Subject: Echelon story goes mainstream: 60 Minutes this Sunday
[see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm]
   Date:         Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:22:41 -0500
   From:        JBJ

[I've been remiss in sharing the abundant news forwarded to me so this may be bit long (as well as long in the tooth).  Importantly, the Echelon story is going mainstream, a Fed president questions the need for central banks (but who would give us great ideas like the "carry tax" on cash?), and the fight for civil asset forfeiture reform heats up.  Enjoy! JBJ]

Are central banks obsolete?
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n1/monetaryconf.html

TO:      Interested persons
FROM:    Coalition to reform the federal forfeiture laws
DATE:    Tuesday, February 22, 2000
SUBJECT: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to vote on forfeiture bill!
  Please distribute this memo widely. Ask your family and friends to
     visit http://www.forfeiture.org as soon as possible. Thanks!

We have just learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on forfeiture reform legislation (S. 1931) on Thursday, February 24.  Key U.S. senators are currently negotiating with the U.S. Department of Justice to see if the bill can be amended to address the Justice Department's concerns. (This is important because, ultimately, President Clinton will consult with the Justice Department when deciding whether to sign or veto the bill.)  If these negotiations are still underway as of Thursday morning, then the committee vote will likely be postponed until Thursday, March 2.  If we are able to get a majority vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, then it is very likely that the full U.S. Senate will also pass the bill. (A forfeiture reform bill already passed the U.S. House in June.)

As you may know, current law allows federal agents to take your property without convicting you of -- or even charging you with -- a crime. In 85% of federal asset forfeiture cases, the owner of the property is never charged with a crime, yet government officials can -- and usually do -- keep the seized property for their own use.  This is nothing short of "legal theft"!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

several forwards from Freematt's list:

    From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>

Echelon  [see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm] will get a segment on 60 Minutes, February 27,  this coming Sunday, according to Margaret Newsham, an ex-employee of Lockheed Martin, who worked at NSA's Menwith Hill Station and trained agency personnel, and who testified in a secret congressional hearing in the 80s. She'll be a main player in the segment. A capsule of her visit to Menwith Hill and a 60 Minutes crew:

     http://cryptome.org/menwith-mn60.htm

 And Bo Elkjaer's Danish interview of Newsham:

     http://cryptome.org/echelon-baby.htm

----------------------------------
[Note from Matthew Gaylor:  Nearly every security expert I know won't use Windows on their personal machines (I don't).  Everyone is aware of the security issues that arise with Microsoft and it is common knowledge that many intelligence workers have cover jobs with various corporations.  But I don't place complete confidence in the French either. Kenn Cukier formally of Communications Week International and now the International Editor at Red Herring had this interesting paper on France's spy network.

    http://www.cfp99.org/program/papers/cukier.htm

"France reportedly has developed its own "Frenchelon" -- a worldwide network of spy satellites and listening stations that systematically eavesdrop on communications in the United States and elsewhere.  Monitoring stations are said to exist in French Guiana, in the city of Domme in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, in New Caledonia, and in the United Arab Emirates. The information gleaned is reportedly used for both political and commercial ends.  Additionally, some speculate that the French project may mark the first step in a pan-European effort to counterbalance the U.S.'s global spying capabilities. Germany is said to partially fund France's initiative in return for access to the information it collects."]
Sent with permission of John Young

    From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
 

Subject: Microsoft Funded/Founded by NSA?

A French intelligence report alleges that Microsoft was set up with NSA funding and that NSA imposed MS-DOS on IBM, and also alleges that NSA agents are now working at Microsoft:

    http://cryptome.org/nsa-ms-spy.htm

The full confidential report has not been published and these allegations are made by an intelligence newsletter which claims to have seen it. The Age, an Australian newspaper, has reported on the topic today -- that account leads the file above.

The NSA MS key revelation appears in the reports, and may have prompted the intelligence investigation and speculation, along with the April 1999 report for Europarl, due to be considered by EuroParl in a week, which also warns of Microsoft's and Intel's possible cooperation with US intelligence to use Wintel as a spying tool.

Still, we had not before seen an allegation that NSA was in on the gitgo with Microsoft and that DOS had been forced upon IBM. Is that old news or new, or merely a French counterattack on Echelon-like espionage [see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm]?
 

------------------------------

    From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Subject: Re: MS Funded/Founded by NSA?

Very well, your rebuttal would be an informative addition to the file, if you don't object.

To pick up on a couple of your points:

There should be a sustained burst of activity from Europe on the Echelon affair as EuroParl deliberates on it, guided by the four 1999 Echelon reports prepared by its technological research department, STOA [see the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm]. The one most recently featured for its allegations about Wintel is, "Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information (an appraisal of technologies of political control):"

    http://cryptome.org/stoa-r3-5.htm

The Cukier CFP99 report Matthew cited presents a useful summary of Echelon-like activities by nations other than the US.

Wayne Madsen is quoted today in Canada's National Post that the EU hearings are a joke. That all nations spy on each other and only a fool thinks otherwise:

    http://www.nationalpost.com/news.asp?s2=worlds3=observer&f=000219/210021.html

And Wayne Madsen wrote yesterday of Net intrusions and attacks by the USG, with the probability that it carried out the US "hacker attacks:"

    http://cryptome.org/madsen-hmhd.htm

Which of these charges and countercharges and dismissals are conventional bread and butter propaganda and which are new revelations, that may never be known for certain.

Would that San Diegian be the gent who bragged of snagging Mitnick?
-----

On the recent denial-of-service Internet attacks, Tim May wrote:

It's probably a boullaibaise (sp?) of paranoid conspiracy theory, journalistic sensationalism, piling on, French nationalism, and a desire to distract attention away from French industrial espionage. (Recall the confirmed report that Air France was bugging commercial travellers.)

PC-DOS was so primitive in 1980, when IBM's Boca Raton division--itself a backwater, led by Phil "Don" Estridge--that it is inconceivable that it had any "spying" hooks built in. I mean, come on!  Besides which, it was written initially by Tim Patterson, of Seattle Computer, and only bought hastily by MS when it looked like they would get the IBM contract. (So the French paranoids would claim that Tim Patterson was operating his little company in Seattle with the intent of selling his spy software to MS. Get real.)

PC-DOS, later MS-DOS, was also small enough in those days that nearly every function could be analyzed in detail, and the code could be dissected.

Ditto for the chips. I worked for Intel during that period when this supposed NSA "Operation Wintel" was being developed, and I can assure you that the chips of the day had no particular features of interest to the NSA, save for some of the well-known bit twiddling instructions which might otherwise have been. (But a lot less well-suited than it could have been.)

Most compellingly, until fairly recently the Net was primarily run off of Sun and similar computers...we all know that, of course. Sniffers on Sun networks would have been more interesting (and there's anecdotal evidence that a certain San Diegan developed precisely those tools for the NSA).

Arghh..where to continue? Consider that at least several other manufacturers of Intel-compatible chips exist. AMD, obviously. But also Cyrix/National/Via, and Texas Instruments, and IBM. Did all of them design in the "special NSA sections"? Without any of them talking?

(And these are only the recent deals. In the past, Matra/Harris, a French-affiliated company, was a producer. Ditto for a bunch of others, American, European, and Asian. All of them in on the conspiracy?)  As a paranoid theory, it's not even interesting.

--Tim May
 

---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon"             | black markets, collapse of governments.

[Note from Matthew Gaylor:  Tim May asked that I include his comments if I fowarded his rebuttal:  "...but tell them I won't respond to any e-mail. (I hate it when my words show up on some list and I get a bunch of questions from East Bumfuck, Nebraska asking what I "meant."  People on other lists don't have context for my comments.) And tell them if they crosspost to me, I'll reply with 500 messages for each of theirs." -- Tim May]
--------------------------------------
From: "judith loring" <jloring@cybernet1.com>
To: "Matthew Gaylor" <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Re: Policing the Internet
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:43:49 -0700

Dear List:
I'm not at all convinced that the DDOS attack was by hackers, etc.. Here's another take on what the DDOD really might have been about.  I found this link:  http://cryptome.org/madsen-hmhd.htm  which included, in part, the following:  This radio program is highly indicative of the current hype surrounding the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks on DOT COM sites on the Internet. Even the use of the acronym DDOS is amazing. Here they are, twenty-something DOT COM executives, who probably never thought about computer security except for watching re-runs of "Hackers" and "Sneakers," using Pentagon-originated terms like "Distributed Denial of Service" attacks.

Why? Who told them to use those terms?

Then Clinton manages to take 90 minutes to attend an Internet security summit on February 15. Northern Ireland's peace agreement is falling apart, the Israeli-Palestine agreement is unraveling, and Russia's new President is putting ex-KGB agents in his government, but Clinton has enough time to talk with a group of e-commerce barons, computer security geeks, and even one hacker. The whole thing appeared to be staged and scheduled way in advance.

The whole so-called Internet "hack" smells of a perception management campaign by the intelligence community. Perhaps the system flooding was coordinated by one group -- however, those types of attacks probably occur on a daily basis without being reported by the world's media. It is important to note that one of the key components of information warfare -- according to the Pentagon's own seminal documents -- is perception management -- psychological operations to whip up public support for a policy or program. The early Defense Science Board reports on Critical Infrastructure Protection actually call for a campaign to change the public's attitude about information system and network security.

The Pentagon is a master at deception campaigns aimed at the news media.  They constantly broadcast disinformation to television and radio audiences in Haiti, Serbia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere. They are now extending this to cyber space. Critical infrastructure protection is a masterful ruse aimed at creating the myth of impeding cyber-peril.

The major domo is a weird chap named Richard Clarke, a Dr. Strangelove-type character who is Clinton's counter-terrorism czar. He always talks about defensive cyber-warfare but clams up when it comes to offensive US cyber-operations. That is classified.

However, it is certain that the US Government has already done more to disrupt the Internet than any other actor -- state-sponsored or freelance. For the past few years, US government hackers have penetrated networks at the European Parliament, Australian Stock Exchange, and banks in Athens, Nicosia, Moscow, Johannesburg, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Zurich, and Vaduz.  The US also engaged in network penetrations in Yugoslavia during the NATO war against that country.

Why doesn't NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC and the others focus on what the US is doing to disrupt the Internet? They are instead falling into a familiar Pentagon trap of deception and diversion.

Judith Loring
jloring@cybernet1.com

Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues   Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per month)
Matthew Gaylor, 1933 E. Dublin-Granville Rd., PMB 176, Columbus, OH 43229  Archived at http://www.egroups.com/list/fa/
 

**************************************************************************
 Coalition for Constitutional Liberties
 Weekly Update for 2/17/00  Volume 3, Number 7
 Brought to you by the Center for Technology Policy of the Free Congress Foundation
 Lisa S. Dean, Vice President for Technology Policy (mailto:lsdean@freecongress.org)
Julie Malone, Coalition Coordinator (mailto:jmalone@freecongress.org)
 phone: (202) 546-3000  fax: (202) 544-2819   http://www.FreeCongress.org
 

AMERICANS IN WONDERLAND - Endangered Liberties Commentary
FCF Vice President for Technology Policy Lisa Dean

 Many Americans pretty much understand that the Clinton Administration has skewed reality to such an extent in the last eight years that black has become white, up is down, backward is forward.  In fact, while John F. Kennedy's term in office was dubbed "Camelot", Clinton's should be known as "Wonderland" because as Alice experienced when she fell down the rabbit hole, nothing is as it seems.

The most basic example of that is in the case of words.  Your teachers probably always told you "Choose your words carefully."  Why?  Because every word means a specific thing, words illustrate specific principles and  ideas.  And in order to associate and communicate in a society, in a community of people, all words have to mean the same thing to everyone within that society.  When they don't, you have Alice in Wonderland.  That's what we have with the Clinton Administration and it's because it has chosen to play Humpty Dumpty where when they use a word, they also choose the meaning for that word, that it has managed to defeat its opposition by creating an atmosphere of confusion.

There is no better example of this than with regard to federal agencies.  And to prove my point, let me give you a little quiz.  When we think of the duties related to transportation, we think of . . . Department of Transportation.  How about issues related to the economy and financial matters?  Department of the Treasury.  And what about issues related to trade?  That's right, Department of Commerce.  Those questions were easy to answer even if you don't know government because the words mean specific things and relay ideas.

How about one more?  What agency handles housing and planning questions?  The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD as it's known.  Well, technically you're correct but remember, this is the Clinton Administration and just because an agency bears a particular name, doesn't mean that its duties have to relate to its name or handle responsibilities for which that agency was created in the first place.  HUD is the perfect example.  About a year or so ago, HUD began to involve itself in domestic violence cases.  Why?  Well, HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo indicated that the word "Housing" in Housing and Urban Development gave them that authority.  Now that agency is acting as an arm of law enforcement on the scene where police are called in to settle domestic disputes.  That responsibility of course is why we have law enforcement.  That is not the job of HUD.

According to Jeri Clausing writing for the New York Times, HUD will be handling free speech issues as they are related to the Internet.  The agency filed a lawsuit against a man who was allegedly operating what HUD considered to be a "hate site".  Apparently this man who is allegedly associated with a white supremacist group posted negative information on his website about an employee of the Reading-Berks Human Relations Council in Reading, PA, whose job it was to help people file discrimination suits under the Fair Housing Act.  Why was she targeted?  Probably because, while she is white, most of the cases she is encouraging are being filed by minorities.

Who knows but the employee wrote to the Justice Department asking for action to be taken because she feared for her life but got no response from that agency.  Then HUD stepped in and decided to file suit.  Where is HUD's jurisdiction in this case?  Well, the agency claims that it has the authority because the threats made by the man prevented the employee from doing her job, namely, enforcing the provisions in the Fair Housing Act.

Pardon me but if someone is being threatened by anyone, it's the job of law enforcement to remedy the situation.  It's the job of this woman to hire an attorney and file suit herself.  Why sit back and demand that the federal government take care of the problem, let alone a federal HOUSING agency?  Aside from the fact that this woman helps people file discrimination suits for housing related matters, there is no relationship between the threats made against her personally and HUD's duties as an agency.

For HUD to think that it can get involved in this case, which has nothing whatsoever to do with housing matters is really a fine example of the Clintonesque tactic of stretching definitions to suit its agenda. What it really does is give this agency and other federal agencies who overstep their bounds, more authority and expanded powers far beyond those which were originally intended for them at their founding.

When the legacy of this Administration is finally reviewed, it will be clear that Clinton has redefined reality like no other President has ever done.  And unfortunately, it's quite possible that whoever takes his place will likely stick with that redefined reality for the most part. We hear all sorts of things these days about Clinton fatigue and how Clinton is a lame duck. Don't believe a word of it.  This is the most activist Administration in its eighth year in the history of this country.  The redefinition of HUD is but one example I could give.  I could go agency by agency to show you how this Administration has completely reconfigured the way our government operates.

I wish I could be optimistic and tell you that I thought we had a chance when a new Administration comes in and that such a change would bring things back to reality.  Why would I believe that when there is no evidence to support it?  There should have been a popular uprising against the activities of this Administration long ago but instead, there was and still largely is, silence.  While a few congressmen and senators are starting to speak out, it will take so much more to reverse the current trend.  One of the leading presidential candidates said that Jesus Christ is the most important influence in his life.  Well, let's hope so because it will take God himself to straighten  out what this Administration has done.
 

 Endangered Liberties Program Excerpts:

PROPERTY RIGHTS CONTINUE TO BE AN ENDANGERED LIBERTY

"On the federal front, this has been going on since the '70s, since the Carter administration.  In fact, the deputy assistant for Secretary of Interior, David Hale, said 'if Congress puts a circle around it, we're going to buy all.'  And so it started in the 70s - the land grabs - an acre here, an acre there, a few thousand here, and a few thousand there," said Loretta Harrington from Defenders of Property Rights, a guest on the "Endangered Liberties" television program.  Harrington added,  "GAO started coming out with a series of reports critical of land acquisition the way the federal government was managing their property - organizations like the Bureau of Labor Management, the Forest Service, the Park Service; so Congress reacted and said, 'OK, we're going to give you less money.'

So, in the Reagan administration, the condemnations were decreasing.  They were getting less money to acquire more land.  But the abuses continued all up and down the Appalachian Trail, [also]...in Minnesota, where the Park Service - they took 21,000 acres, and they were only mandated to take a thousand.  So, it's a thousand here, and a thousand there."  Discussing the land grabs in the Clinton administration, Harrington said,  "We call it the 'big jaws' of the Clinton administration - now we're talking millions, and one or two executive orders.... 'We're not going to nibble around the edges any longer.  We're going after millions of acres through a 1906 Antiquities Act, and through Executive Order.  So, the land grab began in the 70s and now it's in full force."

Co-host Paul Weyrich commented, "Congress does nothing about it.  When the Utah land grab occurred in 1996, there was enormous controversy.  There was talk about lawsuits - the State of Utah was going to sue; Senator Orrin Hatch was going to push legislation, and then all of a sudden the matter was dropped.  Why?"  Harrington answered, "Good question.  Lack of political courage to do something about it, lack of interest, except for those few states that are affected, although those few states [where] federal land is owned by a larger percentage in those western states.  I simply don't understand where our elected officials are."

Sandy Liddy Bourne from the American Legislative Exchange Council also appeared on "Endangered Liberties" to discuss the gross land grabs that have occurred, stating, "It's almost as though there's been a stealth attack by the Clinton Administration to come in and grab up land during the last year of their administration.  And you see it going out to Idaho, grabbing forestland; they're going up to New Hampshire grabbing the White Mountains. They are just really going around to a lot of states.  And the states are beginning to respond.  We've got a model bill that the states are putting out now called the Regulatory Responsibility Act, that in essence, makes it illegal for a state to implement any, quote, 'federal guidance' that exceeds that federal agency's own authority and statute.

In other words, if it isn't written, it isn't done.  And as a tool for a governor...to either accept the guidance or to say no.  And we're hoping to see that get through the states this year.  And that was a direct response to the President's Executive Order this past August.  ... Montana, has now put through, I believe through their congressmen, to have some legislation that says it's illegal to come into Montana and take land without getting the permission of the general assembly, notification prior to."  This discussion begs the question: what can be done to stop this encroachment of our liberty?  Bourne said, "The most important thing any citizen can do is be active.  Free government does not exist - democracy does not exist if you do not have an active citizenry."

Contact:  American Legislative Exchange Council  202-466-3800 / http://www.alec.org
Contact:  Defender of Property Rights  202-822-6770 / http://defendersproprights.org
 

Brought to you by Notable News Now
Contact: Angie Wheeler  e-mail: awheeler@freecongress.org
 

TOUGHER LAWS EYED FOR CYBER-CRIMES

 By Brock N. Meeks   MSNBC

 WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 -  The cost of committing a cyber-crime, if caught, is about to get a lot more expensive. But that's a big "if." Two of the nation's top law enforcement officials told a Senate panel Wednesday that the pursuit of cyber-crime is hampered by a lack of manpower, technology, hazy jurisdictional issues and weak laws. As a result, Senate members promised to seek much tougher penalties for cyber-crime, doubling jail time and fines.

 OTHER PROBLEMS also plague the cops: A morass of governmental agencies and enforcement teams - each charged with some manner of protecting the nation's critical infrastructures and prosecuting cyber-crime - don't necessarily coordinate their work.

 "How do we make sure everyone is singing off the same page and not singing off tune?" said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who chairs the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary, which held the hearing Wednesday to look at how effectively the Justice Department and the FBI were attacking the problem of Internet-related crimes.
 

LEADS DEVELOPING IN HACKER PROBE

 Despite the problems and glitches facing law enforcement, FBI Director Louis Freeh, speaking at the hearing, said his investigators were "very busy, but not overwhelmed last week," when looking for suspects responsible for the denial-of-service attacks on major Web sites.

 Freeh said the investigation "literally stretches around the world" and that while no suspects have been apprehended, "there are fast-developing leads as we speak."

 Adding to the problem is a reluctance on the part of private industry to cooperate with law enforcement investigations in pursuit of cyber-criminals.

 "There is a problem of communication between the private sector and law enforcement," said Mark Rasch, senior vice president of Global Integrity, a computer security firm that has been at the center of the recent rash of denial-of-service attacks.

 Although law enforcement officials see the successful prosecution of a public attack resulting in jail time, that same process "may be disastrous" to the private sector, Rasch said.  Because of the public nature of the trial, a company's vulnerabilities may be revealed in court. In addition, because the FBI must commandeer computing resources to scour them for evidence, those recourses are taken off-line, meaning the company is working at less than full capacity, Rasch said. And if the perpetrator turns out to be a disgruntled company insider, that same company "now faces the prospect of civil or criminal liability," Rasch said.   However, Attorney General Janet Reno said during the hearing that private industry "is getting more comfortable" working with law enforcement.

 "This relationship is going to take some time," Freeh said.  He likened his agency's relationship with the computer industry to where the banking sector was 40 or 50 years ago. Cooperation "requires somewhat of an act of faith," Freeh said.
 
 

COORDINATION PROBLEMS

"As a technical matter, the attacks like the ones we saw last week are easy to carry out and hard to solve," Reno said. "In addition, too many companies pay inadequate attention to security issues, and are therefore vulnerable to be infiltrated and used as launching pads for this kind of destructive programs."

 President Clinton met Tuesday with industry representatives and security experts to discuss ways to increase Internet security. Out of that meeting came an industry-led proposal to create an "information sharing mechanism" in which a kind of "best practices" guideline on security would be developed which others could follow.  But as Rasch outlined, such information sharing, especially between the government and private sector, won't be an easy hurdle to jump.

 In addition, the various agencies already in place to protect Internet security and work with the private sector aren't well lubricated.   "We're not doing as good a job in the cyber-crime area," as we're doing with counter-terrorism, Freeh acknowledged, "simply because the issues are so new."

 Undersecretary for Commerce William Reinch put the e-commerce spin on the problem: "This [coordination effort] is essentially a start-up, and start-ups are always rough around the edges."
 

TOUGHER LAWS COMING

 And even if all the investigative work pays off, the current computer crime laws may not be enough of a deterrent, Reno said.  Reno said that Congress needs to look seriously at "closing a loophole that allows computer hackers to escape punishment if no individual computer sustained over $5,000 worth of damage."  Reno also called for increased investigative powers, a move sure to raise the hackles of privacy and civil-liberties advocates.

 The FBI's "trap and trace" laws, which allow the FBI to identify the origin and destination of telephone calls and computer messages, need to be updated, Reno said. Currently, the FBI must get court orders in each state they are tracking calls and messages; Reno wants a statutory change that would give the FBI a blanket order in which a "nationwide effect" would be granted for trap-and-trace orders.

 At the same time, the FBI needs to be granted the authority to work more freely in international investigations, Freeh said.  "There's no large hacking case I can imagine that wouldn't have the need to go beyond the boundaries of the U.S.," Freeh said.  He also acknowledged that the current investigation into last week's denial-of-service attacks has gone international, with leads taking the bureau to Germany, Canada and other, unidentified countries.

 Freeh said that his agency is beginning to consider "whether some of these actions that go beyond a single act should be considered enterprise criminal activity." If that's happening, then prosecutors could begin to examine how the federal racketeering statutes, known as RICO, could apply, Freeh said.

 The international angle in U.S.-related computer crimes is a huge sticking point for the FBI and other government agencies, Reno noted.  Because of lax or non-existent computer laws in some countries, those places might well become the cyber-equivalent of the infamous money-laundering banks in the Cayman Islands.

 "I am quite concerned that one or more nations will become 'safe havens' for cyber criminals," Reno said.  Already Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, have said they will introduce tougher computer-crime bills.  Leahy said he will draft his bill after the next congressional recess.  Hutchinson said Wednesday that her bill will increase criminal penalties for computer intrusion from five years to 10 for the first offense and from 10 to 20 years for a second offense.

 But such moves irritated Global Integrity's Rasch, who said that such new laws would broaden the search-and-seizure powers and streamline the procedures to permit multi-district investigations and international investigations, and possibly call for additional power of investigation.

 Rasch's comment's aren't surprising, given that some of this company's biggest customers include the country's most powerful banking institutions, which are historically among the most secretive and skeptical organizations in America.  "I urge the subcommittee to tread lightly," Rasch said. "Some of these powers may be warranted and some may not."
 

DON'T TREAD ON FREEDOM

 February 17, 2000   The Wall Street Journal
 By Jonathan G.S. Koppell, a fellow at the Washington-based New America Foundation.

 Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh lobbied Congress Wednesday to expand the federal role in the battle against Internet crime.  The Clinton administration is asking for an additional $37 million to bolster its hacker-tracking "cyberforce," among other initiatives.   President Clinton this week tried to reassure Internet executives that Big Brother was not coming to the Internet. But have efforts to police cyberspace already gone too far?

 There's no question that as Internet use increases, Internet use by criminals increases.  Some of the dangers have been well-chronicled:  Electronic information lures thieves.  Stolen "identities" allow crooks to run up credit-card bills, pass bad checks, and destroy credit histories. A well-publicized hacker has recently elevated this gambit to a new level, blackmailing an online retailer from which he stole thousands of credit card numbers.

 Anonymity emboldens perverts.  Purveyors of pornography -- legal and illegal -- have found the Internet good for business. And sexual predators use the seemingly benign settings of chat rooms to identify and lure potential victims.  A global network multiples opportunities for economic crime.

 Auction sites like eBay not only facilitate honest transactions; they invite dishonest individuals to rip off trusting counterparties. Steven Kamensky, a Long Island high school student, and his father, Ira, were arrested last fall and charged with collecting more than $50,000 by allegedly defrauding eBay customers.

 In another alleged racket, Alfred Flores was indicted and accused of purchasing shares of a bankrupt chain of used car dealerships.  According to Securities and Exchange Commission charges, he circulated information to online traders that the company had purchased a research firm developing a cure for AIDS.  He allegedly made $500,000 on the resulting increase in stock values.

 Slowly, even some ardent defenders of the Internet's libertarian culture are turning to government for protection. And therein lies a hidden threat posed by Internet crime. Government agencies, struggling to combat new types of criminals, may tread upon individual rights.  And the public, whipped into a frenzy by stories of Internet mayhem, may accept these intrusions too easily.

 Consider Echelon, a spying network jointly operated by the national intelligence agencies of several Western countries, led by the U.S. National Security Agency. Echelon combats international terrorism by scanning millions of international communications (including e-mail) for suspicious words like revolution, manifesto and Waco [see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm]. When Echelon's existence was revealed last year, its scope surprised even the most vocal alarmists.  It has aroused opposition from diverse quarters, from Rep. Bob Barr (R., Ga.) to the American Civil Liberties Union.

 On the domestic scene, several federal law-enforcement agencies have increased their attention to Internet crime.  As part of its Operation Innocent Images, the FBI tracks adults with a suspicious interest in children. Agent Allison Mourad is one of several who spend their days "disguised" as 13-year-olds in Internet chat rooms, trying to lure pedophiles. The Securities and Exchange Commission has created a "cyberforce" to troll the Internet for scam artists, as have the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration, which is on the lookout for pharmaceutical sellers who do not require prescriptions.

President Clinton's Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet has proposed a Federal Intrusion Detection Network, or FIDNet, within the FBI that would monitor flows of electronic data to help track down the hackers of the future.  This would create an unprecedented opportunity for the FBI to perform surveillance of all domestic communications.  The proposal has drawn a flurry of objections from privacy advocates. The FBI has also proposed rules that would permit tracking of physical locations by cellular phone use and monitoring of Internet traffic under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. (The rules are being challenged in court.)  Another administration plan is "LawNet," which would coordinate enforcement and prosecutorial activities around the world.

 Gradual Erosion

 Any of these developments may be defensible on its own. But the gradual erosion of individual rights is clear, if unintended.  Each step is made palatable by the steady stream of near-hysterical reports of Internet crime.   The FBI's rules that would mandate electronic backdoors to make every home computer more "eavesdropper-friendly," for example, have received minimal attention or protest outside the civil liberties community.

 We must guard against giving away our freedom over a panic based on hyperbolic horror stories. As Justice Louis Brandeis observed: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding."
 

CLINTON TO PROPOSE NET SECURITY CENTER

President meets with high-tech leaders to discuss ways to tighten security on the Web.
Could a think tank be far behind?
By Glenn R. Simpson and Lee Gomes, WSJ Interactive Edition
February 15, 2000 5:56 AM PT

As the investigation of last week's Internet attacks continues, the White House is expected to propose a new Internet-security center following a meeting Tuesday between President Clinton and high-tech executives.  The Cyber-National Information Center, to be known as Cyber-NIC, will be a place where companies "can work together to address cyber security problems and crises," according to a planning document. In addition, the White House is asking its science adviser, Neal Lane, to take the lead in establishing a think tank supported by both the public and private sectors to consider cyber security issues.  The modest steps reflect the lack of consensus about how the government should respond to last week's incidents, in which numerous Web sites were brought down after being deluged with meaningless data. Some industry representatives have been concerned that federal law-enforcement agencies may use the attacks to pressure companies to take security steps that are either costly or otherwise unpopular with Internet users.

 The private and public sectors tend to take different approaches to security issues, with companies emphasizing narrow technical changes, like better protocols at Internet-service providers, while government has stressed increased law-enforcement activities and the like.

Search for common ground

But since last week's attacks, both sides have been trying to find common ground. Commerce Department officials, for example, have had numerous telephone discussions with industry representatives in the days since the attacks to work out security approaches. One person following the calls said they were designed, as much as anything, to get companies talking to each other.   "We're not bringing much to the table outside of a desire to be helpful,"  said one Commerce Department official. "We want the private sector to solve its own problems. After all, they're the ones who own the infrastructure.   This is just not a realm that is conducive to a top-down,
government-czar approach."

 Still, there are concerns. One person who is attending the session said top executives at several of the companies invited to the White House have been reluctant to attend the meeting, out of fear of being pressured into making security steps they would rather avoid, and are therefore sending lower-level executives who lack the authority to make commitments for their companies. The White House Monday was insisting that only "principals" attend for companies, according to one invitee.  Among the companies expected to attend are Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT),  IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL), Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), Electronic Data Systems Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU), eBay Inc, (Nasdaq: EBAY), Nortel Networks Inc. (NYSE: NT), Iridium LLC and AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T).

Focus on existing programs

 President Clinton said Monday in an online interview with CNN.com that he found the attacks last week "very disturbing" and hoped to use Tuesday's summit as a way to promote Internet security. The White House plans today to refocus on a few existing programs, including a proposal to spend $9 million on education and training for computer-security specialists.  The money, earmarked for this year, was included as a supplemental item in President Clinton's 2001 budget proposal. Administration officials say their efforts to boost critical infrastructure protection have been hampered by a severe shortage of trained computer-security experts.

 On the private-sector side, the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group, said that in preparation for the session it had coordinated support for agreed-upon "best practices" that its tech-company members should adopt to keep hackers at bay. The association said most tech companies had long been concerned with security issues, but that they may need to become even more vigilant.  "The recent incidents are a 2-by-4 across the head of the entire industry and helped push the issue high up on everybody's list," a spokesman said.

A statement to be issued by the group calls for the establishment of "a mechanism for the systematic and protected sharing" of information on cyber attacks, security vulnerabilities, and countermeasures.  Meanwhile, security experts said a monetary reward may be needed in addition to technical detective work in order to track down the perpetrators.

 Financial rewards are commonly used to solve criminal cases, and some experts now are starting to push the idea as a way to crack last week's  attacks.  "This thing needs a million-dollar bounty if it is going to be solved,"  said Michael D. Allison, CEO of the Internet Crimes Group Inc., a Princeton, N.J., security-consulting operation. "That's one way of turning the firepower of the hackers against themselves."   Mr. Allison and others cite two reasons in advocating rewards.  For one, skillful hackers know how to hide their tracks.  "Mixter," the German hacker who wrote one of the programs involved in last week's attacks -- but who isn't suspected of actually launching them -- has told interviewers that the chance of finding the person who used the program is slim unless he made a serious mistake.

Bragging rights

 What's more, hackers routinely talk to each other over communications links known as IRC channels, and tend to know about the activities of other hackers. In fact, people familiar with the hacker world say that bragging rights are a major motivation for Web attacks in the first place.  Also, there are many well-known rivalries among hackers, suggesting that could be exploited by offering a reward.  "This case is probably going to be solved by an informant, and not by any technical tools," said Steve Bellovin, a prominent expert in network security issues at AT&T.

 On the eve of the online-security summit, further attention was drawn to the Internet's vulnerability to mischief. Monday night, Reuters reported that online hecklers posted irreverent queries to the CNN.com Internet site during the interview with President Clinton, and that "ribald remarks" under Clinton's name slipped through a network filter designed to block inappropriate questions.  A representative of CNN wouldn't confirm or deny the report.
 

BIG BROTHER MAY BE SPYING ON YOU

Februrary 11, 2000   CBN News
By Erin Zimmerman and Dale Hurd

 Is your privacy in jeopardy?  CBN News investigates one U.S. government agency that is secretly keeping tabs on American citizens.

 A Russian spy made headlines last December after he was found listening in on conversations through a bug planted at the U.S. State Department, and there are renewed concerns about Chinese spying.

 But the government is using methods that are far more sophisticated -- and far more secret -- to capture everything from phone calls to e-mails to faxes. And there's growing evidence that they may be using it, not just on terrorists, but on you.  "I think that people need to understand that we're entering an age of a new America, and we're not going to like it," says privacy expert Lisa Dean of the Free Congress Foundation. "This is not a society where what we say, or what we do, or what we tell people is kept a secret."

 "And people's conversations are being eavesdropped on in violation of the 4th amendment," says Greg Nojeim of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If Americans don't wake up to their diminishing window of privacy, as it were, pretty soon, there's not going to be any left."

 In a high-tech world that now contains 40 million cell phones, 14 million fax machines, and 180 million computers, just how private is your communication?  The answer may surprise you.  "I don't think we have a whole lot of privacy left in America," says Dean.  "We think we do, but we really don't."

 Big Brother may not be watching yet ... but he may be listening to your phone calls and reading your e-mail, all in the name of national security.  "Secretary of Defense William Cohen has said publicly, the American people need to decide how much privacy they're willing to give up in favor of more security," says Dean. "Well, the answer to that should be none."

 And as Americans move further into the information age, Big Brother is rapidly becoming public enemy number one.  "The Wall Street Journal conducted a poll sometime in November of last year and asked Americans what they feared most in the next century.  Terrorism? No. Crime? No. The thing that concerned most Americans was the loss of personal privacy."

 At the center of the firestorm over electronic privacy is the National Security Agency, headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland.  With a global staff of around 38,000 the NSA is larger than the FBI and the CIA combined.

 "The NSA has two missions: one is foreign intelligence gathering, and the other one is creation of codes to protect U.S. diplomatic and military secrets," says former NSA analyst Wayne Madsen. "Historically, that's been NSA's two major functions. Unfortunately, with the end of the Cold War, they're now looking into other areas."

 These other areas may include your own home, through a global eavesdropping system known as ECHELON [see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm]. "What ECHELON basically is is a system that, based on key words in a conversation or key words in an e-mail -- it takes those key words of interest, which are basically pre-programmed in something called a dictionary."

 According to Madsen, this dictionary may be searching your phone calls, faxes, and e-mails to sniff out terrorists, hackers, and other potential threats. Privacy experts charge that even accidental use of these
 so-called key words could put you under the sharp ears of the NSA.  "I think the NSA would say, 'I wonder what they're up to,' and I think there might be increased monitoring of their communications."

 Most of the public information about ECHELON is based on a report [by Duncan Campbell] commissioned by the European parliament  [see also the European Parliament Echelon Hearings Report at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm and http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg2/hearings/20000222/libe/en/].  Published last April, the report charges that the NSA's global spy bases, like the one at Menwith Hill in England, routinely intercept around two-million communications every hour.

 "So basically, you can think of it as a giant drift net that captures everything," says Madsen.  The countries casting this global drift net are members of what's known as the UKUSA alliance: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. According to the EU report, this five-pronged partnership also forms the legal loophole that allows the NSA to spy on its own citizens.

 "The NSA has no jurisdiction here in this country," says Dean. "So it can't legally listen in on Americans' phone conversations or electronic communications. However, according to the European parliament, what it's doing is getting its British counterparts, or Australian counterparts, and so on, to do their dirty work."  For example, if you send an e-mail message from New York to Los Angeles, it may be routed through Canada or the UK before  reaching its destination. And once a message travels outside U.S. borders, it's fair game for ECHELON's web.

 Most Americans got their first glimpse of the super-secret agency in the 1998 action film Enemy of the State.  Former attorney and journalist James Bamford wrote The Puzzle Palace, considered to be the definitive work on the NSA. And although film producers relied heavily on his best-selling book to make Enemy of the State, Bamford says they used more than a little creative license.  "The NSA doesn't possibly have the ability to do that," says Bamford.  "There are too many inaccuracies. NSA doesn't control imagery satellites, photo satellites -- you don't pick up the phone and say, 'I want a satellite on the corner of Wisconsin and M Street, and they don't go into hotel rooms -- they can't do hotel rooms, so there were a lot of problems I had with it."

 Meanwhile, critics are asking, if the Cold War is over, then why has global intelligence continued to mushroom?  "Russia's defeated; we are still the superpower, the one and only superpower in the world," says Dean. "How do we justify all the systems that we have in place; how do we justify all of the activities of the people we've employed in the intelligence community to keep going?"

 But Bamford, an NSA observer for over 20 years, argues that there are still too many global hotspots to consider downsizing at Fort Meade.  For example, while much of the NSA's attention was focused on the growing missile threats in North Korea, it completely missed the budding nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan in 1998.

 "This is an intelligence agency that some critics are giving enormous abilities to listen to everything everywhere at all times, but this was a major security issue, whether India and Pakistan were developing nuclear weapons, but they didn't hear it -- they didn't know about it," he says. "So this is an agency that is given far more credit for being able to listen to things than they are able to. They can't even listen to things they're supposed to be listening to, let alone things
they're not supposed to be listening to."

 Since its creation in 1952, the National Security Agency has remained America's biggest intelligence secret -- so secret, in fact, that Washington insiders often joke that the initials "NSA" stand for "No Such Agency."  But for the first time in its history, the agency maybe forced to reveal some of those secrets to Congress.

 Georgia Republican Bob Barr is leading a congressional movement to force the NSA to answer for spying on U.S. citizens.   "There seems to be very credible evidence that this operation is taking place, and has been taking place for quite some time," says Barr. "At this point, all we're asking for is the basic information telling us what do you at the NSA, the National Security Agency, believe is the legal basis for you to gather this information?  That's the starting point: What's the basis that you believe you're authorized to do this?"