To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Wiretapping the net
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:48:50 +0000

From: research-bpr@philologos.org (Moza)

From Wired News,
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/22195.html
-
Wiretapping the Net: Oh, Brother
by Declan McCullagh

2:00 p.m. 12.Oct.99.PDT
Internet Engineering Task Force has had one guiding principle: To
solve the problems of moving digital information around the world.

As attendance at meetings swelled and the Internet became a vital
portion of national economies, the standards-setting body has become
increasingly important, but the engineers and programmers who are
members remained focused on that common goal.

No longer.

The IETF is now debating whether to wire government surveillance into
the next generation of Internet protocols. The issue promises to cause
the most acrimonious debate the venerable group has ever experienced
and could have a lasting effect on privacy online.

To reach even a preliminary decision in a special plenary session of
the IETF meeting in Washington next month, attendees must weigh
whether law enforcement demands are more important than communications
security and personal privacy -- a process that places technology
professionals in the unusual position of taking a prominent political
stand.

"As Internet voice becomes a wider deployed reality, it is only
logical that the subject has to come up," IETF chairman Fred Baker
said. "We are deciding to bring it up proactively rather than reacting
to something later in the game."

The wiretapping issue arises as the IETF is wrestling with another
prominent privacy issue in IPv6, the slated next-generation Internet
protocol. As outlined, the proposal would include the unique serial
number for each computer's network connection hardware as part of its
expanded address.

Many governments, including the United States, require telephone
companies to configure their networks so police can easily wiretap
calls. As more phone calls flow through the Internet, some experts
predict that the FBI and similar agencies will demand additional
surveillance powers.

If the IETF takes no action and governments require IP telephony firms
to use snoopable products, some veteran task force members fret that
companies might simply start to use technology that won't talk to
products from other manufacturers. It's a noxious prospect for a
standards-setting body like IETF.

Even worse: The products may divulge more information to an
eavesdropper or introduce further security holes.

"The basic problem is that the government will probably demand of IP
telephony the rules that govern wiretaps," said University of
Pennsylvania electrical engineering professor Dave Farber, a board
member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Society.
"...I wish we didn't have the law. But given that the law is there,
it's wiser to make sure it just applies to the stuff that's IP
telephony and not all of our data traffic."

It's unclear whether the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law
Enforcement Act (CALEA), which requires wiretapping access, applies to
IP telephony firms.

"There are two independent questions to answer," says Chris Savage, a
Washington attorney who represents Internet providers and phone
companies. "First, is the provider of the service a
'telecommunications carrier' under the law? If the answer's no, CALEA
does not apply. If you are a telecommunications carrier under the law
and using packet communications, the FCC has said that compliance
doesn't kick in until September 2001."

Even if CALEA does apply to products IP telephony firms may use, the
IETF can simply ignore what legislators say, as the group did when
supporting stronger encryption standards than what governments
preferred.

IETF Chairman Baker said the organization has not received any direct
requests from the FBI or other law enforcement officials, and some
members of the media gateway control working group brought up the
subject in August during a discussion on a mailing list. "Megaco's"
goal is to figure out how to replace a telephone company's traditional
phone switch with digital controllers.

Some of the megaco members work for telephone companies that have long
since bowed to law enforcement demands, and they seemed ready to
compromise. One poster from Nortel Networks wrote on 24 August that he
hoped "our architecture allows government agencies to do what they
require."

But the IETF area director, Harvard University's Scott Bradner, said
he thought the issue was too important to be decided by the handful of
members in a working group. He brought it up during a September
conference call of the Internet Engineering Steering Group, which acts
as the IETF's executive committee.

The IESG then decided the full membership should try to reach a rough
consensus at the November meeting. Bradner and another IESG member
created a mailing list for the topic and drafted an announcement
released Monday.

Privacy advocates say they're concerned. "If the mindset of the
technical people involved in IETF has gotten to the point that they're
voluntarily developing surveillance capabilities, that's a very
disappointing development. The Internet community has been fighting to
protect privacy from government intrusion for years and the IETF now
appears to be doing the government's work," says David Sobel, general
counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"Why doesn't the IETF start working on a key escrow encryption
protocol? Where does it end if they're going to start anticipating
what government mandates might be?"

Jeff Schiller, an IESG member and MIT network manager, predicted
libertarian sentiments would prevail at the November meeting.

"We should not be building surveillance technology into standards. Law
enforcement was not supposed to be easy. Where it is easy, it's called
a police state," Schiller said.

Schiller pointed to previous IETF decisions -- immortalized in a
policy document, numbered 1984, which affirmed the group's opposition
to weakening security to aid in government surveillance.

More recently, the IETF agreed to include encryption in IPv6 even
though US government regulations restrict its export.

Peter Neumann, principal scientist at SRI International and moderator
of the RISKS Digest, said the debate over wiretapping is similar to
the one over encryption backdoors: Both imperil security.

"It's the same argument. You're trying to put in a mechanism that's
essentially misusable, corruptible, and compromisable. And you can't
do it securely given the infrastructures we have. It's basically
impossible," Neumann said.

"The problem is any system or protocol that has a fundamental trap
door in it is going to be misused ... Building in things that are
fundamentally flawed does not make sense."

via: isml@onelist.com

--- BPR

BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Egyptian tunnel holds god of the underworld
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:50:13 +0000

From: research-bpr@philologos.org (Moza)

From http://exn.ca/child/childpage.cfm?ID=sciencewire&Parent=Science
-
EXN Science Wire: Daily news from the world of science October 12,
1999

Egyptian tunnel holds god of the underworld

Archaeologists in Egypt have begun excavating a tunnel found near the
great pyramid of Giza. The tunnel turns out to be the tomb of an
Egyptian god -- apparently Osiris. According to Egyptian myth, Osiris
was killed and dismembered by his brother. He was then brought back to
life after his body was reassembled. The images in the tunnel show
Osiris, the god of the underworld, overseeing the work of Rastaw, god
of underground tunnels. The tomb was probably built to ensure Osiris
would protect the bodies of Pharoahs buried nearby.

via: isml@onelist.com

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Nat'l Weather Service supercomputer fire
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:59:16 +0000

From: research-bpr@philologos.org (Moza)

Subject: Supercomputer lost to fire, weather predictions reduced

The U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) lost
their Cray C90 supercomputer in a fire, as reported in

 http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/director/supercomputer/

Weather prediction runs have moved to slower backup machines. They
are not being run as often and are not looking as far in the future.
"There is no objective basis for making forecasts at the 8-14 day
range, and no further messages of forecasts will be issued until model
guidance at that range again becomes available."

Andrew Klossner (andrew@pogo.wv.tek.com)

via: transhumantech@onelist.com

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Misc. News
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:25:29 +0000

From: research-bpr@philologos.org (Moza)

RUSSIA TO DEPLOY NEW NUKES IN DECEMBER October 11, 1999

The World Tribune reported: "Russia plans to deploy a second
batch of its new Topol-M nuclear missiles in the first half
of December. =E6A second Strategic Rocket Forces regiment equipped with
land-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles will assume
full combat readiness in the first half of December this year,=C6 deputy
Defense Minister Col.-Gen. Alexander Kosovan told a news conference.
The RIA news agency quoted Kosovan, deputy defense minister in charge
of military construction and housing, as saying that the first 10
Topol-M missiles were installed in their silos last December. The
Topol-M, known to the West as the SS-27, is slated to become the
backbone of Russia's nuclear deterrent. Russian officials said last
month that Moscow had eight years at most to replace its aging nuclear
arsenal before most of it becomes obsolete. Kosovan said two missile
early warning systems were near completion and a number of air and
naval bases had been repaired this year..."

PARAGUAY ADMITS FAILURE TO FIX MILLENNIUM BUG IN TIME October
11, 1999

The International Herald Tribune reported today: "First the
computers will crash, bringing down the electrical grid, the
water system and the telephone network. Then, nearly 200,000
government workers will discover that the
state-run bank that prints their paychecks has been crippled by
technological glitches. Finally, a day or two later, crowds
will riot and loot, forcing the government to declare martial
law. To Walter Schafer Paoli, the Paraguayan government's Year
2000 generalissimo, this is no science-fiction plot. Such bedlam, he
says, is quite possible during the first days of January in this poor,
landlocked South American country sandwiched between Argentina and
Brazil. His manifest fear stems from a simple, alarming fact: The
government has been woefully late in tackling the Y2K computer glitch.
Most government agencies here only recently began to fix their
systems...Paraguay is just one of many developing countries that have
been tardy in dealing with the Y2K bug. From sub-Saharan Africa to
Central America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, many nations have
only just started to vigorously address the glitch, raising the
possibility of disruptions in basic services..."

ANTI-ZIONIST CONFERENCE TO BE HELD BY IRAN October 11, 1999

Associated Press reported: "Tehran said it will host an international
anti-Zionist conference next year. The announcement came as Iranian
leaders met the head of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant group
that spearheads attacks against Israeli targets in Lebanon. Billboards
and press advertisements invited 'thinkers, fighters and militants
from around the world' to attend the conference, to be held here from
Feb. 8 to Feb. 10. 'International Zionism is an organization protected
by Britain and the United States which uses spy networks, the media,
economic organizations and terrorist groups across the world to fight
against Islamic peoples,' the conference advertisements said. As the
conference was announced, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami paid
tribute to the role of Hezbollah in 'fighting for occupied land,
independence and Arab and Islamic dignity' in a meeting with the
movement's secretary general, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. 'The liberation
of Jerusalem is our common goal and we must not allow foreign plots
and pressure to divide us,' the president told Nasrallah, the official
IRNA news agency reported. Iran and its main Arab ally, Syria, both
provide Hezbollah with support in its armed struggle against Israel's
21-year occupation of south Lebanon..."

via: pre-trib-news <pretribnews@listbot.com>

--- BPR

BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr