysite clay mined in Utah. The nanotubes are about 20,000 times thinner than a piece of paper, too small to be seen with even a conventional microscope. At this size, which is near the molecular scale, materials have different physical properties than they normally do.
By filling these tubes with nano-particles of copper, the company can create a medium to suspend the signal-blocking metal throughout a can of paint without significantly changing the way the paint adheres to a surface.
NaturalNano will combine this signal-blocking paint scheme with a radio-filtering device that collects phone signals from outside a shielded space, allowing certain transmissions to proceed while blocking others.
Wireless chill
Even the thought of such a thing upsets the wireless phone industry.
"We oppose any kind of blocking technology," said Joe Farren, spokesman for The Wireless Association, the leading cell phone trade group. "What about the young parents whose baby-sitter is trying to call them, or the brain surgeon who needs notification of emergency surgery? These calls need to get through."
Farren said that any scheme to selectively block calls is illegal.
But Robert Crowley of AMBIT Corp., which designed the radio filtering device for NaturalNano, said the system is legal. The nanotech-augmented paint that blocks signals is a passive device, not an illegal radio jammer, he said.
The radio filter would allow all emergency radio communications to pass through the shield, Crowley said. With all other signals, like cell phones, the filter would act like a spigot to block or allow them to pass through—say, only during intermission.
"There'd be no limitation of public service radio access," he said.
Crowley said there's a lot of pent-up demand for people to have more control of the radio space in their own buildings. His Ashland, Mass.-based firm, which develops equipment to enhance cell phone reception inside moving vehicles, often hears from such people.
"Our No. 1 request comes from churches," he said. "Pastors want a way to stop cell phones ringing in church and people taking calls during worship services."
Schools seek control
School administrators would also want to keep students from taking cell phone calls or sending text messages to one another during class, he said.
Most schools ban cell phone use in class, but administrators would like more control over wireless traffic.
Bill Smith, director of instructional support services for Sioux Falls, S.D., schools said his district is interested in NaturalNano's signal-blocking paint because administrators are worried about what would happen in the event of an emergency in a school.
"During a crisis, students using cell phones would overwhelm the system, making it impossible for administrators to use cell phones to call authorities," Smith said. "I don't know if there's a way to manage that."
Smith said students are allowed to have phones in their backpacks or lockers, but if they use a phone during class, the device is confiscated and their parents are called.
"That works pretty well," Smith said. "Whether we'd want to install a system to add further control would really depend on how much it cost. We run a pretty austere system."
Jamming illegal
Even though they're illegal, jamming devices that emit radio signals to prevent cell phones from working are widely available, said Tim Kridel, a wireless industry analyst.
"You can find plenty of jammers on the Internet that are shipped from other countries," said Kridel. "But using them risks getting into trouble with the Federal Communications Commission."
Farren, the wireless industry spokesman, said that jamming doesn't seem to be a major problem.
"But it's hard to detect," he said. "Nothing shows up on your phone that says 'Your signal's being jammed.'"
Based on phone inquiries and Web site visits, AMBIT's Crowley said many people apparently want a legal way to control wireless bad behavior.
"We tell pastors they can't be bashful about asking their congregation to turn off their phones, because there's nothing else available," he said. "The system NaturalNano proposes would be a cost-effective alternative."
But even though cell phones can be a nuisance, not all pastors seek a technical solution.
"I've had them go off during a service, although it's rare," said Tom Allen, pastor of the Bible Fellowship Church in Yardley, Pa., and an associate professor at Philadelphia Biblical University in Langhorne, Pa. "I use humor or just ignore it. Obviously, the person is embarrassed. One ring reminds everybody else to check their phones.
"I've never heard that it happened twice in one service."
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...news-headlines
Patriot Act E-Mail Searches Apply to Non-Terrorists, Judges Say
Josh Gerstein
Two federal judges in Florida have upheld the authority of individual courts to use the Patriot Act to order searches anywhere in the country for e-mails and computer data in all types of criminal investigations, overruling a magistrate who found that Congress limited such expanded jurisdiction to cases involving terrorism.
The disagreement among the jurists about the scope of their powers simmered for more than two years before coming to light in an opinion unsealed earlier this month. The resolution, which underscored the government's broad legal authority to intercept electronic communications, comes as debate is raging over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program and the duties of Internet providers to protect personal data.
A magistrate judge in Orlando, James Glazebrook, first questioned the so-called nationwide-search provision in 2003, after investigators in a child pornography probe asked him to issue a search warrant requiring a "legitimate" California-based Web site to identify all users who accessed certain "password-protected" photos posted on the site. The Web provider was not named in public court records.
Magistrate Glazebrook said that in passing the Patriot Act, formally known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, Congress made clear its focus was on terrorism. He said there was nothing in the language Congress adopted in the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that suggested the nationwide-search provision should apply to garden variety federal cases.
"The statutory language is clear and unambiguous in limiting district court authority to issue out-of-district warrants to investigations of terrorism, and that language controls this court's interpretation. The government has shown no legislative intent to the contrary," the magistrate wrote. He also noted that many of the examples given during legislative debate involved terrorism. The then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, described the nationwide- search language as applying in terrorism cases, the court noted.
Magistrate Glazebrook denied the search warrant, but it was recently disclosed that the government appealed to a federal judge, G. Kendall Sharp, who granted it without explanation.
The scenario played out again late last year, after prosecutors presented Magistrate Glazebrook with an application for a search warrant directed to a Sunnyvale, Calif.- based Web portal, Yahoo. The government asked that Yahoo produce web pages, documents, and usage logs pertaining to two e-mail addresses and a Web site allegedly linked to an Orlando man, Earl Beach, under investigation for involvement in child pornography. Magistrate Glazebrook allowed searches of Mr. Beach's home and computers, but again rejected prosecutors' request to acquire data located across the country. "Congress has not authorized this court to seize out-of-district property except in cases of domestic or international terrorism," the magistrate handwrote on the application.
Again, prosecutors appealed. Judge Gregory Presnell took up the question and concluded that "it seems" Congress did intend to authorize nationwide search warrants in all cases, not just ones pertaining to terrorism. However, the judge acknowledged that the language Congress used was far from clear. "The court rejects the assertions made by both the United States here and the magistrate judge... that the statutory language is unambiguous. Although the court ultimately comes to a determination regarding the meaning of this language, by no means is it clearly, unambiguously or precisely written," Judge Presnell wrote.
The chief federal defender in Orlando, R. Fletcher Peacock, said the dispute was a straightforward one pitting literal interpretation against legislative intent. "Judge Presnell was more willing to go behind the language of the statute and look at the statutory intent, and clearly Judge Glazebrook was not," the attorney said.
One of the most striking aspects of the dispute is that there appears to be no other published court ruling addressing the nationwide-search provision, known as Section 220. The magistrate involved cited no cases directly on the point and neither did the government.
An attorney with a group that pushes for online privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said yesterday that the lack of published cases on the subject reflects the fact that search warrant applications are presented outside the presence of defense lawyers, often before a defendant even knows he is under investigation. "It's fairly typical that search warrants for electronic evidence would be kept under seal," the privacy advocate, Kevin Bankston, said. "In most cases, they wouldn't be reported."
Mr. Bankston said there is no question that the Justice Department wanted the Patriot Act to include nationwide-search authority for all crimes, but whether lawmakers accomplished that task is another question. "I don't know that Congress knew what it was voting on," he said.
Civil libertarians have objected to the nationwide-search provision on the grounds that it allows prosecutors the discretion to pick judicial districts where judges are seen as more friendly to the government. Critics of the Patriot Act have also warned that allowing search warrants to be filed from across the country will discourage Internet service providers from fighting such requests even when they may be unwarranted.
"The only person in a position to assert your rights is the ISP and if it's in their local court, they are more likely to challenge it if it is bad or somehow deficient," Mr. Bankston said.
A spokesman for the prosecutors did not return a call seeking comment for this story. However, the Justice Department has said the nationwide-search provision was "vital" to its investigation of the gruesome murder in 2004 of a pregnant Missouri woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, whose unborn child was cut from her womb with a kitchen knife. Investigators claim that they used the Patriot Act authority to quickly obtain email evidence from an Internet provider across state lines in Kansas. That data led them to a woman who later confessed to the attack, Lisa Montgomery.
In his ruling, Judge Presnell did not mention that episode, but suggested it was simpler for the courts and prosecutors to issue all warrants in a case from one place.
"As a matter of judicial and prosecutorial efficiency, it is practical to permit the federal district court for the district where the federal crime allegedly occurred to oversee both the prosecution and the investigation (including the issuance of warrants) thereof," he wrote. The government has also complained that the former procedure caused court backlogs and delays in jurisdictions, like northern California, that are home to many Internet companies.
It is unclear whether any charges resulted from the 2003 investigation, but the suspect involved in the disputed 2005 search, Mr. Beach, was indicted earlier this month on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty. A trial is set for April.
Magistrate Glazebrook said in a brief interview yesterday that he could not discuss the specific cases that prompted the legal disagreement over the Patriot Act, but that he expects the question to arise again. "It is certainly something that will come up," he said. "There are a lot of interesting issues surrounding that."
http://www.nysun.com/article/28232
Press Release
Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT - Section 220:
"Nationwide Service of Search Warrants for Electronic Evidence"
How Section 220 Changed the Law
Before PATRIOT, the FBI could execute a search warrant for electronic evidence only within the geographic jurisdiction of the court that issued the warrant - for example, the FBI couldn't get a New York court to issue a warrant for email messages stored by your ISP in California.
After PATRIOT, courts can issue warrants for electronic evidence -- your email messages, your voice mail messages and the electronic records detailing your web-surfing -- anywhere in the country. Notably, Section 220 isn't reserved for terrorism-related investigations, despite the fact that PATRIOT was sold to the American public as a necessary anti-terrorism measure. Instead, it applies in any kind of criminal investigation whatsoever.
Why Section 220 Should Sunset
Section 220 significantly increases the chances that search warrants that fail to meet Constitutional standards will be used to search and seize your electronic communications:
Section 220 allows the FBI to pick and choose which courts it can ask for a search warrant. This means it can "shop" for judges that have demonstrated a strong bias toward law enforcement with regard to search warrants, using only those judges least likely to say no -- even if the warrant doesn't satisfy the strict requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
By allowing courts to issue warrants to be served on communications providers in far-away states, Section 220 reduces the likelihood that your ISP or phone company will try to protect your privacy by challenging the warrant in court, even if the warrant is clearly unconstitutional. A small San Francisco ISP served with such a warrant is unlikely to have the resources to appear before the New York court that issued it. Yet because you won't be notified if the FBI uses a warrant to get your electronic communications, your ISP is the only entity in a position to fight for your rights.
The FBI argues that having to secure search warrants from more than one court during an investigation is a waste of time. But local judicial oversight is a key check against unreasonable searches. Further, the FBI already has the ability to conduct emergency searches without a warrant when it doesn't have time to go to a local judge.
Even worse, Section 220 isn't necessary even to help combat terrorism -- PATRIOT section 219 already allows nationwide search warrants in terrorism-related investigations. In fact, the only practical result of Section 220 is less paperwork for the FBI -- at the expense of your Constitutional rights.
Conclusion
Section 220 threatens your Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. EFF strongly opposes its renewal, and we urge you to oppose it, too. We also support the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE Act, S 1709/HR 3352) and encourage you to visit EFF's Action Center today to let your representatives know you support the bill.
http://www.eff.org/patriot/sunset/220.php
NYT Sues Pentagon Over Domestic Spying
The New York Times sued the U.S. Defense Department on Monday demanding that it hand over documents about the National Security Agency's domestic spying program.
The Times wants a list of documents including all internal memos and e-mails about the program of monitoring phone calls without court approval. It also seeks the names of the people or groups identified by it.
The Times in December broke the story that the NSA had begun intercepting domestic communications believed linked to al Qaeda following the September 11 attacks. That provoked renewed criticism of the way U.S. President George W. Bush is handling his declared war on terrorism.
Bush called the disclosure of the program to the Times a "shameful act" and the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into who leaked it.
The Times had requested the documents in December under the Freedom of Information Act but sued upon being unsatisfied with the Pentagon's response that the request was "being processed as quickly as possible," according to the six-page suit filed at federal court in New York.
David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, acknowledged that the list of documents sought was lengthy but that the Pentagon failed to assert there were "unusual circumstances," a provision of the law that would grant the Pentagon extra time to respond.
The Defense Department, which was sued as the parent agency of the NSA, did not immediately respond to the suit.
McCraw said there was "no connection" between the Justice Department probe and the Times' lawsuit.
"This is an important story that our reporters are continuing to pursue and of the ways to do that is through the Freedom of Information Act," McCraw said.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires the federal government to obtain warrants from a secret federal court for surveillance operations inside the United States.
But the Bush administration says the president as commander in chief of the armed forces has the authority to carry out the intercepts and that Congress also gave him the authority upon approving the use of force in response to the September 11 attacks.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060227/...nsa_nytimes_dc
Prof can’t hack it says critic
An Assignment From Professor Packetslinger of the School of Loose Screws
Deborah Hale
Update #1
We have received an overwhelming number of emails as a result of this diary. This is to clarify a couple of things. Yes this professor could have set up its own system for the students to use, yes they could have been instructed that they were to get permission from the owners of the systems first, yes they could have done any number of things to make this a valuable, worthwhile learning experience. That was not done unfortunately.
We have also received several emails asking us to release the name of the institution that this refers to. We won't do that as we were asked not to in the diary. It is our policy at the ISC to provide confidentiality when requested. That is what allows us to cover such controversial subjects as we do. Yes what is being done by this Institution of Higher Education is incorrect. We are pursuing a satisfactory resolution to this as best we can. We also have not and will not publish the entire document.
John Bambenek one of our handlers that works at University of Illinois had this to say on the subject:
It's high time that the principles of academic freedom stop providing shields for felonious conduct or eventually the people and the government will take it away all together.
We also have received a number of emails suggesting that we have a legal obligation to report this. We are aware that this maybe a possibility. We will assure all of our readers that we will indeed do what is right. We may not talk about what we did but we will do our best to make sure that this type of activity does not continue to go on. We truly want the Internet to be a safe place for all to work and play.
Hopefully this will answer some of the questions and concerns that are arising from this article.
Update #2
We have received indications there has been a partial callback of the assignment. We're inviting the professor to contact us directly for any statement and/or clarification he might want to offer.
If he does contact us with a statement we will update the diary again. Again thanks to all who did contact us concerning this. Both the good and the bad. We have responded to as many as we could (of course not to the ones that gave us phony email addresses). We at the ISC appreciate the participation of everyone, whether you agree with us or not. We learn a lot from the pro's and the con's and enjoy the interaction.
Update #3
Since this article is now referenced directly just a note there is a follow up diary on how to setup such assignments in a responsible manner.
Furthermore the amount of feedabck we get will mean that we're unlikely to individually answer unless you are a bit exceptional in remark or are the professor himself. Please no more "portscanning is not illegal" and assumptions the assignment was portscanning only, we've seen those remarks by now a few times.
But again, we'd love to have a chat with the professor himself.
We received an email today from a concerned colleague at one of the state colleges in the US. We promised the colleague that we would not reveal name or school so I won't. It is tempting, but I won't. This is an actual assignment. I am not making this up, this IS the real thing.
So here is the story of the assignment from Professor Packetslinger. In a Computer Security class in the Winter of 2006 (which by the way is next year if I remember correctly) the students have been given an assignment. The assignment is worth 15% of the final grade for the class. (So refusing to do the assignment very well could drop a student from an A to a B or worse in the blink of an eye).
The "TASK"
Student is to perform a remote security evaluation of one or more computer systems. The evaluation should be conducted over the Internet, using tools available in the public domain.
You got it. This is verbatim. Professor Packetslinger wants the students to conduct illegal activity involving port scanning and vulnerability scanning. He wants them to write an evaluation of what they find: what ports are open and what service could be running on them, Host names and IP addresses, OS, version, last update, patch status, what shares are available, what kind of network traffic and what vulnerabilities they see.
Hmm – seems to me that Professor Packetslinger wants the students to do all of the background work for him.
Ok so now what must the students submit in writing to Professor Packetslinger?
Let's see what he wants:
What the student must submit
The note to the students:
In conducting this work, you should imagine yourself to be a security contracted by the owner of the computer system(s) to perform a security evaluation.
(This tells me that Professor Packetslinger is well aware of the laws and the fact that doing this without express permission and authorization IS against the law in most countries and municipalities. The same laws that the students are being asked to violate).
The student must provide a written report which has the following sections: Executive summary, description of tools and techniques used, dates and times of investigations [AKA break ins, our words], examples of data collected, evaluation data, overall evaluation of the system(s) including vulnerabilities.
Can you believe it? Amazing, simply amazing. One important thing Professor Packetslinger failed to request:
Dates of student's incarceration so that they can be excused from class and not counted absent.
Ok, so the concerned colleague who contacted us about Professor Packetslinger and his assignment went on to explain:
"We've barked this one up our own tree of management. Word came down this morning that no direct action will be taken against the professor, but if we catch any students doing these scans against our computers we will not be exempting them from our existing procedure. Specifically, disabling their student account and referring them to the Student Dean of Corrections."
In other words, we won't discipline Professor Packetslinger, we won't stop the assignment from going forward. As long as the students don't scan our computers, it is ok. If they scan our computers they will be reprimanded and lose their privileges on campus.
This is incredible; this University is encouraging illegal activity. They are encouraging students to do something that is, in the words of fellow Handler Adrien:
Illegal, unethical, immoral.
How about just plain stupid and ignorant.
And handler Swa had this to say:
Doing it is illegal in many parts of the world. But using authority to have somebody else do something illegal is in some places on this world even worse than the act itself and any decent prosecutor should chop the prof in fine pieces over this.
Actually inciting somebody to do something illegal (even if the act isn't performed) might be a case on its own. Now if he fails a student over this, they might have no more reason not to put down an official complaint for being asked to perform illegal acts.
First thing to do: recall the assignment; tell the students they should not even consider it. Next (public) apologies from the professor are the least. But at the _very_ least don't let him near kids anymore, as an educator he's a miserable failure.
This from our resident comedian Tom:
Spamming for Fun and Profit.
It is hard for me as a security professional to understand the logic of Professor Packetslinger. I have relatives in the fair city in which this prestigious state university resides. I am going to ask them to keep an eye on the local paper and shoot me off articles about the arrests. And I definitely will not recommend this school to my friends and relatives. My sympathy goes out to the students that will be forced into completing this assignment. My sympathy to their families, especially those who are caught and charged with computer crimes. I just hope that the dear professor gets to experience the full impact of his illegal, unethical and immoral acts and he too gets to spend some time behind bars.
How about the school?
As fellow Handler Lorna put it
Wonder how the school would feel about a law suit launched against THEM because of this assignment!
The school is allowing this assignment to go forward. They are as guilty of this crime as the professor and the students. They too need to pay the price and a lawsuit against them would be a small price to pay.
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1155
Indiana State adds ThinkPad to List Of Essential School Supplies
Indiana State University has selected the Lenovo ThinkPad as its preferred computer for students and faculty as the university moves toward becoming a notebook institution.
Developed by IBM, the ThinkPad is now manufactured and marketed by Lenovo, the world’s third-largest personal computing company after its acquisition of IBM’s personal computer business in 2005.
ISU will become the first public university in the state to require all students to have notebook computers, beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2007.
The university is one of a handful of institutions nationally, including the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Clemson University, to institute similar mobile computing initiatives.
“When we announced the Notebook Initiative last September, we pledged that our students would receive high quality, business-grade laptops worthy of the investment they and their parents are making in an ISU education,” said C. Jack Maynard, ISU provost and vice president for academic affairs. “The selection of the Lenovo ThinkPad fulfills that pledge.”
ISU chose Lenovo because of its superior service and support, the quality of ThinkPad notebooks and the advanced wireless capabilities of the PCs.
ThinkPads help simplify the network connectivity process through ThinkVantage Access Connections 4.1, which helps mobile users set up and automatically switch from one available network connection to the next.
Through Access Connections, students and faculty will be able to seamlessly move from classes to dorm rooms and wired to wireless environments.
The widespread use of laptop technology will leverage the power of mobile computing to provide campuswide access through the university’s extensive wireless network, said Susan Powers, professor of curriculum, instruction and media technology and chairwoman of ISU’s notebook implementation committee.
“The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU,” Powers said.
For more information, see
www.lenovo.com.
http://www.tribstar.com/features/loc...yword=topstory
P2P Can Help The Music Industry
Adam Dylewski
The music business is in need of a radical shake-up. While the Recording Industry Association of America goes around suing their own customers, the music corporations they represent continue to grossly under use peer-to-peer file-sharing, online social networks like MySpace and the Internet, in general, as a new mode of distribution and marketing.
Music sales are down, but it’s not illegal file sharing that’s hurting the “Big Four”—EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group—the most. According to “Music’s Brighter Future” in The Economist, “an internal study done by one of the majors [showed that] between two- thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in the United States had nothing to do with Internet piracy.”
The rest seems to stem from other underlying problems with the music biz—less retail space, competition from other media, the rising cost of CDs and, above all, the quality of the music itself. So what’s a multi-national music corporation to do?
First off, turn to Big Champagne for marketing advice. BC started off by analyzing the same P2P networks that cost the Big Four an absurd amount of legal fees, but soon after started tracking online music sales, streamed songs and videos and more traditional mediums for music distribution.
The hearty digital soup that results from this diverse collection of meta-data can find “whether listeners have found a hit before radio” and give the music industry a better measure of an artists’ success, according to “The Chumbawamba Factor,” an article by Chris Dahlen at the online music critique hub Pitchfork Media.
Dahlen wrote that modern music dominates the hits on download charts, but exceptions can arise—last August, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” broke into the iTunes top 25 when “Family Guy” and “Laguna Beach” both used the song.
The Big Four should heed this phenomenon and peddle their back catalogs the same way they market their new music—there is an enormous audience of music fans out there, both young and old, that don’t pay much attention to releases after 1990.
Where did this audience come from? My guess is they got fed up with modern music outlets. Music execs need to realize that MTV and the thousands of Clear Channel-owned stations out there aren’t the tastemakers they used to be.
While a lot of these disgruntled consumers run to classic rock and oldies radio for their musical fix, many indie music fans turn to
www.pitchfork.com and
www.metacritic.com to find new artists. While I don’t always agree with Pitchfork’s snarky and overwrought reviews, a lot of the time these guys get it right, to the benefit of fledgling artists and music fans everywhere.
The “Pitchfork” effect can be seen in the success of bands like the “Arcade Fire” and “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.” The latter, then-unsigned group became an overnight Internet sensation after their self-titled record got a 9.0 on Pitchfork. Thousands downloaded the album and, after a few months of online acclaim, sold over 40,000 records—all without a record deal.
If the major labels took a closer look at MySpace profiles and Pitchfork, they could get nearer to the hearts and minds of file-traders... as well as their wallets.
Still, the music industry would have to do a whole lot more to regain their lost audience. In 2004, the mobile ringtone industry grew to one-tenth of the size of the music business. The Big Four have made inroads towards this market through Motorola’s new iTunes-ready phones, but this is only the first step.
The inevitable success of a wireless-enabled iPod that could access iTunes has huge implications for the music industry. Instead of grappling with Steve Jobs about the prices of songs on iTunes, the Big Four needs to strengthen this partnership to stay afloat in the future.
And while Big Champagne’s data mining is already informative, it cannot track BitTorrent downloads. According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent downloads account for 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet. As it stands, Big Champagne is missing a huge chunk of downloaders in its statistics.
All of this will take time, of course, but when iTunes sold its billionth song last week, it heralded a future shift in the music industries’ business model and the de-stigmatization of downloading music. Like the New Pornographers—a Pitchfork favorite—sang, “It was crime at the time / but the laws, we changed `em.”
Adam Dylewski is a junior majoring in genetics and life science communications. His iTunes top 10 is composed solely of Journey songs—he never stopped believing.
http://www.dailycardinal.com/article...toryid=1029026
Throw another right on the barbie
Copyright Makes Web A Turn-Off
Simon Hayes
SCHOOLS have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website.
Teachers said students in rural areas would bear the brunt of cuts if the Copyright Agency was successful in adding internet browsing charges to the $31 million in photocopying fees it rakes in from schools.
The agency calculates the total due by randomly sampling schools each year for materials they copy, and extrapolating the results.
The battle between the schools and the agency will go to the Federal Court over its attempts to make schools pay for asking students to use the web.
Negotiations between the Ministerial Council on Education Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, representing the schools, and the agency have broken down over plans to change the scheme to include a question in the survey on whether teachers direct students to use the internet.
"If it turned out we'd have to pay them, we'd turn the internet off in schools," the council's national copyright director Delia Browne said.
"We couldn't afford it; it would not be sustainable. How on earth are we going to deliver education in the 21st century? How are taxpayers going to afford this."
The move has teachers up in arms, with some warning "ludicrous" charges for using websites would increase the gap between haves and have-nots.
"Kids in rural areas, particularly, depend on websites," said Sui-Linn White, creative and performing arts head teacher at a Sydney school.
"There's a whole section of the NSW Art Gallery website aimed at education, and teachers in rural areas depend on sites like that."
The Copyright Tribunal held three days of hearings on the issue in September 2005, but it is now expected the matter will be heard in the Federal Court later this year.
Agency chief executive Michael Fraser said schools paid only $10 per student per year for photocopying.
"For less than the cost of maintaining the grounds, emptying the garbage bins and managing the tuckshop you can access all the material you want and make photocopies," he said.
"It would be tragic if schools had to shut down the internet, we don't want that. "What they pay will be for the tribunal to determine."
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15318,00.html
New Solution Cuts Escalating Cost of Bandwidth for ISPs by up to 70 Percent
Press Release
“Peer-to-Peer (P2P) traffic consumes up to 70 percent of Internet bandwidth and promises to increase as the entertainment industry embraces P2P for distribution, the popularity of VoIP and personal audio and video players grows, and its use for business and government communication increases,” says Robert Mayer, CEO, PeerApp, which developed new technology that enables Internet Service Providers to cut bandwidth costs and increase network efficiency.
Newton, MA (PRWEB) February 28, 2006 -- PeerApp, today, launched UltraBand 2000™, a new Clustering Bandwidth solution that cuts the Internet Service Providers’ cost of providing bandwidth for P2P traffic by up to 70 percent.
UltraBand 2000™ enables Internet Service Providers (ISP) to significantly reduce bandwidth lease charges and better serve all subscribers, including those who share information using P2P technology. The extra network capacity enables ISPs to offer new services and attract additional subscribers.
PeerApp introduced and tested its product worldwide, especially where demand is growing and bandwidth is more limited and far more costly. The huge customer base of ISPs in the US, such as Verizon, Comcast and AOL, plus the volume of traffic on US networks make PeerApp’s technology vital for North American ISPs.
Recognizing growth potential, Pilot House, Cedar Fund and Evergreen Venture Partners have funded development and marketing of PeerApp’s technology.
Pressures on ISPs to provide more bandwidth is expected to increase with the motion picture industry looking to the P2P infrastructure for distribution of home entertainment, the growing popularity of iPod and other personal audio and video players, as well as increasing use by government and business of P2P applications. Adoption of Voice over Internet Protocols (VoIP) and IPTV will further increase bandwidth demand here and internationally.
The Technology. To increase bandwidth capacity and improve network efficiency, UltraBand 2000™ separates P2P communication from the rest of Internet traffic and caches the P2P traffic locally. With the PeerApp (
www.peerapp.com) Protocol Based Bandwidth Solution in place, P2P traffic is cached on scalable Dell blade servers using EMC SAN storage technology.
The PeerApp solution manages millions of concurrent connections, supports all major P2P file-transfer protocols and resides in a centralized location to expedite maintenance.
“By deploying UltraBand 2000,™ ISPs gain control over their bandwidth costs, are able to manage peak and seasonal P2P traffic, and will be prepared for future P2P traffic growth. The PeerApp solution is transparent to the subscriber and maintains quality of experience for all ISP users -- both P2P and non-P2P," says Robert Mayer, CEO of PeerApp, in announcing the worldwide launch of UltraBand 2000™.
During testing over the past year, UltraBand 2000 ™ was able to reduce the overall bandwidth cost by over 50% for leading ISPs around the world. ISPs can expect a return on investment measured in months and the added benefit of gaining control over future P2P bandwidth costs by markedly reducing the need to lease additional capacity at market rates.
Contact PeerApp
381 Elliott Street, #140-L, Newton, MA 02464, tel 617-795-0977
About PeerApp
PeerApp is the leader in providing Protocol Based Bandwidth Solutions. PeerApp develops and services technologies and products to help ISPs enhance network efficiency, reduce bandwidth cost and enhance subscribers’ quality of experience and service. PeerApp products and solutions are suitable for all ISPs providing broadband, DSL or cable service. They are designed to allow ISPs to manage their networks in compliance with applicable laws. For further information about PeerApp, its products, technology, and services, visit PeerApp at
www.peerapp.com.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2006/2/emw352639.htm
Japanese Data at ASDF and GSDF Also Leaked Onto Internet
Ground Self-Defense Force and Air Self-Defense Force data stored on privately owned computers have leaked onto the Internet via peer-to-peer file- sharing software following a similar case at the Maritime Self-Defense Force last week, Defense Agency sources said Thursday.
But no confidential information was among the leaked GSDF and ASDF data, the sources said.
Investigations show that the GSDF files included members' address lists and drill plans and those from the ASDF included a mock air base construction plan to be used for training.
The computers were apparently infected with a virus that causes information disclosure from an infected machine using the file-sharing software Winny, the sources said.
The GSDF, ASDF and MSDF are currently checking to see if there have been more leaks, the sources said.
Last Friday, the Defense Agency instructed all its officials and SDF members to delete all peer-to-peer file-sharing software and work-related confidential data stored on private computers to prevent leaks.
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-data-...01/1422503.htm
New Technologies, New Anxieties
The tools that are making your users’ lives easier—USB thumb drives, DVD burners, peer-to-peer file-sharing tools—are making your lives harder. Here’s how to ease the strain.
Christopher Lindquist
Internal data theft. The problem was bad enough 10 years ago, when remote connections to your office were limited by modem speeds, and the most anyone was going to take was a couple of floppies or a briefcase-load of printouts. It could be damaging, sure, but it was mostly petty theft—the equivalent of a stolen lipstick dropped in a handbag.
But the same modern technologies that have made your users’ lives more convenient and entertaining—USB thumb drives, portable media players, DVD burners, peer-to-peer file-sharing tools—have also created a situation where something no bigger than a lipstick might just contain gigabytes of your corporate data.
Worse, such tools can make data thieves out of even well-intentioned users with goals no more insidious than getting out of the office early enough to pick up their kids from school. Where these unwitting burglars once might have tried to sneak a single file onto a floppy to work on later at home, now it can be just as easy to download an entire directory to a thumb drive or to open an assortment of files to remote synchronisation using an inexpensive online service such as BeInSync.com.
Unfortunately, traditional security tools are often completely ineffective against these new threats. And locking down USB ports with Windows Group Policy or by tweaking PC BIOS settings is kludgy at best—if not downright unmanageable for large, dispersed corporations.
A recent CIO-conducted poll of more than 200 IT professionals showed that 62 percent were at least very worried about the loss of critical data via USB drives and other portable devices—outpacing concern over e-mail by 12 percent. And 48 percent of respondents expressed significant concern about data loss through Web-based services such as online backup and remote access tools.
It’s easy to understand the fear. Every day new devices and services appear, forcing IT managers to play a never-ending game of catch-up.
So what are you going to do?
Here’s an escalating plan for securing your company’s data.
Take a Stand
There is no magic bullet for the problems these latest threats present to your data. Policies, procedures and technology must work together to create a proper balance of security and convenience. “I think these measures—technical or otherwise—need to be part of a healthy balanced diet,” says Andrew Jaquith, Senior Analyst for security solutions and services at Yankee Group. “The pendulum can’t swing so far that you’re hampering productivity.”
Jaquith gives the example of a financial services firm he knows that went so far as to actually solder shut the USB ports on a number of its workstations in order to safeguard critical financial information. But, he cautions, that approach would be unreasonably restrictive for many companies.
Instead, a good place to start is with simple, well-defined and well-distributed policies regarding the use of removable mass storage devices, service providers and peer-to-peer software. The goal is to guarantee that no one on your staff can truthfully say that they didn’t know they shouldn’t attach their MP3 player, PDA or other device to their PC, or that signing up for that remote access service wasn’t a serious mistake. Publicising your policy should make people think twice about doing these things in the first place, and it also will provide a firmer footing for disciplinary action later on, should that become necessary.
Fabi Gower, IT director at medical staffing and recruitment company Martin Fletcher, is a firm believer in policy. She oversees two days of IT orientation training during the 30-day training period for all new employees at the company, and she makes it crystal clear what is and what isn’t OK. And that policy is pretty simple: If the company didn’t give it to you, it’s not allowed.
“I’m very proactive when it comes to my network,” Gower says. “It’s my baby.”
John Loyd, Director of Information Technology for engineering consultant Patton, Harris, Rust and Associates (PHR&A), also makes sure that company policies—no webmail, no webpages unrelated to the business during business hours, no software installed by anyone but IT— are made clear on the company intranet and to new employees during orientation. (He depends on an honour system for compliance and concedes “mixed success.”)
But in an effort to bring security home for PHR&A users, Lloyd’s department sends out regular e-mails concerning various security issues, pointing users to additional resources, and even giving advice on protecting their home PCs. And, he notes, the bulletins have a side benefit. “It makes our IT department look knowledgeable and competent.” To further boost the “we’re here to help” image, Lloyd purchased a number of inexpensive PC antivirus licenses from Symantec and gives them out for free to employees for use at home.
Keep Your Eyes Open
Having and communicating a security policy isn’t enough. Some kind of monitoring is the next step. But monitoring doesn’t necessarily have to mean buying new software. Eric Ahlm, Vice President of emerging technologies at security consultant Vigilar, says monitoring can be as simple as having IT personnel make a visual audit of what types of devices people are using, especially at smaller companies. “It doesn’t have to be a big huge thing,” Ahlm says. “Just walk around the premises and see how widespread personal devices are.”
Even if you do decide to invest in tools, you shouldn’t feel obligated to go for full lockdown from the get-go. Simply monitoring—and letting users know you’re monitoring—might be sufficient. “Monitor rather than block is the best policy,” says Yankee’s Jaquith, noting a personal experience with a former employer who didn’t block employee Web browsing, but who made it very clear that they were logging it—and that they would review those logs regularly. Even then, some employees wandered to sites that violated company policy. But, Jaquith says, “it only takes a couple publicised examples [of people being caught] to put the fear into users and get them to straighten up and fly right.”
Block If You Must
If policy and monitoring don’t seem sufficient to address the threat, next come tools for restricting access. For Gower, the equation was simple: Martin Fletcher’s value is contained in its database of job-seeking health-care professionals; anything that could expose that database to theft or loss would be unacceptable. Coming to the company six years ago, Gower quickly recognised that personal mass storage devices and other tools—including locally attached USB printers—could present a serious threat. So she began looking for a solution.
It wasn’t easy. After two years of examining Windows Group Policy hacks and PC BIOS settings and even mulling over the “epoxy the ports shut” option, Gower finally found her solution with SecureWave’s Sanctuary Device Control, a remotely managed tool that shuts off USB and FireWire ports, disc drives of all types, Bluetooth connections and more. IT can then selectively activate devices as needed—even to the point of letting individual users have time-limited access to specific ports on an ad hoc basis. “We have a couple of VPs and maybe our COO who have USB printers,” Gower says. “I can allow each of these people USB printer access.”
PHR&A’s Loyd—also a SecureWave customer—notes that implementing the company’s product can take a few months (largely from building the whitelist of allowable activities and having to scan every executable file to determine which are permitted). But, he says, the result is a much safer, more controlled environment.
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Addressing current problems is also a good first step toward dealing with upcoming issues. For instance, recently released USB drives based on the U3 standard allow users not only to transfer data in a frighteningly efficient manner but also to carry USB-stored applications and desktop settings. A user simply pops a U3 driver into an available port, and the applications automatically install—regardless of whether the user has administrator privileges.
While the drive is installed, users can copy files, run U3 compatible applications (for a list of such apps, visit software.u3.com and take advantage of all their customised Windows settings, such as Web bookmarks. When they remove the drive, all traces of its presence vanish. But tools that can block USB ports (and sometimes other types of connections, such as FireWire and Bluetooth)—including SecureWave’s Device Control, SmartLine’s DeviceLock, Ardence’s Port Blocker, Reflex Magnetics’ DiskNet Pro, Safend’s Protector and myriad others— can prevent U3 and other device usage.
Unfortunately, no product provides a complete solution for the latest security problems. Port blockers can sometimes be defeated by using bootable CD- or DVD-ROMs (or the latest geeky toy—bootable USB drives), giving dedicated attackers free access to local hard drives. Modifying and password-protecting the BIOS on every machine to support hard-drive-only booting solves that problem, but only at the price of tedious configuration processes—especially if you have thousands of machines with which to deal.
And there seems to be no all-encompassing solution coming down the road anytime soon to such end-user-induced threats. Attempts at enterprisewide digital rights management, for instance, are in their infancy. For his part, Yankee’s Jaquith says that they’re also in the world of fantasy. “I don’t think we’ll ever get to a place where we can track every piece of data we create,” he says. Instead, companies might want to take a cue from the open-source world and services such as photo-posting site Flickr, which allows users to apply simple tags to their photos, such as “San Francisco” or “wedding,” making it easy to locate and control access to various pictures. “That kind of semantic tagging is a lot flatter and simpler and easier to use,” he says. “That’s where we really need to be. Label it as product plans. Strategy. Pricing.” And then use those tags as keys to which you can attach security policies.
Jaquith also points to security vendor Verdasys as having an interesting alternative solution. Rather than blocking connections, Verdasys tools begin monitoring when something happens that’s worth watching. For instance, noticing when a spreadsheet is attached to an e-mail message. According to the company, the Verdasys software can simply log such events for later review. It can also block the attachment. But a third option provides the opportunity for some social engineering; the software can pop up a message window warning users about the hazards of attaching spreadsheets to e-mail, but still allow the user to do so if he types a reason into a text field explaining why he needs to do it.
“Just warning people is enough to get them to stop doing what they’re doing,” says Dan Geer, Vice President and Chief Scientist at Verdasys and a widely acknowledged security expert. “Nine times out of 10, people are doing things against policy because they forget policy,” Geer says. And tools such as those from Verdasys act as very potent reminders.
“The best proving ground for this is the sales guy,” says Jaquith. “[Think about] Joey the sales manager. How frustrated would he be if you put some of these measures in place?” If your answer is “extremely frustrated,” Jaquith says, you’re probably better off finding a different solution or combination of solutions. “Monitoring and blocking mixed with some good old-fashioned human deterrents is the right way to do this.”
http://cio-asia.com/ShowPage.aspx?pa...d=5&issueid=83
HDClone Free Edition 3.1.8
Webcopy
HDClone Free Edition enables you to move the content from an entire hard drive to another, larger one. The program installs itself on a bootable floppy or CD, and include it`s own operating system, so it runs completely independent from Windows. Once HDClone has created the bootable floppy or CD for you, you can use it to boot your computer and copy the drive content to the new (installed) drive, using a graphical interface. The free version is perfectly suitable to upgrade your existing drive to a larger one. It supports IDE/ATA/SATA hard disks and is able to copy up to 300 MB/min. The software does not recognize a USB mouse or keyboard (after boot), so you need to connect a non-USB mouse and keyboard to operate the copy interface.
http://www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.php?id=109804
TVNZB: Under New Management
Drew Wilson
TVNZB, a website known for hosting NZB files for Usenet users to find their favourite TV shows has sold their domain to a new management. The pressure against NZB websites after news circulated that the MPAA made unprecedented movements against such websites.
TVNZB was a website that specialised in NZB files that pointed to TV shows on Usenet. NZB acts similar in nature to a .torrent file on a BitTorrent network only UseNet doesn't require a tracker like BitTorrent does.
Unlike BitTorrent, the NZB websites seemed immune to pursuit by the MPAA. An idea that was shattered when reports came of NZB sites being recipients of cease and desist orders.
Although TVNZB were not included as targets in the round of lawsuits, the MPAA press release was enough to shake the TVNZB administration. Jon of TVNZB decided to pull the plug on his free NZB service. Users noticed yesterday that all they could see was the following in the message:
"tvnzb is for sale."
Expanding on this surprising message, Slyck.com caught up with "Jon", administrator of TVNZB.com. "Yes [the news report] was mainly the cause," Jon told Slyck.com. "We did not receive any lawsuit or notification, but, quite simply, it just wouldn't be worth the trouble to move the server offshore we don't have the resources to deal with any type of lawsuit.
"It was fun while it lasted, but as many of your readers are no doubt aware; this is the nature of internet filesharing. It evolves and changes. I am accepting offers for the site, maybe someone else will want to pickup where I left off."
It didn't seem to take long before someone decided to take the TVNZB torch. Jon later updated Slyck, "There is a buyer and we are in the process of transferring the site over. It should be done in a week max."
The main website was then changed to, "TvNZB has been sold! The new owner should commence operations in a few days, so check back!"
What the new management plans on doing with the domain is anyone’s guess. However, the speed of the handover suggests that there is enthusiasm to continue where Jon left off. With this enthusiasm that new management brings, this may herald a brighter future for the site.
http://slyck.com/news.php?story=1109
That’s all she wrote
STATEMENT OF CONCLUSION
Many are now aware that the MPAA have filed a lawsuit against us regards the indexing parts of the site. We have expressed and believe that these sections are not illegal and have tried to work with the MPAA to a satisfactory resolve. The MPAA however have failed to respond to our requests and we feel we must act on this situation ourselves.
DVDRS has been evolving for sometime and has been steadily moving away from its initial purpose. Indexing Usenet is still a part of the site granted, but we are now far more than that with in depth articles on DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W, DVD+R DL, DVDRAM, BLU-RAY and HD DVD media, software and hardware technology We also have a healthy movie, game and hardware review section as well as active news. Our forums are also more about technology than Usenet.
To this end we feel its time to drop reference to Usenet entirely. We understand that this may be seen as defeat or guilt by some parties but we feel its more about compliance and adaptivity. If a governing body feel that what we do is illegal we wish no part of it and will show willingness to comply by removing areas that may be in dispute. This isn't about acceptance of guilt, this is about removing anything that people deem offensive.
DVDRS will reach its final evolvement and we hope you understand why and where we are heading. We also understand that DVDRS will always be seen, in light of recent press, as a site that dealt in illegal file sharing. We feel there is no way we can recover from this and thus will re-launch Talk DVD with some of DVDRS database and ideas. This decision has not come easy for us and it pains us to do so.
We understand many members will not appreciate these changes and all we can do is apologize. As a site we must evolve and hope you can likewise do so. If you do not wish to be a part of these new changes we hope you will vote with your feet and not your negative opinions. What we do now is for the good of the site and any negativity will only result in instant removal. Any site that wishes to slam or slander us may do so willingly, we will not fire any shots back and quite frankly are not interested in your adverse opinions.
I have to confess that the site has caused my family a huge amount of stress over the last year. We have had many issues to deal with and the recent lawsuit is the final action that has decided our course.
“I am a family man and this is not a business, i cannot take the fight to anyone without fear of risk. Money has changed hands but remember i have always invested this back into the site. If you feel i have got rich from these dealings i feel for you, however many will see that this simply wasn't the case. Granted some will not be happy about that but at the end of the day this is a hobbyist site and one i enjoy working with. Talk DVD will feature the same morals and goals as DVDRS and we will re-invent and invest a huge amount of time in sections there to make us a fun, friendly place to be.
We will move the site to that location, streamline the member base to active membership and hopefully develop as time permits. We hope that you see our actions as the only recourse and that we feel passionately enough about what we do to try and evolve.”
The site will be closed for restructure. All reference to Usenet will be removed, the logo adapted (its a long time coming anyway) and NZB indexing sections dropped.
We will prune our membership database and remove any inactive member who have not logged the site for 6 months. Members who are still active and wish to be removed after this time will be allowed to submit a request for their account to be terminated.
Site supporters will still have all benefits of their donations minus the NZB section and Usenet reviews. We will not issue any refunds under the grounds of our TOS and no funds to do so :-
(a) Payment Obligation and PayPal® Authorization.
There shall be no Refunds, except in demonstrated cases of payment fraud or under the terms agreed to when purchasing a product or service as agreed to during the payment process.
(b) Termination of Your Subscription
DVDRS may also, in its sole discretion, at any time discontinue providing the Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice. You agree that any termination of your access to the Service under any provision of this Agreement may be effected without prior notice, and acknowledge and agree that DVDRS may immediately deactivate or delete your account and/or bar any further access to the Service. Further, you agree that DVDRS shall not be liable to you or any third-party for any termination of your access to the Service.
(c) NZB Section Access
Access to the DVDRS NZB section is considered to be a Site Supporters Club membership free benefit and is not a condition or entitlement of the membership fees. You acknowledge that DVDRS, in its sole discretion, may terminate your access to the NZB section for any reason, including, without limitation, if DVDRS believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of this Agreement or any DVDRS Terms of Service or User Agreements.
All site supporter funds have been used for that, to support the site. There is no funds to issue our members refunds, if there had been, we would willingly give them.
Danish speaking sections will be removed. We understand that we have a large population of Danish speaking members and encourage them to stay as part of the active membership base but they will, unfortunately, need to speak English from now on. This is not for racialist reasons but so we can better effectively moderate our forums.
We will be moved to shared hosting as the services of a dedicated server will no longer be required.
We understand that these changes will bring some negativity and expect the worse. However we also feel that its this or close the site entirely and we have worked far too long and hard for this to happen.
Since the PR press release broke we have been seen as an organized pirate network and this is unacceptable. In the first day of the press release we had 100 new members sign up looking for pirated movies. This has continued everyday since and we will not allow DVDRS to be used this way. We have not, will not and never shall host illegal files here. To this end we tried to control the situation with locking out both site supporters and new registrations.
We feel our actions are justified to keep the site free from such problems in the future.
These decisions are not open for debate and have been thought over long and hard. We still voice we have done nothing wrong but feel that the stress of the last few days has not been worth it. We hope that the MPAA can finally see that we are willing to work alongside them to resolve any disputes they may have on anything we do and hope they will next time contact us directly before they decide on a course of action.
D9 at binnews has expressed his dismay at our actions but understands them. We feel we are far more than an indexing site and although what we have done is not illegal, feel its not worth risk for us to pursue. However D9 has expressed he will continue the fight and would welcome your support on these matters. We wish him well.
If, after we move, restructure and remodel, negativity becomes the main voice on the site, we will be forced to close. We hope it doesn't come to that and hope each and every member understands our need to evolve. If you still have a passion for DVD in any form (be it games, movies, or technology) we hope you'll become an active member.
We wish to thank every active member and hope you can see our actions as just.
Thank you
Descds
http://www.dvdrs.net/
Senate Bill to Address Fears of Blocked Access to Net
Ken Belson
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, will introduce new legislation today that would prohibit Internet network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring some content providers over others.
The bill is meant to ease growing fears that open Internet access may be blocked or compromised by the Bell phone carriers and cable operators, which may create tiers of service for delivering content to consumers, much the way the post office charges more for overnight mail delivery than for regular delivery.
Consumer groups and Internet companies like Google and Amazon contend that any move by the network operators to levy fees for premium delivery service would harm Web sites that are unwilling to pay for faster delivery.
The Wyden legislation, called the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, aims to prohibit network operators from assessing charges that give some content providers better access than others or blocking its subscribers from accessing content.
"You best compete by letting every company play on a level field, but these proposals would tilt the field," Senator Wyden said of the plans discussed by some network operators. "The Net has been about access and equal treatment and giving everyone a fair shake, and people who own these fat pipes, these cable and telecommunications people who say that they can't keep doing this, want to undermine that."
He added that his bill would prevent network operators from giving preferential treatment to affiliated companies. Time Warner Cable, he said, should not be able to give other Time Warner companies better access to the network than their rivals.
The bill more squarely confronts the concerns of consumer groups than a broader bill proposed last summer by Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, which would prevent Internet service providers from blocking access, but would largely leave network operators to manage their own networks, including potentially charging content providers for a premium service.
That bill has won support from 16 Republican senators.
The Federal Communications Commission has largely stood on the sidelines as this debate as evolved. Though the commission has said it supports the principle of open, undifferentiated access to the networks, it has not taken any regulatory action.
"One reason I'm hesitant to have the commission jump in is because we don't want to impede companies' ability to invest," said Kevin Martin, the commission chairman.
Phone and cable companies largely agree that they should have the right to offer Internet companies the option of paying for faster delivery of their content. They argue that since traffic over their networks is rising, companies may want to pay to ensure that their Web sites can be accessed quickly by consumers.
Executives at Verizon, for instance, want to give companies a chance to buy a dedicated link to Verizon's customers so that their data would be set apart from general traffic on the network.
But consumer groups say that creating a "fast lane" for those who can pay would ultimately result in a series of "walled" networks run by the phone and cable companies, which is very different from the open Internet model that exists now.
"We're concerned that even if you have a robust basic Internet and higher-speed lane, they will only make it available to their favorite partners, and that's discrimination," said Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that focuses on telecommunications and intellectual property issues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/te.../02online.html
iTunes, One Billion Suckers Served
Thomas hawk
ABC News: iTunes: One Billion Served Crank up the old PR and spin machine. Apple today announced their one billionth iTunes download today. The song? Speed of Sound by Coldplay.
"Over one billion songs have now been legally purchased and downloaded around the globe, representing a major force against music piracy and the future of music distribution as we move from CDs to the Internet," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Personally I've never bought an iTune and I don't own an iPod. I think Apple's DRM is awful and represents a major step back for us all. I think those that are investing in iTune digital libraries are suckers. You are basically betting that Apple's proprietary DRM laced format will be the standard for the rest of your life. You are paying too much for your music and tying yourself to only Apple products going forward. More innovative ways to play your music may indeed come in the future but unless they are marketed by Apple you will not likely be able to use these devices with your iTunes files due to Apple's tight proprietary control.
Personally I want nothing to do with it. I still collect my digital music the old fashioned way, I rip it straight from CDs to crystal clear high bit rate DRM free mp3s. These files of course can be played on any device and represent better value in my opinion for today's consumer.
What happens when the killer phone is finally here? You know the one, built in terabyte of storage, lightening fast file transfer speeds, full satellite radio, a breathalyzer, your car and house key, a tiny little thing the size of credit card with a 12 mega pixel camera on it (hey it's the future right, we can dream). What happens when this phone is out and you really want it and unfortunately Apple didn't make it? That's right, you're a sucker then aren't you. I thought so. You paid all that good money for your iTunes and now you can't put them on your new phone because your new phone threatens Apple's dominance. So who owns the music anyway? You or them? They do. You bought nothing. You bought the right to play their song on their product. It might work today. But I'm not about to bet that this will be the format du jour 10 years from now.
Of course the record labels won't care about you being screwed because they'll be happy to just have you buy your same music all over again. Just like you did when you bought it on LP, then cassette, then CD then from iTunes. Why charge you once when they can keep charging you over and over and over again?
And if you think Apple will be opening up their proprietary format anytime soon, think again. Apple makes virtually nothing on their iTunes downloads, after paying the labels, marketing costs, bandwidth costs, etc. they make peanuts. They make a *ton* of money on the other hand on selling iPods. This was the genius deal between Steve Jobs and the hacks over at the record labels who are just as big of suckers as you are and basically have done nothing but cannibalize existing more lucrative CD sales. They were short sighted and never thought to try to get a piece of the hardware sale and now they are yammering on about raising iTunes prices on you because they are bitter dogs over the screwing that Jobs gave them. Jobs of course is quick to turn around and call them greedy hacks, but can anyone here say "pot" "black".
They will do everything they can to protect this market including screwing over you the customer who mistakenly thought you bought a song from them.
Above and beyond all though this has done absolutely zero to stop online digital music piracy despite Jobs' central point in Apple's spin release this morning.
Just look at the latest P2P numbers from BigChampagne, and I'm not even going to get into BitTorrent which makes the numbers BigChampagne tracks look tiny. And this does not even begin to scratch all of the other ways that music is being traded. Let me ask you a question. Can you rip your friends CD on your PC? Yeah I guess you can. Can you rip your brother's CD on your PC? Yep this works too. Can you copy your entire digital music library of 100,000 mp3s and give a copy to your brother on Seagate 500 gig drive? Theoretically it's possible right? What about sneakernet? Again, theoretically. Would it be possible to send that same hard drive via the U.S. mail to your new friend that you met last month on your My Space account? And would it be considered sharing if he sent it back to you in the mail full of his own 70 or 80 thousand favorite tunes. Welcome to the darknet ladies and gentlemen.
And what if you are just dying to get the latest CD from that hot new band. Again, theoretically, would it be possible to go down to Amoeba records, buy it for $14, take it home and rip it, then return it within 7 days to get 75% credit back? What's that like $3.50 for the new CD? And with 12 songs that's like what 29 cents a track? Hmmm... would I rather have a crystal clear high bit rate mp3 track for 29 cents or a sure to be antiquated DRM bloated track from iTunes for 99 cents?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating piracy here, per se. But the way I see it, if Apple is going to go to war with me the consumer to lock up my music and keep it off my innovative new devices of the future, then this doesn't really represent a valid step forward away from piracy at all.
It will also be interesting to hear what Xeni Jardin has to say about the billionth download later tonight. I can't tell if she was on World News Tonight Last night or will be on next Thursday. I'll try to find out.
Also for more on the iTunes saga be sure and check out downhill battle's great site on the subject.
And..... let the Appleheaded fan boys flame comments begin.....5, 4, 3, 2, 1… now.
http://thomashawk.com/2006/02/itunes...ved.html#links
Until next week,
-
js.
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February 4th
Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.
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