http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/12/01/assange.profile/

The secret life of Julian Assange

(CNN) -- He grew up constantly on the move, the son of parents who were in the theater business in Australia.

Now, Julian Assange, 39, finds himself on the move again, wanted in Sweden for alleged sex crimes and wanted by officials around the world for his website WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of documents containing confidential information.

If he has succeeded in creating a public firewall of sorts around himself and his personal life, it is perhaps because of that childhood, which taught him to cope with solitude and exposed his mind to mesmerizing machinery that would overtake his life.

Assange has been described by his mother, Christine, as a "highly intelligent" son. She raised him without any religious influence, but she sensed that from a tender age, her son was led by a strong desire to do what he perceived as just.

"He was a lovely boy, very sensitive, good with animals, quiet and has a wicked sense of humor," she told the Melbourne, Australia, Herald Sun newspaper Wednesday.

When Assange was 13, his mother bought him a Commodore 64 computer. It was 1987 and there were no Web sites then. Assange attached a modem to his computer and began his journey through the growing world of computer networks.

"It's like chess," he told New Yorker magazine. "Chess is very austere in that you don't have many rules, there is no randomness and the problem is very hard."

Later, Assange studied mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne.

In interviews, his scientific precision shines through. He speaks in a baritone voice in measured pace, choosing each word carefully. He can be charming yet cagey about his private life and is rarely shaken by discussions of even the most controversial revelations on WikiLeaks.

He's the kind of person who, he says, can hack into the most sophisticated computer system. But he can forget to show up for an interview. Or cancel at the last minute.

When he talks, he displays an astonishing breadth of interests from computers to literature to his travels in Africa.

Even when he walked out of a CNN interview in October after refusing to answer questions about the sex charges in Sweden, Assange remained cool and collected. He projected a stately demeanor helped by his profusion of gray hair -- which grew at an early age -- and an equally steely facial expression.

After his initial foray into computers, Assange delved into computer encryption and grew keen on computer security. He once relayed a story about how he set up an encryption puzzle based on the manipulation of prime numbers.

The New Yorker article, published earlier this year, described how in 1991, Assange hacked into the master terminal of the telecom company Nortel, after which he developed a growing fear of arrest.

He had married and fathered a child when he was only 18 but the relationship fell apart and his wife left him with their infant son.

He was charged with 31 counts of hacking in Australia but in the end paid only a small sum in damages, according to the New Yorker.

The young hacker began to focus his attention away from network flaws to what he perceived as wrongdoings of governments.

In a 2007 blog post on IQ.org, he wrote:

"The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them."

IQ.org is believed to be a blog created by Assange and is registered under the name "JA" by the same U.S. domain company as WikiLeaks. Its Australian postal address is also the same as a submissions address for WikiLeaks.

Among myriad topics addressed in the blog, Assange discusses mathematics versus philosophy, the death of author Kurt Vonnegut, censorship in Iran and the corporation as a nation state.

Driven by the conviction of an activist and the curiosity of a journalist, Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He slept little and sometimes forgot to eat. He hired staff and enlisted the help of volunteers.

Always, he protected his sources, never discussing where information came from.

"People should understand that WikiLeaks has proven to be arguably, the most trustworthy newsource that exists, because we publish primary source material and analysis based on that primary source material," Assange told CNN. "Other organizations with some exceptions, simply are not trustworthy."

The website skyrocketed to notoriety last July when it published 90,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan. It was considered the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history.

WikiLeaks followed in October with classified documents about the Iraq war. And then this week, it began posting 250,000 cables revealing a trove of secret diplomatic information.

Some praised WikiLeaks as a beacon of free speech. But others, including outraged Pentagon and White House officials, considered it irresponsible and want WikiLeaks silenced for what they call irreparable damage to global security.

Assange, the elusive public face of WikiLeaks, catapulted to celebrity status.

The image of the lean, lanky, leather jacket-clad figure with the pale skin and mop of white hair was splashed on television screens and wesbites. Everyone wanted to know how the editor in chief of WikiLeaks had pulled it off.

Time magazine has nominated him for its Person of the Year, calling him a "new kind of whistleblower ... for the digital age."

But Assange's notoriety did not stop there. Shortly after the Afghan war releases, he became the subject of a sex crime case in Sweden.

The Stockholm Criminal Court issued an international arrest warrant for Assange two weeks ago on probable cause in that case, saying he is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and illegal use of force in separate incidents in August. He could be sentenced to two years in prison if convicted.

Interpol issued a high alert for Assange on Wednesday at the request of Sweden.

Assange has maintained his innocence and called the charges in Sweden a smear campaign. He has also dismissed reports of internal strife within WikiLeaks.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a longtime volunteer and spokesman for WikiLeaks who recently quit his job, told CNN that Assange's personality was distracting from the group's original mission: to publish small leaks, not just huge, splashy ones like the Afghan War Diary.

Assange took issue.

"It is my role to be the lightning rod," Assange said. "That is a difficult role. On the other hand I get undue credit."

Assange's mother said Wednesday that she feared her son had become "too smart for himself."

"I'm concerned it's gotten too big and the forces that he's challenging are too big," Christine Assange told the Herald Sun.

She did not comment on the sex crimes charges in Sweden. But she said lately, Assange had distanced himself from his family to protect them.

Assange, too, declined to address the charges in the October interview with CNN in London.

"This interview is about something else. I will have to walk if you are ... going to contaminate this extremely serious interview with questions about my personal life," he said.

Then, he pulled off his mic, said sorry, and walked away.

CNN's Mia Aquino contributed to this report.

New domain name practice criticized

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Fri Jan 11, 7:48 AM ET


NEW YORK - A company that sells Internet domain names is facing criticisms for holding some in reserve as a consumer-protection measure, a move that also prevents interested parties from shopping around for better prices.


After weeks of testing, Network Solutions LLC began this week to grab names that people search for on its Web site but don't immediately register.
The name is locked up for about four days, during which the person who made the search can buy it directly from the company for $35 a year — a few times more than what many of its rivals charge. After that, the name returns to the pool and can be registered by anyone through any registration company.
Spokeswoman Susan Wade said Network Solutions was trying to combat domain name front running — the use of insider information to snatch desired domain names before an individual or business can register them.
But what it's doing shares similarities with the practice the company says it is trying to prevent, which the Internet's oversight agency for domain names already is investigating.
One blogger termed Network Solutions' action "deplorable."
"They actually think they are doing customers favors with this little dirty trick," wrote Jay Westerdal, president of Name Intelligence Inc., which analyzes domain name patterns. "These guys are clueless!"
Wade said the company was making adjustments in response to feedback but considered its measure a benefit for customers — by preventing domain name speculators and others with questionable intentions from grabbing the name first.
"We are not front running," she said. "We are not monetizing the page. We have no intent in keeping it. We have no intent in selling it in secondary markets at inflated prices — that is front running."
In October, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers launched a probe into domain name front running and likened it to a stock broker buying or selling shares ahead of a client's trade, in anticipation of a movement in price.
The committee said the practice isn't necessarily prohibited under current regulations but could dampen the domain name industry's image within the Internet community.
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Banning Suspected Hackers from using the Internet

Super-Asbos planned for cybercriminals

Tom Espiner
ZDNet UK
July 18, 2006, 14:00 BST

The Home Office is pushing for sweeping powers to ban suspected hackers from using the Internet, but security experts are concerned that civil liberties could be infringed

The Home Office wants to give the police and the courts sweeping new powers which could see suspected hackers and spammers receiving the cyber equivalent of an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).

The proposed Serious Crime Prevention Order is intended to combat organised crime where the police do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. It would enable civil courts to impose the orders on individuals, even if they had not been convicted of a crime.

The proposals are contained within a Home Office green paper called New Powers Against Organised and Financial Crime", published on Monday.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that the proposals, if enforced, would give the police and courts "extensive powers" against suspected hackers and spammers, which could extend to banning people from using the Internet.

Asbos give the courts almost unlimited powers when imposing conditions on the person receiving the order. Under the Home Office proposals, the courts would have almost unlimited discretion to impose the order if they believe it probable that a suspect had "acted in a way which facilitated or was likely to facilitate the commissioning of serious crime". In a civil court, hearsay is admissible evidence, and the burden of proof is lighter than criminal courts.

"The proposals would give extensive powers [to the courts and police]. Suspected hackers could be banned from the Internet, or banned from entering Internet cafés," a Home Office spokesman told ZDNet UK.

Those suspected of hacking or spamming could also have computer equipment taken away by the police.

"Equipment can be seized [if the proposals go through]," said the Home Office spokesman.

Suspected cybercriminals could also have severe limitations imposed on their financial dealings, requiring them to use "notified financial instruments" such as credit cards and bank accounts, and limit the amount of cash they can carry. They could also lose their businesses, property, or anything which may "have been used to facilitate serious crime".

The proposals also call for greater data transfer and mining capabilities between public and private sector bodies for law enforcement, enabling the police to track financial transactions.

Security professionals have flagged up the impact that the Home Office proposals would have on civil liberties.

"It would be a good piece in the law-enforcement arsenal, if judiciously used," said Richard Starnes, president of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA).

"Obviously one pitfall is that this could adversely affect people's civil liberties, without going through the judicial process. The judicial process is there for a reason — to prevent the State from abusing its citizens," said Starnes.

"In the US, this legislation would not be constitutional," said Starnes.

"If the Home Office can show it can use these powers in a reasonable and prudent manner, then I'm in favour," Starnes added.

The Home Office said that the courts would have to decide whether the proposed legislation would contravene individuals' rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, and insisted that the proposals were "a good idea".

"This [the proposals] is what we're going to push for," said the Home Office spokesman.

However, these proposals are not set in stone, as they will be debated in Parliament. Stakeholders including the police and judiciary will be consulted, as well as the public, who can download a PDF of the proposals from the Home Office Web site.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39279134,00.htm

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AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence

02:00 AM May, 17, 2006

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program.

In this recently surfaced statement, Klein details his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T office in San Francisco, and offers his interpretation of company documents that he believes support his case.

For its part, AT&T is asking a federal judge to keep those documents out of court, and to order the EFF to return them to the company. Here Wired News presents Klein's statement in its entirety, along with select pages from the AT&T documents.

---

AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens

31 December 2005

I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic. At the time I thought this was an outgrowth of the notorious Total Information Awareness program which was attacked by defenders of civil liberties. But now it's been revealed by The New York Times that the spying program is vastly bigger and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties. I am presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project.

---

AT&T Deploys Government Spy Gear on WorldNet Network

-- 16 January, 2004

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

The physical arrangement, the timing of its construction, the government-imposed secrecy surrounding it, and other factors all strongly suggest that its origins are rooted in the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program which brought forth vigorous protests from defenders of constitutionally protected civil liberties last year:

"As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant." The New York Times, 9 November 2002

To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting "research" using "artificial synthetic data" or information from "normal DOD intelligence channels" and hence there are "no U.S. citizen privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm. Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DOD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replaced by another.

Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from "AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services" and authored by the labs' consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. (See sample PDF 1-4.) This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not "leak" their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.

This problem is solved with "splitters" which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: Circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the "secret room." The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform -- in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter -- its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the internet.

The above-referenced document includes a diagram (PDF 3) showing the splitting of the light signal, a portion of which is diverted to "SG3 Secure Room," i.e., the so-called "Study Group" spy room. Another page headlined "Cabinet Naming" (PDF 2) lists not only the "splitter" cabinet but also the equipment installed in the "SG3" room, including various Sun devices, and Juniper M40e and M160 "backbone" routers. PDF file 4 shows one of many tables detailing the connections between the "splitter" cabinet on the 7th floor (location 070177.04) and a cabinet in the "secret room" on the 6th floor (location 060903.01). Since the San Francisco "secret room" is numbered 3, the implication is that there are at least several more in other cities (Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego are some of the rumored locations), which likely are spread across the United States.

One of the devices in the "Cabinet Naming" list is particularly revealing as to the purpose of the "secret room": a Narus STA 6400. Narus is a 7-year-old company which, because of its particular niche, appeals not only to businessmen (it is backed by AT&T, JP Morgan and Intel, among others) but also to police, military and intelligence officials. Last November 13-14, for instance, Narus was the "Lead Sponsor" for a technical conference held in McLean, Virginia, titled "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception and Internet Surveillance." Police officials, FBI and DEA agents, and major telecommunications companies eager to cash in on the "war on terror" had gathered in the hometown of the CIA to discuss their special problems. Among the attendees were AT&T, BellSouth, MCI, Sprint and Verizon. Narus founder, Dr. Ori Cohen, gave a keynote speech. So what does the Narus STA 6400 do?

"The (Narus) STA Platform consists of stand-alone traffic analyzers that collect network and customer usage information in real time directly from the message.... These analyzers sit on the message pipe into the ISP (internet service provider) cloud rather than tap into each router or ISP device" (Telecommunications magazine, April 2000). A Narus press release (1 Dec., 1999) also boasts that its Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) technology "captures comprehensive customer usage data ... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) is the only technology that provides complete visibility for all internet applications."

To implement this scheme, WorldNet's high-speed data circuits already in service had to be rerouted to go through the special "splitter" cabinet. This was addressed in another document of 44 pages from AT&T Labs, titled "SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure," dated 01/13/03 (PDF 5-6). "SIMS" is an unexplained reference to the secret room. Part of this reads as follows:

"A WMS (work) Ticket will be issued by the AT&T Bridgeton Network Operation Center (NOC) to charge time for performing the work described in this procedure document....
"This procedure covers the steps required to insert optical splitters into select live Common Backbone (CBB) OC3, OC12 and OC48 optical circuits."

The NOC referred to is in Bridgeton, Missouri, and controls WorldNet operations. (As a sign that government spying goes hand-in-hand with union-busting, the entire (Communication Workers of America) Local 6377 which had jurisdiction over the Bridgeton NOC was wiped out in early 2002 when AT&T fired the union work force and later rehired them as nonunion "management" employees.) The cut-in work was performed in 2003, and since then new circuits are connected through the "splitter" cabinet.

Another "Cut-In and Test Procedure" document dated January 24, 2003, provides diagrams of how AT&T Core Network circuits were to be run through the "splitter" cabinet (PDF 7). One page lists the circuit IDs of key Peering Links which were "cut-in" in February 2003 (PDF 8), including ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, AboveNet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet and Mae West. By the way, Mae West is one of two key internet nodal points in the United States (the other, Mae East, is in Vienna, Virginia). It's not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on -- it's the entire internet.

The next logical question is, what central command is collecting the data sent by the various "secret rooms"? One can only make educated guesses, but perhaps the answer was inadvertently given in the DOD Inspector General's report (cited above):

"For testing TIA capabilities, Darpa and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) created an operational research and development environment that uses real-time feedback. The main node of TIA is located at INSCOM (in Fort Belvoir, Virginia)…."

Among the agencies participating or planning to participate in the INSCOM "testing" are the "National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the DOD Counterintelligence Field Activity, the U.S. Strategic Command, the Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Command and the Joint Warfare Analysis Center." There are also "discussions" going on to bring in "non-DOD federal agencies" such as the FBI.

This is the infrastructure for an Orwellian police state. It must be shut down!

Source:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70908-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70908-2.html?tw=wn_story_page_next2

Hacker fears 'UFO cover-up'

Last Updated: Friday, 5 May 2006, 16:40 GMT 17:40 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Hacker fears 'UFO cover-up'

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Watch the interview In 2002, Gary McKinnon was arrested by the UK's national high-tech crime unit, after being accused of hacking into Nasa and the US military computer networks. He says he spent two years looking for photographic evidence of alien spacecraft and advanced power technology. America now wants to put him on trial, and if tried there he could face 60 years behind bars. Banned from using the internet, Gary spoke to Click presenter Spencer Kelly to tell his side of the story, ahead of his extradition hearing on Wednesday, 10 May. You can read what he had to say here. Spencer Kelly: Here's your list of charges: you hacked into the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, and Nasa, amongst other things. Why? Gary McKinnon: I was in search of suppressed technology, laughingly referred to as UFO technology. I think it's the biggest kept secret in the world because of its comic value, but it's a very important thing. Old-age pensioners can't pay their fuel bills, countries are invaded to award oil contracts to the West, and meanwhile secretive parts of the secret government are sitting on suppressed technology for free energy. SK: How did you go about trying to find the stuff you were looking for in Nasa, in the Department of Defense? GM: Unlike the press would have you believe, it wasn't very clever. I searched for blank passwords, I wrote a tiny Perl script that tied together other people's programs that search for blank passwords, so you could scan 65,000 machines in just over eight minutes. SK: So you're saying that you found computers which had a high-ranking status, administrator status, which hadn't had their passwords set - they were still set to default? GM: Yes, precisely. SK: Were you the only hacker to make it past the slightly lower-than-expected lines of defence? GM: Yes, exactly, there were no lines of defence. There was a permanent tenancy of foreign hackers. You could run a command when you were on the machine that showed connections from all over the world, check the IP address to see if it was another military base or whatever, and it wasn't. The General Accounting Office in America has again published another damning report saying that federal security is very, very poor. SK: Over what kind of period were you hacking into these computers? Was it a one-time only, or for the course of a week? A bird or a plane?... Gary was not able to get a picture of what he saw GM: Oh no, it was a couple of years. SK: And you went unnoticed for a couple of years? GM: Oh yes. I used to be careful about the hours. SK: So you would log on in the middle of the night, say? GM: Yes, I'd always be juggling different time zones. Doing it at night time there's hopefully not many people around. But there was one occasion when a network engineer saw me and actually questioned me and we actually talked to each other via WordPad, which was very, very strange. SK: So what did he say? And what did you say? GM: He said "What are you doing?" which was a bit shocking. I told him I was from Military Computer Security, which he fully believed. SK: Did you find what you were looking for? GM: Yes. SK: Tell us about it. GM: There was a group called the Disclosure Project. They published a book which had 400 expert witnesses ranging from civilian air traffic controllers, through military radar operators, right up to the chaps who were responsible for whether or not to launch nuclear missiles. They are some very credible, relied upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extra-terrestrial in origin, and we've captured spacecraft and reverse-engineered it. SK: What did you find inside Nasa? GM: One of these people was a Nasa photographic expert, and she said that in building eight of Johnson Space Centre they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. What she said was there was there: there were folders called "filtered" and "unfiltered", "processed" and "raw", something like that. I got one picture out of the folder, and bearing in mind this is a 56k dial-up, so a very slow internet connection, in dial-up days, using the remote control programme I turned the colour down to 4bit colour and the screen resolution really, really low, and even then the picture was still juddering as it came onto the screen. But what came on to the screen was amazing. It was a culmination of all my efforts. It was a picture of something that definitely wasn't man-made. It was above the Earth's hemisphere. It kind of looked like a satellite. It was cigar-shaped and had geodesic domes above, below, to the left, the right and both ends of it, and although it was a low-resolution picture it was very close up. This thing was hanging in space, the earth's hemisphere visible below it, and no rivets, no seams, none of the stuff associated with normal man-made manufacturing. SK: Is it possible this is an artist's impression? GM: I don't know... For me, it was more than a coincidence. This woman has said: "This is what happens, in this building, in this space centre". I went into that building, that space centre, and saw exactly that. SK: Do you have a copy of this? It came down to your machine. GM: No, the graphical remote viewer works frame by frame. It's a Java application, so there's nothing to save on your hard drive, or at least if it is, only one frame at a time. SK: So did you get the one frame? GM: No. SK: What happened? GM: Once I was cut off, my picture just disappeared. SK: You were actually cut off the time you were downloading the picture? GM: Yes, I saw the guy's hand move across. SK: You acknowledge that what you did was against the law, it was wrong, don't you? GM: Unauthorised access is against the law and it is wrong. SK: What do you think is a suitable punishment for someone who did what you did? GM: Firstly, because of what I was looking for, I think I was morally correct. Even though I regret it now, I think the free energy technology should be publicly available. I want to be tried in my own country, under the Computer Misuse Act, and I want evidence brought forward, or at least want the Americans to have to provide evidence in order to extradite me, because I know there is no evidence of damage. Nasa told Click that it does not discuss computer security issues or legal matters. It denied it would ever manipulate images in order to deceive and said it had a policy of open and full disclosure, adding it had no direct evidence of extra-terrestrial life.

SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4977134.stm

Digital Data Exchange (DDEX)

New group to standardize digital music data

By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: May 4, 2006, 10:50 AM PDT

Last modified: May 4, 2006, 11:53 AM PDT

In an effort to better track digital music sales, several big-name record companies, digital music services and music rights agencies have founded a consortium called Digital Data Exchange.

The purpose of DDEX (pronounced "dee-dex") is to establish standards for the meta-data in digital music files, mainly for sales and rights-tracking purposes.

Founding members of the consortium include artists' rights group ASCAP, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music, as well as several other music rights societies and agencies from the U.S., U.K. and Europe. Apple Computer, Microsoft and RealNetworks, which all provide digital music services, are also charter members.

"What we hope to accomplish is a foundation or baseline so that information about music and songs are going to be transmitted more efficiently," Chris Amenita, senior vice president of ASCAP, told CNET News.com. "Sort of like what the credit card industry did a number of years ago when they standardized their numerics."

As it stands now, content providers, publishing houses and digital music services have no standard way to deliver or receive information on the sales of music downloads. The record labels report to publishing houses when they release music files to music services in their own proprietary way. Each music service in turn reports the sales of specific digital music files to the publishing houses and content providers in their own format.

DDEX seeks to establish a standard format and tracking system for the meta-data attached to digital music files. Once the standard is established, identification of rights owners, sales and royalty information will be relayed in the same manner for all legally distributed music.

"Optimistically, it would be great if we could have something by the end of the year," Amenita said. "But with so many parties involved you have to be realistic."

In addition to streamlining rights reporting and sales, a long-term goal for DDEX is to eventually standardize the meta-data consumers use to digitally sort and organize their music.

That would mean that information such as artist name, track labels and other related content would appear in a standard format across devices and music programs.

Apple recently renewed its contracts with EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner to maintain its 99-cents-per-song pricing on iTunes. Last year at a press conference Apple CEO Steve Jobs publicly referred to record labels as "greedy."

SOURCE: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6068601.html?part=rss&tag=6068601&subj=news

Net neutrality bill

Democrats introduce new Net neutrality bill
The standalone bill is similar to a version crafted in the Senate

News Story by Grant Gross

MAY 02, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - After failing last week to add a provision to a telecommunications reform bill, four Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced a free-standing bill aimed at preventing broadband carriers from discriminating against competing Web content or services.

The bill, sponsored by Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Anna Eshoo of California and Rick Boucher of Virginia, would create a net neutrality law banning phone and cable companies from charging Web sites for faster data transmission, or blocking their online competitors' content and services. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

The four Democrats' amendment failed, on a vote of 34-22, largely along party lines, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a wide-ranging telecom reform bill last week.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to deregulate DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) providers in August 2005, and backers of a net neutrality law say broadband providers could now charge their competitors Internet tolls and slow down the content of those who don't pay.

"We cannot allow telecommunications companies to hijack the Internet," Inslee said in a statement. "After all, the beauty of the Internet is its open architecture."

Public Knowledge, a group advocating for consumer rights online, praised the new House bill. "[The] legislation recognizes that the cable and telephone companies are threatening to take over the Internet, and that strong nondiscrimination policies are needed to prevent them from limiting consumer choice and favoring their own content and services," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in an e-mail.

Broadband providers have repeatedly said they will not block or impair their customers' access to competing Web content or services, although some have talked about charging Web sites extra for a faster tier of service.

The House Democrats' bill comes a day after Senators Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat, introduced a telecom reform bill similar in some ways to the one that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee and awaits action on the House floor.

Like the House bill, the Senate bill would streamline the franchising requirements for telecom carriers looking to offer Internet-based television services in competition with cable providers. The Stevens bill would also require the use of a broadcast flag anticopying system to protect digital video broadcasts, and it would require cities considering municipally run wireless broadband networks to first allow private providers to bid on the project.

While the House bill endorses general net neutrality goals, the Senate bill would only instruct the FCC to study whether a net neutrality law is needed. Net neutrality advocates said the Senate bill fails to protect U.S. consumers against broadband providers that want to block or slow competing content or services.

But Randolph May, a senior fellow and director of communications policy at conservative think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, praised the Stevens bill for not mandating net neutrality rules. "Especially in light of the fact that presently there are no identified consumer harms that need remedying, this 'study first, mandate later' approach is much to be commended," May wrote in his blog.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legislation/story/0,10801,111090,00.html

ISP snooping gaining support

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: April 14, 2006, 4:03 AM PDT

The explosive idea of forcing Internet providers to record their customers' online activities for future police access is gaining ground in state capitols and in Washington, D.C.

Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate.

Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months. And some proposals would require providers to retain data that ordinarily never would have been kept at all.

CNET News.com was the first to report last June that the U.S. Department of Justice was quietly shopping around the idea of legally required data retention. But it was the European Parliament's vote in December for a data retention requirement that seems to have attracted broader interest inside the United States.

At a hearing last week, Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who heads a House oversight and investigations subcommitte, suggested that data retention laws would be useful to police investigating crimes against children.

"I absolutely think that that is an idea that is worth pursuing," an aide to Whitfield said in an interview on Thursday. "If those files were retained for a longer period of time, it would help in the uncovering and prosecution of these crimes." Another hearing is planned for April 27.

Internet providers generally offer three reasons why they are skeptical of mandatory data retention: first, it is not clear who will be able to access records of someone's online behavior; second, it's not clear who will pay for the data warehouses to be constructed; and third, it's not clear that police are hindered by current law as long as they move swiftly in investigations.

"What we haven't seen is any evidence where the data would have been helpful, where the problem was not caused by law enforcement taking too long when they knew a problem existed," said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, which represents small to midsize companies.

McClure said that while data retention aficionados cite child pornography, the stored data would be open to any type of investigation--including, for instance, those focused on drug crimes, tax fraud, or terrorism prosecutions. "The agenda behind this doesn't appear to be legitimate," he said.

Proposals for mandatory data retention tend to adhere to one of two models: Address storage or some kind of content storage. In the first model, businesses must record only which Internet address is assigned to a customer at a specific time. In the second, which is closer to what Europe adopted, more types of information must be retained--including telephone numbers dialed, contents of Web pages visited, recipients of e-mail messages and so on.

Without saying what model he favored, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff broadly endorsed data retention at a meeting of a departmental privacy panel last month. In response to a question, Chertoff said that federal police should be permitted to run queries against data repositories created and maintained by businesses for a set time.

"That might be a model for some kind of data retention issue," Chertoff said. "It might be one that would say the government, instead of holding the data itself, will allow it to remain in the private sector, provided the private sector retains it for a period of time so we can ping against it."

FBI Director Robert Mueller was more blunt. He was quoted by the Financial Times in January as saying: "There can be standardized regulations and rules relating to data retention and secondly a mechanism for the swift exchange of information." The remarks, made at the Davos economic forum, were part of Mueller's support of harmonizing national laws dealing with computer crime.

Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security responded to a request for comment on Thursday.

Agitation by state investigators
Federal politicians also are being lobbied by state law enforcement agencies, which say strict data retention laws will help them investigate crimes that have taken place a while ago.

Sgt. Frank Kardasz, head of Arizona's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, surveyed his colleagues in other states last month asking them what new law would help them do their jobs. "The most frequent response involved data retention by Internet service providers," or ISPs, Kardasz told News.com in an e-mail message on Thursday.

Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on when the connection is actually in use. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)

Police typically rely on subpoenas to find which customer was assigned which Internet address. "When subscriber information is not preserved by the ISPs the investigation dead-ends," said Kardaz, who has testified before Whitfield's subcommittee. "Ideally, we would like to have ISPs preserve subscriber information for one year."

Flint Waters, head of the Wyoming's Internet Crimes Against Children task force, also is pressing for federal data retention laws. He's interested in mandating records of who used what Internet address--not content such as chat conversations, e-mail messages, and so on.

"Individuals will activate their Webcam when they're abusing a child and they'll record the sexual assault live, and it may be 45 days before law enforcement finally gets notified," Waters said. "We reach out to service providers and they say they don't maintain those records, so the child remains in that environment, and there's nothing we can do to help them."

Waters said that Comcast was unable to help police in an investigation dealing with the rape of a 2-year-old child because logs are routinely deleted as is standard business practice. "We'd like to see one year minimum" for data retention, Waters said. "Two years would be even better."

Comcast did not take a position on data retention laws when asked on Thursday. But Jeanne Russo, a Comcast spokeswoman, said: "Comcast is horrified by any act of violence inflicted upon a child and takes this issue very seriously. Comcast promptly processes and responds to valid legal and law enforcement requests according to law and as described in our applicable privacy policy."

Colorado's legislature is considering an amendment (click here for PDF) to a bill dealing with sex offenders.

The amendment, sponsored by state Sen. Ron Tupa, a Democrat, requires Internet providers to "maintain, for at least 180 days after assignment, a record of the Internet protocol address" assigned to each customer. Violations can be punished by fines of up to $10,000 per incident.

"Preservation" vs. "Retention"
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.

A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."

In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.

That pair of laws--coupled with Internet providers' willingness to cooperate when a child is being harmed--has created a system that works today, says Kate Dean, director of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association.

"Law enforcement has not demonstrated that the absence of mandatory data retention is detrimental to the public interest," said Dean, whose board members include representatives of AOL, Verizon, BellSouth and EarthLink.

Dean said she's not sure whether U.S. data retention proposals being discussed are likely to mandate mere address recording or also require the storage of the contents of e-mail messages and Web pages visited. A representative of one large Internet provider who did not want to be quoted expressed concern that content could be swept up into legislation--and cited the privacy and security risks of having such a massive data warehouse available.

Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, who's the senior Democrat on the House oversight and investigations subcommittee, expressed skepticism about forcible data retention requirements in an interview on Thursday. He said he would not "be in a rush to support" data retention requirements and would rather see the private sector come up with a better solution.

"I'm against this child porn stuff, but at the same time, let's not further erode the rights of the American people," Stupak said. "That's what I'll be looking for. I'll be looking at (proposed laws) with a very close, constitutional eye as to the validity of the proposals... and I'd like to hear from private industry what they can do."

The European precedent
One question is how closely U.S. proposals will follow those that Europe already has adopted. In December, the European Parliament approved a U.K.-backed requirement saying that communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.

The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time, and duration of phone calls, voice over Internet Protocol calls, or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.

According to a memo accompanying the proposed rules (click here for PDF), European politicians approved the rules because not all operators of Internet and communications services were storing information about citizens' activities to the extent necessary for law enforcement and national security.

"These developments are making it much harder for public authorities to fulfill their duties in preventing and combating organised crime and terrorism, and easier for criminals to communicate with each other without the fear that their communications data can be used by law enforcement authorities to thwart them," the memo said.

Some U.S. companies are so alarmed by this requirement that they've talked about scaling back their operations in Ireland, which boasts some of the region's most aggressive data retention laws. Joe Macri, managing director of Microsoft Ireland, told the Irish Times last month: "Irish legislation is going beyond what is required from an EU perspective and is going to put significant additional costs on businesses...While we respect and understand the needs and concerns of the law enforcement agencies, there is also a need to take personal privacy concerns and the broader needs of business into consideration."

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, was the member of the Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee who asked Chertoff about data retention last month.

In an interview this week, Harper warned that mandatory data retention may cause more harm than good. "The true criminals will go and use random Wi-Fi nodes where you can get anonymous access," he said. "You haven't done anything but increase surveillance of law-abiding citizens."

CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report.

Judge Orders Deleted Emails Turned Over

http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+Judge+orders+Gmail+disclosure/2100-1047_3-6050295.html?tag=nefd.top
http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+Ex-employee+faces+suit+over+file+deletion/2100-1030_3-6048449.html

"In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena sent to Google orders the turnover of the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/17/1548216

Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista

Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista

Exclusive from:

Fri Feb 10, 3:00 AM ET

Michael Desmond

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you probably know that the latest version of Windows--called Vista--is due to hit store shelves later this year (in time for the holidays, Microsoft tells us). T

Windows XP offers a little something for everyone, from eye-catching graphics and new bundled applications to more-rigorous security. In fact, there is so much in the new operating system that it can be tough to get a handle on it all.

I've been noodling around with a recent beta version of Windows Vista (Build 5270) and had a chance to make some observations. While the sleek new look and polished interface caught my eye, it's what's under the covers that impressed me most. Microsoft's done a great job of improving security across the board. Things like Windows and spyware library updates are streamlined, and I definitely appreciate the more robust Backup software.

Still, there's plenty of unfinished work left to do. Internet Explorer 7 struggled to properly render some Web pages, and I found local network connectivity to be a hit-or-miss affair. And then there's the stuff that isn't even in there yet--like the intriguing Windows Sidebar, which will put real-time weather info, stock quotes, system status, RSS feeds, and other information on the display.

So during my time with Windows Vista, I kept an eye out for the reasons I--and you--might ultimately want to lay my hands on the new OS when it's available. And frankly, if you buy a new Windows-based PC at the end of this year or any time in, say, the next five years, you'll probably end up with Vista by default.

Keep in mind, this is based solely on my experience with prerelease software (and a whole new beta could be out by the time you read this). Features get tweaked, they come and go, but from what we can tell, Vista is now starting to harden into the product that will be running many, many desktops for the foreseeable future. And by and large, that's a good thing.

Here's what to be excited about:

1. Security, security, security: Windows XP Service Pack 2 patched a lot of holes, but Vista takes security to the next level. There are literally too many changes to list here, from the bidirectional software firewall that monitors inbound and outbound traffic to Windows Services Hardening, which prevents obscure background processes from being hijacked and changing your system. There's also full-disk encryption, which prevents thieves from accessing your data, even if they steal the PC out from under your nose.

Perhaps most crucial (and least sexy) is the long-overdue User Account Protection, which invokes administrator privileges as needed, such as during driver updates or software installations. UAP makes it much more convenient for users to operate Vista with limited rights (meaning the system won't let them do certain things, like load software, without clearance from an administrator). This in turn limits the ability of malware to hose your system.

2. Internet Explorer 7: IE gets a much-needed, Firefox-inspired makeover, complete with tabbed pages and better privacy management. There's also the color-coded Address Bar that lets you know if a page is secured by a digital key, or, thanks to new antiphishing features, if it's a phony Web site just looking to steal information about you.

These features will all be available for Windows XP users who download IE7. But Vista users get an important extra level of protection: IE7 on Vista will run in what Microsoft calls "protected mode"--a limited-rights mode that prevents third-party code from reaching your system. It's about darn time.

3. Righteous eye candy: For the first time, Microsoft is building high-end graphics effects into Windows. The touted Aero Glass interface features visually engaging 3D rendering, animation, and transparencies. Translucent icons, program windows, and other elements not only look cool, they add depth and context to the interface. For example, hover your cursor over minimized programs that rest on the taskbar and you'll be able to see real-time previews of what's running in each window without opening them full-screen. Now you can see what's going on behind the scenes, albeit at a cost: You need powerful graphics hardware and a robust system to manage all the effects.

4. Desktop search: Microsoft has been getting its lunch handed to it by Google and Yahoo on the desktop, but Vista could change all that. The new OS tightly integrates instant desktop search, doing away with the glacially slow and inadequate search function in XP. Powerful indexing and user-assignable metadata make searching for all kinds of data--including files, e-mails, and Web content--a lot easier. And if you're running Vista on a Windows Longhorn network, you can perform searches across the network to other PCs.

5. Better updates: Vista does away with using Internet Explorer to access Windows Update, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up-to-date. The result is quicker response and a more tightly streamlined process. The update-tracking mechanism, for instance, is much quicker to display information about your installation. And now key components, such as the Windows Defender antispyware module, get their updates through this central point. Like other housekeeping features, a better Windows Update isn't a gee-whiz upgrade, but it should make it easier--and more pleasant--to keep your PC secure.

6. More media: Over the years, one of the key reasons to upgrade versions of Windows has been the free stuff Gates and Company toss into the new OS, and Vista is no exception. Windows Media Player (perhaps my least favorite application of all time) gets a welcome update that turns the once-bloated player into an effective MP3 library. The Windows Photo Gallery finally adds competent photo-library-management functionality to Windows, so you can organize photos; apply metatags, titles, and ratings; and do things like light editing and printing. The DVD Maker application, which was still very rough when I looked at it, promises to add moviemaking capabilities--along the lines of Movie Maker--to the operating system. There are even some nice new games tucked into the bundle.

7. Parental controls: Families, schools, and libraries will appreciate the tuned-up parental controls, which let you limit access in a variety of ways. Web filtering can block specific sites, screen out objectionable content by selected type, and lock out file downloads. You can also restrict each account's access by time of day or day of the week. As a dad, I can tell you this will be great for keeping kids off the PC while you're at work, for instance. You can even block access to games based on their Entertainment Software Rating Board ratings.

8. Better backups: When Windows 95 first came out, the typical hard disk was, maybe, 300MB in size. Today, desktops routinely ship with 300GB or 400GB hard drives. And yet, the built-in data-backup software in Windows has changed little in the past decade. Windows Vista boasts a much-improved backup program that should help users avoid wholesale digital meltdowns. Microsoft also tweaked the useful System Restore feature--which takes snapshots of your system state so you can recover from a nasty infection or botched software installation.

9. Peer-to-peer collaboration: The Windows Collaboration module uses peer-to-peer technology to let Vista users work together in a shared workspace. You can form ad hoc workgroups and then jointly work on documents, present applications, and pass messages. You can even post "handouts" for others to review.

10. Quick setup: Beta code alert: There are some Vista features I hope dearly for even though they haven't been built yet. This is one of them. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's co-president, says that Windows Vista boasts a re-engineered install routine, which will slash setup times from about an hour to as little as 15 minutes. Hurray! The new code wasn't in the beta version of Vista that Microsoft sent to me--my aging rig took well over an hour to set up--so I'll believe it when I see it. Still, any improvement in this area is welcome.

Five Things That Will Give You Pause

All this is not to say that Vista is a slam-dunk and everyone should be running out to buy it as soon as Microsoft takes the wraps off. Heck, Windows XP has developed into a fairly stable, increasingly secure OS. Why mess with that?

Yes, during my time with Vista, I've found more than enough features to get excited about--features that will make a sizable chunk of Windows users want to upgrade. So why would anyone in their right mind stick with what they've got? Here are a few reasons:

Pay that piper: Vista is an operating system. It's the stuff your applications run on. But it'll cost $100 or more to make the switch. Unless you're buying a new PC and starting from scratch, you may be better off saving the money for something else.

Where's my antivirus?: For all the hype about security in Windows Vista, users may be disappointed to learn that antivirus software will not be part of the package. There's every indication that an online subscription service--possibly under the OneCare rubric--will offer antivirus protection to Vista users down the road. But for the time being, you'll need to turn to third-party companies like Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft, and others for virus protection.

Watch that hourglass: Vista is a power hog. Unless you have a top-end PC with high-end graphics hardware, for instance, you won't see one of the coolest parts of the new OS--the Aero Glass interface. Microsoft did the smart thing by offering Aero Basic and Windows Classic looks as well, which will let older and slower PCs run Vista. It just won't look as pretty.

Curse the learning curve: Microsoft has already ditched some aggressive ideas--such as the whole "virtual folders" thing--because the concepts proved too confusing for users. Even so, you'll find that the new Windows changes a lot of old tricks, and not always for the better. Heck, it took me almost five minutes to find the Run command, which used to show up right in the Start menu. And many users may struggle with the new power scheme, which defaults to putting the PC into hibernation rather than shutting down. I know it frustrated me the first time I wanted to power down the system to swap out a disk drive.

Meet the old boss, same as the new boss: Microsoft has added lots of new stuff to Vista, but some features are just warmed-over fare. Windows Mail is nothing more than a rebranded Outlook Express, and Windows Defender is simply an updated version of Microsoft AntiSpyware.

So keep your eyes peeled for future previews of Vista. It may not be perfect (what software is?), but in a lot of ways, it's a giant leap forward.

Amazon’s Alexa Commoditizes Search

http://gigaom.com/2005/12/12/amazons-alexa-commoditizes-search

About a month ago Nicholas Carr suggested that Internet search was fast becoming a commodity, because there was very little differentiation between MSN, Yahoo or Google. That’s why all the action around toolbars, desktop widgets and desktop search.
Google knows this, as do its competitors. They’re all looking for ways to increase switching costs, or, as we used to say, make search sticky.
Carr made some good, though debatable, points. But even he couldn’t have predicted the ultimate act of commoditization - giving away the very index. John Battelle, reports that Amazon.com’s Alexa is planning to do exactly that, and will announce that as soon as tomorrow.

Anyone can also use Alexa’s servers and processing power to mine its index to discover things - perhaps, to outsource the crawl needed to create a vertical search engine, for example. Or maybe to build new kinds of search engines entirely, or …well, whatever creative folks can dream up……The fees? One dollar per CPU hour consumed. $1 per gig of storage used. $1 per 50 gigs of data processed. $1 per gig of data uploaded (if you are putting your new service up on their platform)….consumption charges” depending on “consuming processor cycles, or storage, or bandwidth.”
The argument thus far has been that it is tough to do the indexing, build the infrastructure and stay competitive. Only a handful have been able to compete with the GYM gang. Gigablast (my personal favorite) is one such search service. Still, no one has pulled an Alexa. Interesting move, but quite understandable. Amazon knows it has little or no chance of being a player in the search game. John thinks that by offering an “outsourced index” it become a player. I see it slightly differently - Amazon.com is trying to inflict death by a thousand cuts to rivals including the GYM Gang.

Internet Scammers Keep Working in Nigeria

Aug 6, 4:13 PM (ET)
By DULUE MBACHU
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050806/D8BQHJROA.html

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Day in, day out, a strapping, amiable 24-year-old who calls himself Kele B. heads to an Internet cafe, hunkers down at a computer and casts his net upon the cyber-waters.

Blithely oblivious to signs on the walls and desks warning of the penalties for Internet fraud, he has sent out tens of thousands of e-mails telling recipients they have won about $6.4 million in a bogus British government "Internet lottery."

"Congratulation! You Are Our Lucky Winner!" it says.
So far, Kele says, he has had only one response. But he claims it paid off handsomely. An American took the bait, he says, and coughed up "fees" and "taxes" of more than $5,000, never to hear from Kele again.

Festac Town, a district of Lagos where the scammers ply their schemes, has become notorious for "419 scams," named for the section of the Nigerian penal code that outlaws them.
In Festac Town, an entire community of scammers overnights on the Internet. By day they flaunt their smart clothes and cars and hang around the Internet cafes, trading stories about successful cons and near misses, and hatching new plots.

Festac Town is where communication specialists operating underground sell foreign telephone lines over which a scammer can purport to be calling from any city in the world. Here lurk master forgers and purveyors of such software as "e-mail extractors," which can harvest e-mail addresses by the million.

Now, however, a 3-year-old crackdown is yielding results, Nigerian authorities say.
Nuhu Ribadu, head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, says cash and assets worth more than $700 million were recovered from suspects between May 2003 and June 2004. More than 500 suspects have been arrested, more than 100 cases are before the courts and 500 others are under investigation, he said.

The agency won its first big court victory in May when Mike Amadi was sentenced to 16 years in prison for setting up a Web site that offered juicy but phoney procurement contracts. Amadi cheekily posed as Ribadu himself and used the agency's name. He was caught by an undercover agent posing as an Italian businessman.

This month the biggest international scam of all - though not one involving the Internet - ended in court convictions. Amaka Anajemba was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and ordered to return $25.5 million of the $242 million she helped to steal from a Brazilian bank.
The trial of four co-defendants is to start in September.

Why Nigeria? There are many theories. The nation of 130 million, Africa's most populous, is well educated, and English, the lingua franca of the scam industry, is the official language. Nigeria bursts with talent, from former NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon to Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka.

But with World Bank studies showing a quarter of urban college graduates are unemployed, crime offers tempting career opportunities - in drug dealing, immigrant-trafficking, oil-smuggling, and Internet fraud.

The scammers thrived during oil-rich Nigeria's 15 years of brutal and corrupt military rule, and democracy was restored only six years ago.
"We reached a point when law enforcement and regulatory agencies seemed nonexistent. But the stance of the present administration has started changing that," said Ribadu, the scam-busting chief.

President Olusegun Obasanjo is winning U.S. praise for his crackdown. Interpol, the FBI and other Western law enforcement agencies have stepped in to help, says police spokesman Emmanuel Ighodalo, and Nigerian police have received equipment and Western training in combating Internet crime and money-laundering.

Experts say Nigerian scams continue to flood e-mail systems, though many are being blocked by spam filters that get smarter and more aggressive. America Online Inc. Nicholas Graham says Nigerian messages lack the telltale signs of other spam - such as embedded Web links - but its filters are able to be alert to suspect mail coming from a specific range of Internet addresses.
Also, the scams have a limited shelf life.

In the con that Internet users are probably most familiar with, the e-mailer poses as a corrupt official looking for help in smuggling a fortune to a foreign bank account. E-mail or fax recipients are told that if they provide their banking and personal details and deposit certain sums of money, they'll get a cut of the loot.

But there are other scams, like the fake lotteries.
Kele B., who won't give his surname, says he couldn't find work after finishing high school in 2000 in the southeastern city of Owerri, so he drifted with friends to Lagos, where he tried his hand at boxing.

Then he discovered the Web.
Now he spends his mornings in Internet cafes on secondhand computers with aged screens, waiting "to see if my trap caught something," he says.

Elekwa, a chubby-faced 28-year-old who also keeps his surname to himself, shows up in Festac Town driving a Lexus and telling how he was jobless for two years despite having a diploma in computer science.
His break came four years ago when the chief of a fraud gang saw him solve what seemed like "a complex computer problem" at a business center in the southeastern city of Umuahia and lured him to Lagos.
He won't talk about his scams, only about their fruits: "Now I have three cars, I have two houses and I'm not looking for a job anymore."