-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 205 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send $$ to RadTimes!! --> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Eighteen months for 'White Hat' Hacker --Brave new babies --14 Illegal Immigrants Die in Desert --Human trafficking on the rise --White House site crippled by DoS attack --Sensitive E-mails 'Being Read By Spy Network' --Those Seattle WTO riots? It's just a game now, folks --China Clones Scores of Plants, Pigs, Sheep, Rabbits, Cows --Spies hang on our every word --U.S. 'Impediment' to Human Rights, Report Declares --You are being watched =================================================================== Eighteen months for 'White Hat' Hacker http://www.securityfocus.com/news/207 By Kevin Poulsen May 21, 2001 7:00 PM PT San Jose, Calf.--Computer security researcher and former FBI informant Max Butler was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison for launching an Internet worm that crawled through hundreds of military and defense contractor computers over a few days in 1998. In handing down the sentence, federal judge James Ware rejected defense attorney Jennifer Granick's argument that the Air Force, and other victims of the worm, improperly calculated their financial losses from the hack. The judge also declined to give Butler credit for his brief stint as an undercover FBI informant, during which he infiltrated a gang of hackers that had penetrated 3Com's corporate phone network. But the judge refused prosecutor Ross Nadel's request that Butler be immediately taken into custody in the courtroom, and allowed the hacker to remain free on bail until June 25th, when he's scheduled to report to prison. With credit for good behavior, Butler will be eligible for assignment to a community halfway house as early as April of next year, and will be released in mid-October 2002. He'll then serve three years of supervised release during which, under a special order, Butler will be barred from accessing the Internet without permission of his probation officer. Ware also ordered Butler to pay $60,000 in restitution. A consultant who specializes in performing penetration tests on corporate networks, the 28-year-old remained well regarded in computer security circles even after his March, 2000 indictment. Butler is known for his expertise in intrusion detection: the science of automatically analyzing Internet traffic for "signatures" indicative of an attack, and he created arachnids, a popular open source catalog of attack signatures that forms part of an overall public resource at WhiteHats.com Butler, known as "Max Vision" to friends and associates, crossed the line in June of 1998, at a time when much of the Internet was still vulnerable to a hole that had been discovered months earlier in a ubiquitous piece of software called the BIND "named" domain server. The hacker group ADM published a computer program capable of spreading through vulnerable systems automatically. Butler launched a special strain of the worm that penetrated systems, but also automatically closed the BIND hole as it spread, forestalling attacks from other hackers. Tall and soft-spoken, wearing a blazer and rumpled cargo pants, the hacker apologetically told Judge Ware that he got caught up in the need to close a serious security hole. "I got swept up," said Butler. "It's hard to explain the feelings of someone who's gotten caught up in the computer security field... I felt at the time that I was in a race. That if I went in and closed the holes quickly, I could do it before people with more malicious intentions could use them." Butler did not address why he left malevolent features from the ADM worm in his own program, including one that created a secret back door on every system it penetrated. "What I did was reprehensible," Butler told the court. "I've hurt my reputation in the computer security field. I've hurt my family and friends." Judge Ware emphasized the need to deter other hackers. "There's a need for those who would follow your footsteps to know that this can result in incarceration," said Ware. =================================================================== Brave new babies http://www.newscientist.com/newsletter/news.jsp?id=ns229228 An automated IVF chip could lead to production-line embryos by Anil Ananthaswamy From New Scientist magazine, 26 May 2001. THE children of the future may be conceived and spend their first few days of development on a computer-controlled chip. In a move recalling Aldous Huxley's famous production lines for making babies in Brave New World, researchers in the US are building a "chip" that can automatically carry out all the steps involved in IVF, from fertilising eggs to preparing embryos for implantation. Ultimately, such devices--which amount to artificial reproductive tracts--may even be able to sort and test embryos for genetic flaws. So far researchers David Beebe and Matthew Wheeler have built prototypes that can carry out the major steps involved in IVF, though not all on the same chip. Far more mouse embryos develop successfully on these devices than by traditional methods. The researchers say they expect the technology will first be used for livestock production, but their eventual aim is to use it for human embryos. The work could be the first step towards a future in which IVF becomes the norm, says George Seidel, a reproductive physiologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "Fifty or 100 years from now, our in vitro procedures for parts or even all of pregnancy may end up being safer than dealing with the various things that occur in the body--in terms of viruses that the mother comes across, toxins, and so on." In conventional IVF, sperm and eggs are dumped into a Petri dish where the fertilised eggs grow until they're ready to be implanted. As embryos need different culture media at different stages, embryologists transfer them from one dish to another via a pipette. "It's like being plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean and stuck into the Pacific Ocean," says Beebe, a biomedical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. So Beebe and Wheeler, an embryologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, designed a device to mimic conditions inside a female's reproductive tract. The device, made of a transparent elastomer, resembles a small glass slide and contains a network of tiny channels, each around 0.2 millimetres in depth and width. The researchers connect the channels to programmable syringe pumps, which can move embryos around and add or remove fluids. To test the device, the team cultured mouse embryos to see how many developed to the "blastocyst" stage, ready to be implanted. "In 48 hours, in the traditional Petri dish, none of them made it to the blastocyst stage. In our channels, about 75 per cent made it," says Beebe. "The embryos were transplanted into hosts and live pups were born. So there doesn't appear to be any detrimental effect." The researchers also used the device to remove the "zona pellucida" shell that encases early embryos. In human IVF, this "assisted hatching" can be used to encourage implantation. Traditionally, the embryo is put into an acid medium and quickly removed when the embryologist sees the zona break up. But waiting this long may damage the embryos. By washing acid over mouse embryos "parked" in a microchannel on a chip (see Graphic), the team found even with a brief exposure, the zona broke up after the acid was removed. "People have been leaving embryos in the acid too long," says Beebe. In a separate experiment, the team matured mouse eggs inside the channels, then fertilised them by squirting sperm over them. Eventually they hope to integrate all the steps into a single artificial reproductive tract. Crucially, the chip-like device not only allows many embryos to be cultured at once, it allows each one to be individually manipulated and tracked in separate channels. That should make it easier to weed out poor-quality embryos before implantation. Embryologists already inspect embryos under the microscope, and some IVF clinics also measure their consumption of oxygen and glucose and the amount of carbon dioxide they release. All this could be done more routinely on a reproductive chip, says Beebe. In time, the device could even make it easier to carry out pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, where a few cells are removed to screen embryos for genetic disorders. "That involves more sophisticated manipulation than our current devices can do. But it is something we are working on," says Beebe. But quality control raises ethical issues, says Tom Shakespeare of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute in Newcastle. "If we are talking about maximising the chances of becoming pregnant and carrying to term, then there's less argument. But if we are talking about either reducing genetic diversity or indeed enhancing selection then there are major questions." More at: IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (vol 48, p 570) =================================================================== Thursday May 24, 2001 14 Illegal Immigrants Die in Desert By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, Associated Press Writer WELLTON, Ariz. (AP) - Fourteen illegal immigrants have died and at least two others were missing Thursday, five days after smugglers abandoned them in the blistering heat of the Arizona desert. The death toll was a record for immigrant smuggling in Arizona. Rescuers using helicopters and four-wheel-drive vehicles found one survivor early Thursday and, based on footprints, believed two Mexican immigrants remained missing. They had earlier found 11 survivors, some unconscious, who were hospitalized for heat exhaustion and severe dehydration. Searchers had found 11 bodies Wednesday, and one immigrant died en route to a hospital. Two more bodies were found overnight, Border Patrol spokesman Maurice Moore said in Yuma. ``We intend to work this until we've made sure that there's no one left out there,'' Moore said. ``It's in the middle of nowhere there.'' Survivors said the immigrants, including some said to be from the Mexican state of Veracruz, were smuggled into the United States on Saturday east of Yuma, in the rugged terrain of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. The smugglers left them there, promising to return with water and instructing them to walk for ``a couple of hours'' to a highway. But they never came back. The highway was more than 50 miles from where they were abandoned. The Border Patrol began its search Wednesday after five sunburned survivors found agents and sought help. Temperatures climbed as high as 115 degrees. Search teams were operating out of Wellton, 130 miles southwest of Phoenix. The bodies were discovered about 25 miles from the Mexican border. The 14 immigrants who succumbed to exposure made up the largest group of border crossers ever to die in Arizona, Border Patrol spokesman Rene Noriega said in Tucson. He didn't know what the worst death toll in other states was. In July 1980, 13 Salvadorans died in the desert Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, 50 miles east of where the current group died. ``This is evidence of the callousness and the ruthlessness of these smugglers who have now taken human lives to turn them into a commodity,'' Noriega said. Arizona became a popular crossing point for illegal immigrants in the 1990s, after crackdowns in California and Texas pushed more people to try to enter the country through remote and dangerous areas. The Border Patrol said 106 people died while crossing southern Arizona's deserts during the 12-month period that ended on Sept. 30, 2000. Many of them died from exposure. ``What's causing it is the deadly strategy of the Border Patrol that has forced people into the most hazardous areas of the desert,'' said the Rev. John Fife, a Tucson pastor who supports a program that built a watering station for immigrants in Arizona. In August 1997, eight Mexican illegal immigrants drowned after being swept away by a 15-foot high wall of water in a normally dry wash a few yards inside Arizona. In June 1996, five illegal immigrants from Mexico died of exposure in the desert 30 miles south of Casa Grande. ``People are very, very ill-prepared to understand the distances and the dangers and threats to their lives,'' said the Rev. Robin Hoover, a Tucson pastor who sets up water stations for border crossers. ``For many of the people who cross, they have no idea what they are encountering.'' ------------- On the Net: Border Patrol: http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/lawenfor/bpatrol/ =================================================================== Human trafficking on the rise http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/05/24/labour/index.html May 25, 2001 GENEVA, Switzerland -- Forced labour and human trafficking is increasing across the world, a United Nations study says. Women, children and migrants were most at risk, with demand for domestic staff and workers in the sex industry responsible for fuelling the trade. "The growth of forced labour worldwide is deeply disturbing," said Juan Somavia, director general of the U.N. International Labour Organisation. "The emerging picture is one where slavery, oppression and exploitation of society's most vulnerable members have by no means been consigned to the past." He called on the world to "re-examine its conscience and instigate action to abolish forced labour and the often terrible living and working conditions that accompany it." Most countries in the world were either sending countries, transit countries or receiving countries, the United Nations body said in the 128-page report. Although the Geneva-based ILO gave no overall figures, it said the United States was believed to be the destination for 50,000 trafficked women and children each year alone, with New York and California the main entry points. The report said slavery was increasingly rare but still found in a few countries. "The wholesale abduction of individuals and communities in such conflict-torn societies as Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Sudan is not uncommon," the report said. According to the ILO, domestic workers in many countries were trapped into forced labour -- prevented from leaving employers' homes -- through tactics such as withholding pay or identity documents. In many countries in South Asia and Central and South America, millions are living in conditions of debt bondage -- tied to their employers by unpayable debts. In the sex industry, workers were also forced to stay in the job through debt. "The person may enter into an agreement with the recruiting agent on an apparently voluntary basis ... but conditions at the destination point are likely to involve coercion, including physical restrictions on freedom of movement, abuse or violence, and fraud," it said. "Victims frequently find themselves trapped in debt bondage and other slavery-like conditions." Europe has seen an explosion of trafficking since the break-up of the former Soviet Union, with men and women from eastern Europe and the Balkans constituting the vast majority of those on the move, according to the ILO. "Poverty, unemployment, civil disorder, political repression and gender and racial discrimination make for an all too propitious environment for traffickers' exploitation of vulnerable people." Authorities had difficulty detecting the trade as it is often carried out by international gangs who find it less dangerous than drug smuggling. People smugglers have rarely been caught and the punishments handed down were usually lighter than for drug smuggling, the ILO said. Main destinations were the large cities of Western Europe, Israel, Japan and the U.S., the report said. The report pointed to Myanmar, or Burma, as the "prime instance of an extreme case of forced labour." The country is subject to ILO sanctions following revelations of widespread use of forced labour for infrastructure projects or by the military. In a recent high-profile incident of trafficking, 43 children and young adults were set adrift in a ship off the Benin coast. The accounts of children removed from the ship when it docked confirmed the ship was involved in child trafficking, the U.N. children's fund and an aid group concluded. But both organisations stopped short of alleging that any of the 43 children and young adults aboard was destined for slavery. =================================================================== White House site crippled by DoS attack http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6044030.html?tag=mn_hd By CNET News.com Staff May 25, 2001 The White House Web site has been hit by its third denial of service attack this month, rendering the site inaccessible for more than six hours on Tuesday. The hacker attempt on the whitehouse.gov domain, which crashed the site, lasted from 11 a.m. until after 5 p.m. PDT Tuesday. The White House confirmed that the barrage of page requests created through the attack was "heavy enough to block most legitimate users." On May 4, the White House.gov site was down for more than three hours due to a similar attack, purported to be linked to a string of Web site hacks and defacements organized by Chinese and pro-Chinese Internet vandals during the first week of May. The Hackers Union of China admitted responsibility for numerous attacks on U.S. government and commercial sites at the start of May. It has not been confirmed whether the same group was behind Tuesday's attack. =================================================================== Sensitive E-mails 'Being Read By Spy Network' Computer users were today urged to encrypt their emails in a bid to protect themselves against a worldwide electronic spy network which does not officially exist. The danger comes from Echelon, the Anglo-American intelligence operation, say Euro-MPs in a report at the end of a year-long inquiry. Their report warns the government that Britain could be in breach of the European convention on human rights because of its participation in the global spying operation. Full story - Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A89250-2001May28.html) Background: Echelon explained - Guardian Unlimited (http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,498147,00.html) Key player: Echelon temporary committee - European Parliament ( http://www.europarl.eu.int/committees/echelon_home.htm) Background: Echelon watch - Cyber-rights and Cyber-liberties (UK) (http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/echelon/) =================================================================== Those Seattle WTO riots? It's just a game now, folks http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134300484_wtogame29m.html Associated Press Tuesday, May 29, 2001 TACOMA - If you missed the riots and protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle a year and a half ago, you may soon get another chance. Video-game players can march down the middle of a city street to the beat of loud music, launch a rocket or brick into a storefront window, even punch out an officer in riot gear while playing "State of Emergency." Rockstar Games revealed the game - due in October for Sony PlayStation 2 - earlier this month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. No coincidence A spokesman for Rockstar has acknowledged that the game has strong ties to the WTO riots in late 1999. Take-Two Interactive Software, parent company for Rockstar Games, was unavailable for comment yesterday, a holiday. Some 50,000 people marched through Seattle, disrupting the WTO meeting and downtown business in protesting global issues such as human rights, labor issues and the environment. Most were peaceful, but conflicts surrounding the WTO meeting resulted in the arrests of 600 people and property damage of $3 million. "State of Emergency" is billed as an "urban riot game set in the near future, where the oppressive American Trade Organization (ATO) has declared a state of emergency. ... It is up to you to smash up everything and everyone in order to destabilize the ATO." Scoring points A player can overturn vehicles, incite rumbles between rival groups and attack bystanders. Extra points can be made by punching out an ATO officer in riot gear, knocking him to the ground and jumping on him. The game already has drawn criticism. "If you want your child to become a violent anarchist, this is a great training game," said state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle. Dickerson, who joined the ranks of peaceful WTO demonstrators, called the game "a slap in the face of the peaceful ideals of 40,000 protesters." After watching a video clip on the publisher's Web site, she said the game seems to show anarchists whose violent actions all but obscured the message of the peaceful demonstrations in Seattle. State Rep. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, a state trooper who was on duty in Seattle during the WTO meetings, also found fault with the game's premise. "To re-enact things like that in a digital arena sends a very strong message," he said. "It's just better to try to heal a community." Dick Lilly, spokesman for Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, said the game will never show up in any city-run community center. "I think research has raised enough serious questions about these kinds of violent games that people should be very skeptical and critical of this kind of content," he said. It's not child's play The Rockstar spokesman said the company is being careful to follow advertising guidelines set by the Entertainment Software Rating Board to ensure that "State of Emergency" isn't marketed to children. Arthur Pober, president of the ratings board, refused to comment on the game, which has not yet been rated. The vast majority of games fall into the E (Everyone) and T (Teen) categories. Most of the M (Mature) games are aimed at older players.. =================================================================== Tuesday, May 29, 2001 China Clones Scores of Plants, Pigs, Sheep, Rabbits, Cows <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200105/29/eng20010529_71313.html> China has already developed 47 transgenic plant species, cloned goats and transplanted genes into pigs, rabbits, sheep and cows, according to an official report released Tuesday. According to the report released by the Ministry of Science and Technology at a press conference in Beijing, that by the end of 1996, the transgenic plant species on which China had been researching reached 47, concerning 103 kinds of genes. The report said that China has been successful to clone goats by adopting the fetus somatic cell of the transgenic goat and adult somatic cell. "The rate of success is 10-20 times as many as Sheep Doly," the report said. China has also bred pigs, rabbits and sheep of growth hormone (GH) transfer. According to the report, the general rate of external source gene introduction into the animals was 2.1 percent, reaching the world's advanced level. "China has obtained remarkable achievement in animal cloning and transgenic animals," said the report, entitled "Present Status of the Chinese Hi-Tech Agriculture and Its Goal during the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). " The report said that through efforts in the past decade, China has made remarkable achievements in pest and disease resistance, quality improvement, herbicide resistance and security control in genetic engineering of plants. According to the report, China has reached the world's advanced level in the research field of improving crops with radiation and of the application of nucleon tracing technique to agricultural chemicals. Among the mutation breeds which have been cultivated, ten have won national invention awards. =================================================================== Spies hang on our every word http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,2057540%255E1683,00.html By CHARLES MIRANDA 31may01 IN SYDNEY'S western suburbs, a mother e-mails her son in mainland China to ask about the weather and his new job with an international aid agency. About the same time, a senior executive from a high-profile Japanese coal and ore trader holds a telephone conference with partners about a sensitive multimillion-dollar South American tender. Both conversations are personal and important in their own right. But, according to a European Parliamentary investigation, both types of call are being monitored by a global electronic spying network involving Australia. A draft report released in Brussels yesterday warned governments and companies to encrypt all sensitive electronic messages to protect them from eavesdropping. This includes e-mails, telephone conversations from landline and mobile, faxes and electronic banking. For more than a year there have been rumours worldwide that the secretive US National Security Agency (NSA) was networking with "defence club" allies Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand to intercept millions of communications. The existence of the operation, codenamed Echelon, has never been confirmed nor denied but is said to utilise more than 120 satellites left over from anti-Soviet Cold War days to indiscriminately intercept communications 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Microsoft is allegedly collaborating by placing a secret "back door" access in its Windows software, used by nine out of 10 PCs. It is a conspiracy theorist's dream. But a much-anticipated investigation has ended speculation about the existence of Echelon, with the Euro committee of MPs yesterday concluding "there is no more doubt" the global spy ring is operating. Echelon has been credited with causing French firm Thomson to lose a radar contract in Brazil, a European Airbus consortium to lose a $9.6 billion airline contract in Saudi Arabia, and causing the failure of several European tenders for contracts in South-East Asia. The draft report -- which will be submitted for a vote by committee members at the end of June before being discussed and voted on by the European Parliament -- has warned all EU government institutions, agencies and companies to "systematically" encrypt communications, particularly e-mails. It said Echelon, in the process of industrial spying, was eavesdropping on millions of daily communications between ordinary people. Australia's involvement is centred on operations in a small basement at the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) facility in Geraldton in Western Australia, DSD headquarters at Russell Hill in Canberra and the Office of National Assessments (ONA). The network of spy bases acts as a giant vacuum, sucking in millions of e-mails. While it is largely indiscriminate, a super computer analyses can focus in on sensitive information using a dictionary of key words to flag certain communications. These selected communications are then examined closely for information which may be relevant to a government or industry. According to some reports, the system has recorded conversations involving Diana, Princess of Wales, the Pope, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other international aid agencies. Echelon also took an interest in Mark Thatcher, son of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, because of his involvement with arms deals with Saudi Arabia. International aid agencies have been a particular target because of the intelligence that can be gained from their work with foreign regimes, some of which are deemed hostile. Australia's spying has been on South-East Asia, the Pacific Rim and parts of the Indian Ocean, with particular focus on Japan, China and Indonesia. Industrial espionage is nothing new but never before has a global consortium of nations had such an technological advantage. Australia's Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick, yesterday declined to buy into the debate. "My position has fundamentally not changed and that is I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the Echelon network," he said. "My duty as inspector general is to ensure our intelligence and security agencies operate properly and comply with our laws ... and in my view they do so." Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) security expert Dr Serdar Boztas said yesterday all Australians should be wary of conveying sensitive information electronically. "The technical capabilities of Echelon are real ... it is definitely a privacy issue which applies to e-mail and fax traffic as well," he said. Echelon has its genesis in the UKUSA Treaty signed in 1947. Australia has long been considered geographically ideal for spying and, under Operation Reprieve, has for years used its embassies to spy on host nations. For the past 12 months British spy agencies have maintained they operate within the law but the EU warned the UK it could be violating EU rules on competition, privacy and human rights by being involved in a system that provides a competitive edge for its companies. =================================================================== U.S. 'Impediment' to Human Rights, Report Declares http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010530/t000045214.html Justice: Amnesty International cites opposition to ban on land mines and abuse of female prisoners as examples of backsliding By NORMAN KEMPSTER, Times Staff Writer Wednesday, May 30, 2001 WASHINGTON--The United States set the international standard for freedom and democracy decades ago but recently has fallen far short of the mark, often becoming an "impediment" to the sort of human rights that it once championed, Amnesty International says in a report to be issued today. The organization, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, put Washington's recent record at the top of a list of "the five greatest disappointments" in the field of human rights in the past 40 years. "Twenty-five years ago, [President] Jimmy Carter made human rights a central tenet of his foreign policy," the report says. "Today, however, the United States is as frequently an impediment to human rights as it is an advocate." The report says Carter's successors in the White House, both Democrat and Republican, "have ignored or opposed several key human rights treaties." It cites specifically the Clinton administration's opposition to pacts banning the use of land mines and establishing an international criminal court. The Bush administration also opposes the measures. Other nongovernmental human rights organizations have criticized the U.S. in the past, but the Amnesty International report is one of the most scalding. And it comes just weeks after Washington lost its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, an incident that generated a wave of anger on Capitol Hill and produced a defensive U.S. response to any sort of human rights criticism. Opening a hearing on the U.N. vote last week, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), chairman of the international operations subcommittee, said it may be time to reorganize a U.N. commission that excludes the U.S. but includes Sudan, widely criticized here for its human rights record. Allen added that the European Union--which holds three seats on the U.N. panel--may have to assume the leading role that had been played by the United States. Previously, he said, Europe "tended to treat dictatorial governments like Cuba, Libya and Sudan as ordinary countries" with which profitable business could be done. The Amnesty International report levels a similar criticism at the United States: "Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. continues to support--through aid, military training and arms sales--many of the world's most egregious human rights abusers." The report gives no examples, but William F. Schulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the London-based organization, cited U.S. aid to the Colombian military, a force frequently accused of human rights violations. Schulz conceded that the U.S. is not in the same league with countries such as Sudan when it comes to repression. But he charged that U.S. hypocrisy and a failure to live up to its own standards merited the spot at the top of the list of disappointments. "The U.S. is a model and has always seen itself as a model of democracy," Schulz said in a telephone interview. "When you are a model . . . you set the rules and decide which ones to play by." The State Department issues an annual report rating the human rights practices of every nation except for one--the United States. But Schulz suggested several U.S. practices that might merit criticism in the report if they occurred elsewhere. "The United States is the leading producer of equipment that can be used for torture, such as electric shock batons and handcuffs with serrated edges," Schulz said. "We have seen growing examples of sexual mistreatment of women prisoners by guards and prison officials. And the treatment of political asylum seekers is deplorable. When they come here, instead of having their cases adjudicated quickly, they are often thrown into county jails." Other matters on Amnesty International's list of disappointments include the failure of the fall of communism in Europe to produce a genuine democratic revolution; continued acts of "genocide" in nations such as Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan, despite the world's vow of "never again" following the Holocaust; continued impediments to universal human rights; and the failure of international institutions to support and promote human rights. In a contrasting list of human rights advances since Amnesty International was established in 1961, the report cites a "democratization of information" produced by the spread of computers and access to the Internet. Schulz said the cyber-revolution means that governments can no longer hide repression and persecution. Moreover, he said, repressed populations have a way of discovering what their rights are, sometimes a first step toward asserting those rights. Other advances cited by the report include the growth of institutions of accountability, such as the international tribunals adjudicating war crimes committed in the former Yugoslav federation and Rwanda, the development of local human rights organizations, and growing recognition that human rights should be universal. =================================================================== You are being watched http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/06/02/FFXN4R7UENC.html By GARRY BARKER TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Saturday 2 June 2001 Rights net to widen Technically speaking, you now stand naked in the world. People you have never met may know more about you than you can remember yourself. It's all down to advancing technology and our continuing love-hate relationship with computers, networking, automatic processing and customer relations management. Tougher laws protecting individual privacy rights come into force in September but, says Federal Privacy Commissioner Malcolm Crompton, few Australian companies are truly ready with privacy policies to cover the information they collect as byproducts of their enterprise. Yet breaches will be rigorously prosecuted and restitution exacted for failure to protect private rights, he says. The risk to individual privacy has arisen almost unnoticed. Video surveillance, telephonic tracking, data mining and a host of other technologies, collecting, collating and hoarding every detail of yourself and your life are now proliferating faster than Mallee rabbits. Big Brother is bigger in some countries than others but, wherever there are computers, Eftpos, electronic banking, closed circuit cameras, e-mail, electronic tollway billing and the Internet you're being watched. Britain, which now has more than 1.5 million closed-circuit television cameras in its streets, parks and buildings is the most-watched country on Earth, although Germany and the US are catching up fast. So, for that matter, is Australia. Here are some of the snoops you may encounter on an average day around town.: Eftpos, credit cards and loyalty schemes: Loyalty cards, such as Fly Buys, are not there to get you to Sydney. They are aimed mostly at keeping your custom at member companies' shops, but they can be linked to what you bought, and where and when, and used to either push products to you (since they also know your mail and e-mail addresses, your phone number and often much else, perhaps even your income bracket. Similarly, whatever you bought is, or can be, linked to your credit card, which can then give a picture of your spending habits, tastes, weaknesses and financial strength. e-tags: Cars moving along the City Link tollways are all logged, which means someone knows they are there and in which direction they are headed. The e-tag on the windscreen links with the computer system operated by the private company that owns the highways. Cars without e-tags are photographed and that image is stored. It might, therefore, be possible to identify someone in the car, though probably the angle of view would preclude that. Mobile phones: Whenever a handset is turned on the radio transceiver inside it immediately begins to search for and connect to the nearest antenna. Each antenna inhabits, and is identified by, a cell covering a certain area. As you move across the landscape, the phone in your hand switches from one cell to the next, thus effectively charting your movements. This information has been used in court cases in many countries. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on streets: VicRoads operates an extensive network of video cameras used to manage traffic flow on our highways, mainly by giving controllers in the Hawthorn operations centre a view of traffic density that allows them to change the on-off patterns of traffic lights. Such cameras are all over the metropolitan area. One of the most prominent is at the intersection of Victoria and Hoddle Streets. It sits up high above the traffic, peering down upon the passing parade. Others hide under dark plastic domes on street corners in the CBD. CCTV cameras in buildings: Hundreds of shops, supermarkets and buildings all over Melbourne use closed-circuit video technology to watch their customers and staff. All of these images can be, and usually are, recorded by videotape recorders. Use of such images in identifying criminals in incidents such as hold-ups in banks is now standard practice. But they also record everyone. Face recognition systems: In Crown Casino, Colonial Stadium and, increasingly, even shops and business premises, there is increasing use of face recognition technology. Images taken by CCTV cameras scanning an area are sent to computers where software compares every face with photographs stored on a database. Thus, not only can individuals' whereabouts be established by time and place, but also the company they are keeping. Cookies on the Web: Almost every website into which you log will, generally without your knowledge, insert a tiny piece of software into your computer that identifies you to the site's owners. That's how e-mail spammers, those pesky people who keep sending you mail, get your address. Computer operating systems: Intel and Microsoft, among a few others, have been criticised several times for hiding identification codes in their microprocessors, operating systems and applications. The codes allow individual computers to be identified when they go online, making it possible to track their progress around the Internet. Echelon: Echelon is said to be operated by the military and intelligence agencies of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. No government will talk about it. It is believed to monitor e-mails, telephone calls and other communications flowing over the world's cable and satellite systems looking for words that might alert intelligence organisations, police, customs, immigration officers, military and security services to pending crimes. The concern is not that someone is watching for terrorists but that innocent people might get caught in the net. =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ====================================================== "The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Thomas Paine ====================================================== " . . . it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds . . . " -Samuel Adams ====================================================== "You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no results." -Gandhi ====================================================== "The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable." -H.L. Mencken ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ **How to assist RadTimes: An account is available at <www.paypal.com> which enables direct donations. If you are a current PayPal user, use this email address: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, to contribute. If you are not a current user, use this link: <https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=resist%40best.com> to sign up and contribute. 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