Craig Newmark at the Creative Commons Launch

Craig Newmark at the Creative Commons Launch - 18 MB

Craig Newmark at the Creative Commons Launch - 10 MB

Audio - MP3 of Craig Newmark at the Creative Commons Launch - 3 MB

Aaron Swartz At The Creative Commons Launch

Aaron Swartz at the Creative Commons Launch - 27 MB

Aaron Swartz at the Creative Commons Launch - 16.5 MB

Audio - MP3 of Aaron Swartz at the Creative Commons Launch - 5.5 MB

Glenn Otis Brown Introducing "Get Creative" At The Creative Commons Launch

Here's Glenn Otis Brown, the Executive Director of the Creative Commons, introducing the cool animation he (and a few other people from the CC staff) co-produced with Ryan Junell.

This clip provides Glenn's introduction and closing words from the Get Creative premiere at the December 16th launch.


Glenn Otis Brown at the Creative Commons Launch - 28 MB

Glenn Otis Brown at the Creative Commons Launch - 24 MB

Glenn Otis Brown at the Creative Commons Launch - 16 MB

MP3 of Glenn Otis Brown at the Creative Commons Launch (5 MB)

Shrub Admin Creates Revisionist Science

U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On
By Adam Clymer for the New York Times.

The National Cancer Institute, which used to say on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.

A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement, which contradicts the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised version of the page...

The letter to Secretary Thompson from House Democrats said that by alteration and deletion, the disease control agency "is now censoring the scientific information about condoms it makes available to the public" in order to suit abstinence-only advocates. And it said the breast cancer document amounted to nothing more than "the political creation of scientific uncertainty."

"Information that used to be based on science," the lawmakers said, "is being systematically removed from the public when it conflicts with the administration's political agenda."

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.28F.us.sex.info.htm

U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On
By Adam Clymer
New York Times

Friday 27 December 2002

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 -- The National Cancer Institute, which used to say on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.

A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement, which contradicts the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised version of the page.

Critics say those changes, far below the political radar screen, illustrate how the Bush administration can satisfy conservative constituents with relatively little exposure to the kind of attack that a legislative proposal or a White House statement would invite.

Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, scoffed at the idea that there was anything political about the changes, saying that they reflected only scientific judgments and that department headquarters had had nothing to do with them. "We simply looked at them, and they put them up," he said of the agencies involved.

The new statements were posted in the last month, after news reports that the government had removed their predecessors from the Web. Those reports quoted administration officials as saying the earlier material had been removed so that it could be rewritten with newer scientific information. The latest statements are the revisions.

Those statements have drawn some criticism, as did the removal, though like the issue itself it has gone largely unnoticed. Fourteen House Democrats, including Henry A. Waxman of California, senior minority member of the House Government Reform Committee, have written to Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, charging that the new versions "distort and suppress scientific information for ideological purposes."

Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the new statement on abortion and breast cancer "simply doesn't track the best available science."

"Scientific and medical misinformation jeopardizes peoples' lives," Ms. Feldt said, adding that any suggestion of a connection between abortion and cancer was "bogus."

The earlier statement, which the National Cancer Institute removed from the Web in June after anti-abortion congressmen objected to it, noted that many studies had reached varying conclusions about a relation between abortion and breast cancer, but said "recent large studies" showed no connection. In particular, it approvingly cited a study of 1.5 million Danish women that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997. That study, the cancer institute said, found that "induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer."

The Danish research, praised by the American Cancer Society as "the largest, and probably the most reliable, study of this topic," is not mentioned in the government's recent posting, which says the cancer institute will hold a conference next year to plan further research.

Dorie Hightower, a press officer at the cancer institute, attributed the revision to the institute's periodic review of fact sheets "for accuracy and scientific relevance." Asked whether the institute now thought that the Danish study failed on either count, Ms. Hightower said no. But she said there was no scientist available to explain the change.

As for the disease control centers' fact sheet on condoms, the old version focused on the advantages of using them, while the new version puts more emphasis on the risk that such use may not prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and on the advantages of abstinence.

Posted on Dec. 2, the new version begins, in boldface: "The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected. For persons whose sexual behaviors place them at risk for S.T.D.'s, correct and consistent use of the male latex condom can reduce the risk of S.T.D. transmission. However, no protective method is 100 percent effective, and condom use cannot guarantee absolute protection against any S.T.D."

A different Web page maintained by the centers, referring to studies of uninfected people at risk of H.I.V. because of sexual relationships with infected people, does say on the other hand, "The studies found that even with repeated sexual contact, 98-100 percent of those people who used latex condoms correctly and consistently did not become infected."

But the recently revised page warns that evidence on condom use and other sexually transmitted diseases is inconclusive, though it says the uncertainty demonstrates that "more research is needed -- not that latex condoms do not work."

The new version also omits a passage on sex education and condom use that appeared in the earlier document. "Studies of specific sex education programs," the earlier version said, "have shown that H.I.V. education and sex education that included condom information either had no effect upon the initiation of intercourse or resulted in delayed onset of intercourse."

In an interview, Dr. David Fleming, the disease control centers' deputy director for science, defended the new version. "We try as hard as possible," Dr. Fleming said, "to state objectively what is known about condom efficacy without nuancing language beyond what is supported by the science."

He said that the document reflected consensus of the centers, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and that none of its conclusions had been influenced by those agencies' parent, the Department of Health and Human Services.

The letter to Secretary Thompson from House Democrats said that by alteration and deletion, the disease control agency "is now censoring the scientific information about condoms it makes available to the public" in order to suit abstinence-only advocates. And it said the breast cancer document amounted to nothing more than "the political creation of scientific uncertainty."

"Information that used to be based on science," the lawmakers said, "is being systematically removed from the public when it conflicts with the administration's political agenda."

Smaller Files of Lessig's Creative Commons Presentation

Sorry these took so long. Here are some medium and low resolution versions of Lawrence Lessig's December 16, 2002 presentation in San Francisco at the Creative Commons Launch.

Small files and MP3s of Lessig's CC Launch Speech (and others)

Brewster Kahle at the Creative Commons Launch

Complete with new and exciting reasonable file sizes!

Below are links to a high resolution and low resolution QuickTime movies and audio MP3 file. Let me know if you need another format.

Brewster Kahle and son, Caslon, at the Creative Commons Launch

Brewster Kahle at the Creative Commons Launch - 25 MB

Brewster Kahle at the Creative Commons Launch - 14 MB

MP3 of Brewster Kahle at Creative Commons Launch - 5 MB

BBC Coverage of Roundups

Mass LA Muslim arrests condemned

Iranian-American Lawyers Association president Kayhan Shakhib said he feared that the men were being held in inhumane, overcrowded conditions.

California was among the first states where non-resident men from the Middle East were obliged to register. Other states with large Muslim populations have been set later dates.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has refused to say how many people were arrested, but said detainees were being held for suspected visa violations and other offences.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2595391.stm

Friday, 20 December, 2002, 17:45 GMT
Mass LA Muslim arrests condemned
A woman sobs over the detention of her son
The men had gone to register voluntarily
Civil liberties groups in the United States have called on the justice department to scrap an anti-terror scheme which has led to the detention of hundreds of Muslim men.

REGISTRATION ORDER
Introduced after 11 September attacks
Affects all males over 16 from a list of Arab and Muslim countries who do not have permanent resident status in the US
A 10 January deadline will affect men from Afghanistan, Lebanon, Eritrea, North Korea, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen
A coalition of nine civil liberties groups called it a "flawed and misguided" scheme which has "damaged America's global image".

Immigration lawyers say at least 500 men - mainly Iranians - were arrested in and around Los Angeles after they complied with an order to register with the authorities by 16 December.

The programme, conceived after the 11 September 2001 attacks, is aimed at men from more than 20 Arab and Muslim nations who do not have permanent resident status in the US.

Critics say it is unlikely that the plotting terrorists the scheme is supposed to uncover would take part in a voluntary registration programme.

'Flawed and misguided'

The detentions have caused deep unrest within the Iranian-American community in California, with thousands taking to the streets earlier this week in protest.

People in LA demonstrating against immigration detentions
Southern California has a huge Iranian community
California is home to about 600,000 Iranians who have been living in exile since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iranian-American Lawyers Association president Kayhan Shakhib said he feared that the men were being held in inhumane, overcrowded conditions.

California was among the first states where non-resident men from the Middle East were obliged to register. Other states with large Muslim populations have been set later dates.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has refused to say how many people were arrested, but said detainees were being held for suspected visa violations and other offences.

First Hand Account Of The Treatment of INS Detainees: Shackled, Starved, Verbally Abused, Sleep Deprived, Kept In The Cold and Kept In The Dark

Get involved, or perish
There are innocent people in jail. What are you going to do about it?
By Payam Mohseni for The Iranian.

We were led upstairs and then down almost freezing-cold hallways to the chamber that held all the detainees. It was like a scene from a movie: a glass wall separated the two worlds and our only line of communication was by the phones provided. The detainees were seated behind the glass panes speaking with their families when we arrived to interview them.

They were very excited since they had not been able to communicate with the outside world for a long time, and they had thought that there would be no one to help them. They had been waiting to tell us their story. I was able to interview three Iranians, an Iraqi, and a Syrian.

Although they each had different stories to tell, there was a common thread that tied them all together. First, none of them had received notices to appear to register with the INS. Not a requirement, they had all voluntarily gone to the INS just as a precautionary step. They were legally exempt from deportation.

Second, the officers did not explain anything to the detainees as to what was happening, why it was happening, and what the procedures thereafter would be. A few were told not to worry because the judge would release them in less than 72 hours, but here they were speaking with me in jail a week later.

Third, they were all from the San Francisco Bay Area but had been transported around the country. Boarded unto jets, they went from the SF Bay Area to Arizona, then Colorado, back to Oakland, then Bakersfield and finally San Diego. Throughout the travels, they were not told the destination until they actually landed.

This continuous transport was extremely consequential to the services the detainees were able to receive. The detainees have rights to use the phone to call a family member and an attorney, and they also have the right to receive medical attention (a few of the detainees were ill). However, none of these basic rights were given to them with the explanation that since they were "in transit", they would not receive these rights. The ill detainees were not treated by a doctor and did not receive medication either.

Fourth, they were handcuffed and then shackled with chains from around their feet connecting to their handcuffs. This was on them for hours without end while they were held in rooms or were being transported. Eating was a very difficult experience for them.

Fifth, none of them had received court date hearings or been given a bail amount. This is very difficult to handle legally as they are not in the legal system so that an attorney can serve them efficiently and justly.

Sixth, they all reiterated the strategy of sleep deprivation used by the agents. They would be in offices during the day till 1AM waiting to be interviewed or to fill out forms. Then they would be woken up at 4AM to be transported again.

All identified lack of sleep as their most pressing concern as it destroyed their short-term memory and increased stress. Seventh, facilities were of poor quality or misused. They were forced to sleep on concrete floors even though there were rooms with beds present.

There was always an open toilet in the middle of the room that was usually clogged and unsanitary. Blankets were not provided at times even though the detainees requested them. There was an incident where toilet paper was used for insulation from the cold.

Furthermore, the detainees were able to take a shower only once last week. Also, vending machines for food were provided but the detainees were not allowed to use their money to purchase food. And of the food that they were served, some had passed their expiration dates.

Lastly, they were all harassed verbally with extreme profanity and ethnic slurs relating to their Middle Eastern origin. They would not tell me precisely what was said as they hoped to forget the obscene comments. The treatment by the officers was overall very rude. Some were even described as downright "scary", such as a man in the San Diego detention camp, the place they had been taken before the CCA, who smoked a big cigar behind his desk in the facility and made continuous insulting slurs to the detainees.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.iranian.com/Features/2002/December/Detain/index.html

Get involved, or perish
There are innocent people in jail. What are you going to do about it?

By Payam Mohseni
December 23, 2002
The Iranian

With this article, I intend to not only inform the public of the unconstitutional arrests and inhumane treatment of individuals who voluntarily registered with the INS but to demand of the Iranian-American community a political and cultural renaissance to reflect our needs.

I thank Ms. Banafsheh Akhlaghi, an attorney of Akhlaghi & Associates in San Francisco, for her intense passion and ceaseless aid to the plight of those affected by the new INS laws. Most importantly, I thank the detainees who touched my life through their stories of hardship and pain. The impression that their teary and pleading looks left in me will never be erased from my mind.

This is the story they imparted me with to tell you, you who truly cares about the welfare of our fellow human beings and the inviolable rights that should be highly safeguarded in our society: Families and news cameras were all outside the morning of Sunday December 22, when I arrived at the CCA, the INS detention facility on Otay Mesa in San Diego, California, to accompany Ms. Akhlaghi along with Farhan, a first year law student, to interview the detainees.

An Iranian gentleman stated that he had not been allowed to see his brother when he visited the facility a day earlier; everyone was waiting for an official response. An INS agent came outside and explained that it was probably a misunderstanding. Consequently, the families were granted entrance as well as Ms. Akhlaghi, Farhan and I, as the legal team of the detainees.

We were led upstairs and then down almost freezing-cold hallways to the chamber that held all the detainees. It was like a scene from a movie: a glass wall separated the two worlds and our only line of communication was by the phones provided. The detainees were seated behind the glass panes speaking with their families when we arrived to interview them.

They were very excited since they had not been able to communicate with the outside world for a long time, and they had thought that there would be no one to help them. They had been waiting to tell us their story. I was able to interview three Iranians, an Iraqi, and a Syrian.

Although they each had different stories to tell, there was a common thread that tied them all together. First, none of them had received notices to appear to register with the INS. Not a requirement, they had all voluntarily gone to the INS just as a precautionary step. They were legally exempt from deportation.

Second, the officers did not explain anything to the detainees as to what was happening, why it was happening, and what the procedures thereafter would be. A few were told not to worry because the judge would release them in less than 72 hours, but here they were speaking with me in jail a week later.

Third, they were all from the San Francisco Bay Area but had been transported around the country. Boarded unto jets, they went from the SF Bay Area to Arizona, then Colorado, back to Oakland, then Bakersfield and finally San Diego. Throughout the travels, they were not told the destination until they actually landed.

This continuous transport was extremely consequential to the services the detainees were able to receive. The detainees have rights to use the phone to call a family member and an attorney, and they also have the right to receive medical attention (a few of the detainees were ill). However, none of these basic rights were given to them with the explanation that since they were "in transit", they would not receive these rights. The ill detainees were not treated by a doctor and did not receive medication either.

Fourth, they were handcuffed and then shackled with chains from around their feet connecting to their handcuffs. This was on them for hours without end while they were held in rooms or were being transported. Eating was a very difficult experience for them.

Fifth, none of them had received court date hearings or been given a bail amount. This is very difficult to handle legally as they are not in the legal system so that an attorney can serve them efficiently and justly.

Sixth, they all reiterated the strategy of sleep deprivation used by the agents. They would be in offices during the day till 1AM waiting to be interviewed or to fill out forms. Then they would be woken up at 4AM to be transported again.

All identified lack of sleep as their most pressing concern as it destroyed their short-term memory and increased stress. Seventh, facilities were of poor quality or misused. They were forced to sleep on concrete floors even though there were rooms with beds present.

There was always an open toilet in the middle of the room that was usually clogged and unsanitary. Blankets were not provided at times even though the detainees requested them. There was an incident where toilet paper was used for insulation from the cold.

Furthermore, the detainees were able to take a shower only once last week. Also, vending machines for food were provided but the detainees were not allowed to use their money to purchase food. And of the food that they were served, some had passed their expiration dates.

Lastly, they were all harassed verbally with extreme profanity and ethnic slurs relating to their Middle Eastern origin. They would not tell me precisely what was said as they hoped to forget the obscene comments. The treatment by the officers was overall very rude. Some were even described as downright "scary", such as a man in the San Diego detention camp, the place they had been taken before the CCA, who smoked a big cigar behind his desk in the facility and made continuous insulting slurs to the detainees.

This was most of the information that was given to me by the detainees, but I knew that this was not the only message they would want me to tell you. They were not only requesting blankets and medication, but they were requesting the community to save them. They were requesting of us to speak out.

On my part, I have to tell you that I am very ashamed! It is not acceptable if the government violates its own laws written in the US Constitution. If it breaks one law, there will always be a possibility that it will break another one as well.

I am also upset at the Iranian-American community. Although there has been a very good uproar over these events and I am truly thankful to all those involved, we need to be more politically organized and have a stronger voice in order to stop these events from the start rather than practicing the process of damage control later.

A couple of the Iranian detainees told me that they had left Iran because of political injustices only to end up under the same kind of persecution in the United States. This comment made me question why so many Iranians in the US are apolitical. I know that most discuss politics a lot, but many never act on what they say.

This point has been a difficulty for me as a member of Students for Progress and Development in Iran (SPDI), a non-profit student organization established at UC Berkeley. Many students just do not want to get involved with anything political. And before our existence, all the Iranian student organizations in the US that I know of completely stay out of politics. How can we defend the rights that we are entitled to if no one wants to deal with politics?

With this line of thinking, I absolutely do not understand how one can criticize the government in Iran or why people left. If people really cared about the importance of "democracy" and "accountability" they would have to be active participants within it. Otherwise, in my opinion, they would be undermining the basis of democracy itself.

But many of the students' situation is also due to the parents. Many parents will not let their sons and daughters get involved in politics. Just know that such an act in itself is political as it takes away all of the power that our community could have had in this country! There are innocent people in jail right now, and there are laws in place that ensures the arrest of such people. We must not rest until we organize and unite the Iranian community to gain a strong voice in US politics and secure our Constitutional rights.

We must not rest until all of these innocent individuals are released from prison and an apology is made to the entire country. These were the requests the detainees made to me with their eyes. I hope we serve them well. If anyone knows of any detainees who are missing and have not been accounted for, please e-mail me as soon as possible. To find out more please visit spdiran.org.

Photo

Gisroo Mohajeri, who is more than six-months-pregnant, is comforted by her husband Ali Mohajeri, on the steps of the Federal Building in Los Angeles, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2002, after meeting with goverment officials about her son. Gisroo Mohajeri said her 16-year-old Iranian-born son, Hossein Ahmadi, was taken into custoday three days ago when the two came to the Immigration and Naturalization Services to voluntarily register the teenager with immigration officials. Hossein Ahmadi now faces deportation proceedings, she says. Thousands of Iranian-Americans demonstrated Wednesday against the arrest of Middle Eastern immigrants who had voluntarily registered with the federal government under a new anti-terrorism program. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju)

Nader On Bush Shrub

Cakewalk Across the Constitution
George W. Bush Has This Thing About Laws That Disagree With Him

Treaties that deal with arms control or a real weapon of mass destruction called global warming are irritants to our White House-based west Texas sheriff. The Bush Administration has rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, declined to support the small arms treaty, the land mines treaty and the verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention. Mr. Bush refuses to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for ratification by the Senate which rejected it under President Clinton. There are other similar avoidances.

Even in the area of health, Mr. Bush is indifferent. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which 130 countries have signed, has not received Mr. Bush's willingness to send it to the Senate for ratification. What is objectionable about the Covenant is that it has a "right to health" within its terms, along with steps to attain this right to health incumbent on signatory nations. The U.S. is the only western democracy without universal health care.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://counterpunch.org/nader1223.html

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CounterPunch

December 23, 2002
Cakewalk Across the Constitution
George W. Bush Has This Thing About Laws That Disagree With Him

by RALPH NADER

George W. Bush has this thing about laws -- domestic or international -- that disagree with him. He likes to operate outside their embrace or withdraw from them or try to repeal them. It is not just personal -- as when he costs taxpayers millions to pay for his political trips on Air Force One before elections -- it also involves the health, and safety of Americans and people abroad.

Bob Woodward relates in his new book on Bush and war that the President admits to being a black and white person who makes decisions from his gut. A dubious enough personality type for a football coach, this trait raises serious concerns when imbedded in the commander-in-chief of the most powerful arsenal on Earth.

Consider what this gut instinct has done to our constitutional framework and the tenuous architecture of international law. Earlier this year, Bush launched an all out offensive on Congress to have it selectively surrender its exclusive constitutional authority to declare war against Iraq. Despite heroic efforts from legislators led by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), Congress supinely gave up its war-making power to the White House.

Jefferson, Madison, Adams and company had distinct reasons for refusing to lodge this power in the Presidency and instead wanted many legislators in open session to make this awesome decision. They did not want another King George emerging with this single-power launching war.

Throughout the year 2002, Bush made no secret of his desire to unilaterally overthrow the Iraqi dictatorial regime (called "regime change"). But the opinion polls were unflagging; the American people in sizable majorities did not want the U.S. to go it alone.

OK said Mr. Bush; he'll go to the UN and have the Security Council resume a rigorous inspection process in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. The other nations then insisted that if Iraq materially breaches the UN resolution, the U.S. would go back to the Security Council for any further action. Yet Bush made it clear that if the UN did not act, the U.S., and its very few allies, would do so unilaterally.

It should be noted that in responding to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Bush's more deliberative father, then President Bush, first asked the UN for a resolution, then asked Congress, after the November elections not before as did his son, for its approval the following January.

Treaties that deal with arms control or a real weapon of mass destruction called global warming are irritants to our White House-based west Texas sheriff. The Bush Administration has rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, declined to support the small arms treaty, the land mines treaty and the verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention. Mr. Bush refuses to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for ratification by the Senate which rejected it under President Clinton. There are other similar avoidances.

Even in the area of health, Mr. Bush is indifferent. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which 130 countries have signed, has not received Mr. Bush's willingness to send it to the Senate for ratification. What is objectionable about the Covenant is that it has a "right to health" within its terms, along with steps to attain this right to health incumbent on signatory nations. The U.S. is the only western democracy without universal health care.

Perhaps no other area of American law has aroused more anger, pre-9/11 -- in Mr. Bush's mind than the American civil justice system which enables wrongfully injured children and adults to sue, among other parties, the President's corporate friends when they sell dangerous or defective products.

As Governor of Texas and as President, Bush has wanted to limit corporate compensation for unlimited injuries, take away the authority of the states and put it in Washington, D.C. and federally tie the hands of state judges and juries who are the only ones who hear and see the evidence in trials. Note, however, none of his so-called "tort reforms" would take away the right of corporations to sue people or other companies.

It is the daily behavior of this one-track President that is irritating even the usually compliant White House press corp. Day after day, his repetitively belligerent sound bites and his unrevealed "intelligence" declarations about Iraq have been wearing thin. A Los Angeles Times poll on December 17th found that seventy two percent of respondents, including sixty percent of Republicans, "said the President has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq."

On October 11th, the Washington Post reported that the former military commander for the Middle East, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C, Zinni, is opposed "to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq." Zinni believes Iraq is already contained and that the U.S. has other priorities in the Middle East. Adding that General Zinni is "widely respected in the U.S. Military," the Post concludes its report by saying that a retired three-star General said that Zinni's concerns "are widely shared by many in the leadership of the military but aren't universal."

There are few doubts, however, among the covey of "chicken hawks" surrounding Mr. Bush. These men, including Vice President Dick Cheney, supported the Vietnam War in the Sixties but wanted other Americans to do the fighting.

There is not much time before Mr. Bush declares a war with scenarios far more costly, harmful and devastating then the "cake-walk" scenario that is the premise of Mr. Bush's airborne electronic posse. It could be a war fraught with severe longer term "blowback" impacts on the U.S. and one that could seriously affect the economy, as Yale Professor Nordhaus warned recently in the New York Review of Books.

It is testimony to the inherent sense of the American people that, even in the midst of the Bush propaganda barrage, when asked if they would support a U.S. unilateral invasion, with large civilian casualities in Iraq, and significant casualties among our military personnel, a large majority says no.

More Americans are wondering why Bush wants peaceful dialogue with a North Korea that has more advanced arms, yet seeks war with a contained, weakened and surrounded Iraq? But then, when decisions are made in the gut, such inconsistencies can bound.

RAVE ACT Back Burnered For Now!

The Rave Act Has Been Stopped for the time being.

Recognizing that the RAVE Act was a threat to free speech, public health, and innocent business owners, the Drug Policy Alliance launched a major campaign to stop it from becoming law.

* In conjunction with Dance Safe, the Drug Policy Alliance launched a fax campaign that sent over 35,000 faxes to the Senate in opposition to the RAVE Act. Thousands of voters also called and wrote their Senators and urged them to vote against it.
* The Drug Policy Alliance worked with groups around the country - like ROAR (Ravers Organized Against the RAVE Act), Blackkat, AuraSF and Freedom to Dance - to hold organized protests against the RAVE Act in major cities, including protests in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York and a rave on the lawn of Congress in Washington, DC.
* We launched an aggressive legislative and media campaign that criticized the RAVE Act in the media and educated Members of Congress on the dangers of the bill. The campaign garnered national attention, with news articles across the country, including the Oakland Tribune and the Washington Post. Alliance staff warned voters about the RAVE Act and spurned them to action on radio stations from California to New York.

So successful was our campaign, two of the original RAVE Act co-sponsors dropped their support for the bill (including the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee). The House Subcommittee on Crime refused to even vote on the House version of the bill. Senate leadership never dared to bring the controversial Senate version up for a full Senate vote.

Here is the full text of the page in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nomoredrugwar.org/music/rave_act.htm

The Rave Act

Last updated on December 20, 2002

Ravers Against the Machine -- Washington Post (DC) 8/18/02

Proposed Law Could Have Subjected You to 20 Years in Prison

Drug Policy Alliance Stopped It This Year, But It Will Likely be Re-introduced in 2003

Thanks to thousands of our supporters, the Drug Policy Alliance was able to stop federal legislation this year that would have essentially given federal prosecutors new powers to shut down raves, dance parties, hemp festivals, marijuana rallies and other events and punish business owners and activists that hosted or promoted them. The bill, known as the Reducing American's Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act (RAVE Act), was introduced in the Senate on June 18th and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee a week later - without a debate or recorded vote.

If enacted, the RAVE Act would have essentially made it easier for federal prosecutors to punish property owners that failed to deter drug offenses on their property. Property owners could have been punished even if they were not involved with drugs themselves and even if they tried to stop drug offenses from occurring on their property. Although proponents of the bill were seeking to target raves (and DJs, nightclub owners, and rave promoters had the most to fear), the law would have applied to any business owner, including bar owners, motel owners, concert promoters, and cruise ship owners. Because of its broad language, the proposed law would have even potentially subjected people to twenty years in federal prison if one or more of their guests smoked marijuana at their party or barbecue.
Recognizing that the RAVE Act was a threat to free speech, public health, and innocent business owners, the Drug Policy Alliance launched a major campaign to stop it from becoming law.

* In conjunction with Dance Safe, the Drug Policy Alliance launched a fax campaign that sent over 35,000 faxes to the Senate in opposition to the RAVE Act. Thousands of voters also called and wrote their Senators and urged them to vote against it.
* The Drug Policy Alliance worked with groups around the country - like ROAR (Ravers Organized Against the RAVE Act), Blackkat, AuraSF and Freedom to Dance - to hold organized protests against the RAVE Act in major cities, including protests in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York and a rave on the lawn of Congress in Washington, DC.
* We launched an aggressive legislative and media campaign that criticized the RAVE Act in the media and educated Members of Congress on the dangers of the bill. The campaign garnered national attention, with news articles across the country, including the Oakland Tribune and the Washington Post. Alliance staff warned voters about the RAVE Act and spurned them to action on radio stations from California to New York.

So successful was our campaign, two of the original RAVE Act co-sponsors dropped their support for the bill (including the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee). The House Subcommittee on Crime refused to even vote on the House version of the bill. Senate leadership never dared to bring the controversial Senate version up for a full Senate vote.

The RAVE Act is dead for the year - one of many state and federal legislative victories this year. However, Sen. Joe Biden and other supporters of the RAVE Act will likely re-introduce it in 2003. The Drug Policy Alliance is preparing to wage another campaign to defeat it and needs your help.

There are a number of things you can do:

* Sign up to receive our action alerts and weekly e-newsletter if you are not receiving them already, so we can keep you updated on our RAVE Act and other campaigns.
* Give us your contact information, and let us know if you are a DJ, musician, club owner, or promoter, so we can contact you with things you can do to help our campaign.
* Join Drug Policy Alliance. The Drug Policy Alliance is your voice to politicians, the media, and your fellow citizens on important drug policy issues.

Werbach On Open Spectrum

Spectrum Wants to Be Free
Never pay for phone, cable, or net access again
By Kevin Werbach for Wired.

In an open spectrum world, wireless transmitters would be as ubiquitous as microprocessors: in televisions, cars, public spaces, handheld devices, everywhere. They would tune themselves to free spectrum and self-assemble into networks. Anyone could become a radio broadcaster reaching millions. Phone calls would rarely need to pass through central networks; they would be handed off and relayed across devices, for free or nearly so. Businesses would track far-flung assets in real time via embedded sensors. Big TV networks and cable operators would lose their hammerlock control over media distribution. Entrepreneurs would develop as yet undreamed of applications that we can't live without. It happens any time open platforms emerge - think eBay and Amazon.com...

When spectrum licensing was established in the early 20th century, radios were primitive, as was the regulatory model used to govern them. To be heard, broadcasters needed an exclusive slice of spectrum. Today, however, digital technologies let many users occupy the same frequency at the same time. As the FCC's Powell points out, "Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature and extent of spectrum use." Today's devices employ advanced digital signal processing and other techniques, and they're smart enough to coexist without interference.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/view.html

Spectrum Wants to Be Free

Never pay for phone, cable, or net access again

By Kevin Werbach

A revolution is brewing in wireless. In an industry speech in October, FCC chair Michael Powell expressed support for a radical idea called open spectrum that could transform the communications landscape as profoundly as the Internet ever did. If it works, you'll never pay for telephone, cable, or Net access again.

Open spectrum treats the airwaves as a commons, shared by all. It's the brainchild of engineers, activists, and scholars such as wireless gadfly Dewayne Hendricks, former Lotus chief scientist David Reed, and NYU law professor Yochai Benkler. The idea is that smart devices cooperating with one another function more effectively than huge proprietary communications networks. The commons can be created through distinct, unlicensed "parks" or through "underlay" technologies, such as ultrawideband, that are invisible to licensed users in the same band.

In an open spectrum world, wireless transmitters would be as ubiquitous as microprocessors: in televisions, cars, public spaces, handheld devices, everywhere. They would tune themselves to free spectrum and self-assemble into networks. Anyone could become a radio broadcaster reaching millions. Phone calls would rarely need to pass through central networks; they would be handed off and relayed across devices, for free or nearly so. Businesses would track far-flung assets in real time via embedded sensors. Big TV networks and cable operators would lose their hammerlock control over media distribution. Entrepreneurs would develop as yet undreamed of applications that we can't live without. It happens any time open platforms emerge - think eBay and Amazon.com.

The revolution has already started. Wi-Fi, a runaway success, uses a narrow slice of spectrum that is already "open." Wi-Fi is a shot across the bow, much the way the Arpanet served as a proving ground for the commercial Internet. As ever, Moore's law is on the side of the technology upstart. Radio waves resemble ripples on a pond rather than swimmers in a pool - they pass through one another. Distinguishing them can be difficult, but it's not beyond the talents of today's radio engineers.

When spectrum licensing was established in the early 20th century, radios were primitive, as was the regulatory model used to govern them. To be heard, broadcasters needed an exclusive slice of spectrum. Today, however, digital technologies let many users occupy the same frequency at the same time. As the FCC's Powell points out, "Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature and extent of spectrum use." Today's devices employ advanced digital signal processing and other techniques, and they're smart enough to coexist without interference.

Wi-Fi's success is attracting capital and encouraging research into the open spectrum idea. Last year, over the bitter opposition of entrenched spectrum holders, the FCC granted limited approval for ultrawideband. Within the next year, half of all laptops used at work are expected to have wireless connections. And within four years, Intel hopes to incorporate transmitters into all of its processor chips.

Standing in the way of open spectrum are incumbent licensees, government agencies nervous about interference, and economists entranced by the airwave auction market.

Yet the spectrum auction markets are not free markets. Each buyer gains what is, in effect, a little monopoly - which, in the aggregate, stifles communications progress just as well as one big monopoly.

Governments have long treated the airwaves like real estate to be handed out to favored operators or auctioned for huge sums. And like real estate, spectrum makes people do stupid things. The English auctions for third-generation mobile phone licenses in 2000 left the winners choked with debt. In the US, the battle over bankrupt NextWave's licenses and the hyped transition to digital TV are multibillion-dollar fiascoes.

The problem here is not the market, but the outdated real-estate metaphor. Yet, if spectrum was seen as a commons that could be shared by all, then builders of wireless devices would rush to fill it, unleashing market forces to everyone's benefit. It's already happened with Wi-Fi: A billion-dollar industry emerged overnight with no protection against interference. And Wi-Fi is only the beginning.

Independent analyst Kevin Werbach (kevin@werbach.com) is the former FCC counsel for new technology policy.

Pre-Verdict Interview With Sklyarov for CNET

(BTW, I haven't forgotten about my Final Argument coverage -- I just got swept away by the holidays for a few days...)

Sklyarov reflects on DMCA travails
By Lisa M. Bowman for CNET.

Sklyarov laments that he wasted a year and a half dealing with the legal wrangling surrounding the product he developed. But he's learned to take it in stride. He passed time in jail by reading books from the inmate library, including Ken Follett's "Night Over Water." And when he was not allowed to return to Russia for four months following his release from jail, Sklyarov wrote code for ElcomSoft from an apartment in the United States.

Sklyarov said he didn't have to give up anything significant to get the government to set aside the charges against him last year. He thinks prosecutors backed down because they didn't have a good case against him.

"Most probably they understand that they couldn't prove that I am violating the law, so for them it's much more safe to...release me, to let me return back to Russia," Sklyarov said.

Sklyarov left to return to Russia the day after the defense wrapped up its case. He said he plans to spend more time with his wife and two children when not teaching and working on ElcomSoft projects he described as too complicated to explain. Meanwhile, he hopes to concentrate on coding and leave arguments about the DMCA to lawyers.

He said if someone came to him with another project focused on cracking copyright protections, "I would ask you, if you're sure this is legal." If the answer is unclear, Sklyarov said he would suggest the person find a lawyer who could figure it out.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978497.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed

Sklyarov reflects on DMCA travails

By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 20, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov thinks it was unfair of prosecutors to play his videotaped deposition at the ElcomSoft trial rather than calling him to the stand.

But after a legal saga that's included a surprise arrest outside his Las Vegas hotel room, three weeks in jail, and visa tangles that almost prevented him from coming back to the United States for trial, Sklyarov has decided not to worry about situations over which he has no control.

"During my life I'm trying not to spend too much time trying to find what means for me things I cannot change," Sklyarov, 27, said in his first interview since testifying in the criminal copyright case of ElcomSoft, his employer.

Speaking with the careful phrasing of someone communicating in a foreign language and still bound by an agreement to cooperate with the U.S. government, Sklyarov talked with CNET News.com about life after his arrest, his impression of the case, and his opinions about how the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is affecting programmers.

The meeting took place here during a break in the trial at a restaurant across the street from the boxy, gray corporate apartment his company has kept since it became the target of U.S. prosecution 17 months ago. The interview was given with the understanding it would not run until the ElcomSoft trial ended and Sklyarov was no longer under the terms of the government agreement.

On Tuesday, a jury acquitted ElcomSoft of all counts against it in the first case to test the criminal provisions of the DMCA, a U.S. law aimed at updating intellectual property rules for the computer age. Although jurors agreed the product was illegal because it was designed to crack antipiracy technology controls, they declined to convict because they didn't believe ElcomSoft intended to break the law.

Anxiety over the DMCA
Sklyarov said many information security developers have been skittish since learning of his case, fearful that they, too, could face jail time for their work. "Nobody knows. Probably you'll do your work, and after that somebody comes for you to arrest you or something like that because the DMCA is very (broadly) written and many things can be linked with DMCA," he said.

Sklyarov catapulted to code-jockey fame in July 2001 when he was arrested after giving a speech about his company's Advanced eBook Processor, software designed to crack protections on Adobe Systems' eBooks. Prosecutors argued the product violated the DMCA, which outlaws offering software that can circumvent copyright protections.

News.com Special Report
Vision Series 3
20 minds on tech's future

Sklyarov was jailed for three weeks, his case becoming a flashpoint for the battle between copyright owners seeking to maintain control over their material in the digital age and programmers working to highlight security flaws.

But after worldwide protests among programmers, Adobe backed away from its support of Sklyarov's prosecution, and government attorneys set aside charges against him in exchange for his testimony in the remaining case against his company.

Although Sklyarov returned to the United States specifically to testify as a government witness, prosecutors never called him to the stand. In a highly unusual move, the government decided to play an hour-long edited videotape of Sklyarov's deposition instead. Sklyarov said he didn't find out until the day before he was scheduled to appear as a government witness that he would not be called to the stand.

"It's unfair," Sklyarov said of the government's plan to play a tape of him. The "government could ask questions and show them on tape, but (the) defendant couldn't ask cross questions."

The defense later called Sklyarov as its own witness, and in a calm, cooperative manner, the boyish programmer testified that he never intended for the product to be used illegally--an assertion that played well with jurors interviewed after the case. He said the software was designed to allow people to make backup copies of eBooks they already own or transfer the material to a different computer. Earlier in the two-week long trial, the government had tried to use the videotaped deposition to characterize Sklyarov as a hacker affiliate who knew his program could be used for bad purposes but didn't care. The prosecution did not comment on its decision not to call him in person.

Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann said he's not surprised that many jurors found Sklyarov sympathetic. "The jury saw this serious young man and not a copyright pirate," he said. "They must have said, 'Where's the bad guy here?'"

Battling copyright law
Von Lohmann said the arrest of the quiet, mild-mannered Sklyarov was critical in galvanizing programmers to fight heavy-handed use of the DMCA. "He is a classic programmer," von Lohmann said. "He looks like them; he talks like them; he cares about the issues they care about--and he went to jail."

Sklyarov is still working for ElcomSoft these days, in addition to teaching at a technical university in Moscow. He said the company treats him well, although he would think twice about working on any project that veers too close to the DMCA line. To this day, though, Sklyarov insists ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor is legal. Echoing statements made by ElcomSoft attorney Joseph Burton during the trial, Sklyarov compared the Advanced eBook Processor to a lock pick, which could be used for both good and bad purposes.

He also likened the software to a gun. "It has legal applications; it could be used for many legal things, for good things," he said. "A weapon could be used for killing and for protecting myself, but in (the) United States (a) weapon is legal."

Sklyarov said he understood Adobe's eagerness to pursue him and his employer because they were pointing out flaws in the company's software. "Sure I can understand it because if somebody produces bad stuff, and someone proves that this stuff is real bad, nobody will like it." He said Adobe's PDF format is probably the best in the world for distributing documents, but it falls short when it comes to protecting them.

Sklyarov laments that he wasted a year and a half dealing with the legal wrangling surrounding the product he developed. But he's learned to take it in stride. He passed time in jail by reading books from the inmate library, including Ken Follett's "Night Over Water." And when he was not allowed to return to Russia for four months following his release from jail, Sklyarov wrote code for ElcomSoft from an apartment in the United States.

Sklyarov said he didn't have to give up anything significant to get the government to set aside the charges against him last year. He thinks prosecutors backed down because they didn't have a good case against him.

"Most probably they understand that they couldn't prove that I am violating the law, so for them it's much more safe to...release me, to let me return back to Russia," Sklyarov said.

Sklyarov left to return to Russia the day after the defense wrapped up its case. He said he plans to spend more time with his wife and two children when not teaching and working on ElcomSoft projects he described as too complicated to explain. Meanwhile, he hopes to concentrate on coding and leave arguments about the DMCA to lawyers.

He said if someone came to him with another project focused on cracking copyright protections, "I would ask you, if you're sure this is legal." If the answer is unclear, Sklyarov said he would suggest the person find a lawyer who could figure it out.

MP3s of Speech from San Francisco Protest

Here are audio files of Farhan Memon, Legal Aide for the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers -- from the protest last monday.

Farhan Memon explanation 1 (6 MB)

Farhan Memon explanation 2 (6 MB)

I'm finishing up some nice compressed versions of more footage from monday, with MP3s of everything to match, and I promise they will all be up by this time tomorrow.

Sorry for the hold up. I know that Indy Media and some other media affiliates are actually waiting for this footage (a dream come true for me to have this stuff redistributed through as many channels as possible) -- and I promise that I am putting the systems into place so that I can shoot footage of events like these and have the video and mp3s up on the web in hours rather than days so I can be of real use to the "real" media outlets. (That's what I'm here for -- to help you guys report on this stuff!)

So pardon me while I figure out my equipment and software and get my cataloging act together!

Tough Talk From North Korea On X-Mess Day

I realize that the words "Peace On Earth" don't have the same ring to them this year. I know "peace" seems a million miles away sometimes these days, but we have to envision a time when there will be peace again. It will obviously take years to undo what has been done at this point to our international relations, but we have to try.

So with all that in mind, here's the most frightening thing I've seen in the news all week.

It looks like the North Koreans may have taken some of that 'Axis of Evil' stuff the Shrub has been babbling about a bit personally after all.

It just goes to show that if you treat someone like an enemy for long enough, they will become one.

North Korea Warns the U.S. to Negotiate or Risk 'Catastrophe'
By Howard French for the NY Times.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24CND-KORE.html

The New York Times The New York Times International December 24, 2002

North Korea Warns the U.S. to Negotiate or Risk 'Catastrophe'
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 24 - North Korea warned today of an ``uncontrollable catastrophe'' unless the United States agreed to a negotiated solution to a standoff over its nuclear energy and weapons programs.

The statement came as a stiff pre-emptive rebuff to a conciliation-minded, newly elected president in South Korea, and as a warning to other countries that their efforts to mediate the crisis would be futile.

``There is no need for any third party to meddle in the nuclear issue on the peninsula,'' said North Korea's ruling-party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun.

Using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name, the newspaper asserted: ``The issue should be settled between the D.P.R.K. and the U.S., the parties responsible for it. If the U.S. persistently tries to internationalize the pending issue between the D.P.R.K. and the U.S. in a bid to flee from its responsibility, it will push the situation to an uncontrollable catastrophe.''

Going even further, the North Korean defense minister, Kim Il Chol, warned of ``merciless punishment'' to the United States if it pursued a confrontational approach.

``The U.S. hawks are arrogant enough to groundlessly claim that North Korea has pushed ahead with a `nuclear program,' bringing its hostile policy toward the D.P.R.K. to an extremely dangerous phase,'' the state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted Mr. Kim as saying.

[In Washington, the State Department said it was following developments closely. ``Again, we urge North Korea not to restart any of its frozen nuclear facilities,'' the department said in a statement that reflected no change since it declared on Monday that there could be no negotiations while North Korea pursued a nuclear program, and that the United States ``will not give in to blackmail.''

[President Bush was said to be monitoring developments from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., where he will spend Christmas with his family. The Associated Press reported that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was continuing to reach out to North Korea's neighbors, calling Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi. Since Saturday, Mr. Powell has also conferred with leaders in Russia, China, South Korea, Britain and France.]

Some analysts here saw the defense minister's statement as a defiant response to comments by his American counterpart, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said on Monday that the United States had enough military power in reserve to prevail over North Korea in the event a conflict with the country should occur in the midst of a war with Iraq.

``We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said.

The North's comments come as Pyongyang accelerates its takeover of nuclear fuel and reactors that were placed under international surveillance by a 1994 agreement with the United States following a crisis remarkably similar to the current one.

Today, South Korean officials said that North Korea had begun taking steps to reactivate a five-megawatt nuclear reactor that had been mothballed under the eight-year-old agreement, the so-called Agreed Framework. North Korea has completed the removal of the last International Atomic Energy Agency seals and the disabling of surveillance cameras at a fuel fabrication plant in Yongbyon, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

The facility is technically known as a research reactor, but all along, Western arms control experts have said that its true purpose of the plant is to produce plutonium for North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

``There are varying estimates on how long it would take them to reprocess the spent fuel, but they probably have plans to do it a lot faster than outsiders imagine - and will do so if their equipment works,'' said an American official who has studied North Korea's nuclear programs for years. ``Here are a few of the ugly signposts we might whiz pass: asking the inspectors to leave, starting up the reprocessing line, finalizing their withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty, and declaring themselves a nuclear power - with a ``Korean bomb'' intended to protect the whole of the Korean people by keeping the Americans from starting a war.''

Continued
1 | 2 | Next>>

MP3s Of DJ Spooky's Talk and Performance At The Creative Commons Launch

I've made MP3 files of DJ Spooky's preview of his Birth of a Nation Remix (Edited exactly at the beginning and end of the music track that was played along side of his interactive visual presentation so it can be segued accordingly.)

and

The speaking portion of DJ Spooky's presentation (This is slightly incomplete in that I don't have him saying 'thank you' and making a few comments that he made at the end of the visual part of the presentation.)

New Addition to the Commons: Matisse's Glossary of Internet Terms

Here's an old favorite of mine (originally published in 1994 and continuously updated ever since) that will make a great new addition to the commons!

Matisse Enzer has released his
Glossary of Internet Terms under a Creative Commons Share Alike License.

Footage From Yesterday's Demonstration

Okay I've got to go to another meeting at in downtown SF this morning to find out more about what we can do to help the situation. (It's at Van Der Hout & Brigagliano, 180 Sutter St., 5th floor, at Kearny and Sutter, Downtown San Francisco - from 10:00-11:30 am, if you're interested in showing up.)

But here are some photos and footage of yesterday's small (200 people) but effective demonstration in front of the San Francisco INS office.

Both of these movies are of Farhan Memon, Legal Aide for the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, describing the terrible conditions in which these detainees are being treated by the security company contracted out by the INS. (Yep, that's right, these people aren't even in governement custody. Oh yeah, there will be more on this later!)
Farhan Memon explanation 1 (90.3 MB)

Farhan Memon explanation 2 (88.4 MB)

DJ Spooky At The Creative Commons Launch

Here is DJ Spooky's presentation at the Creative Commons Launch last Monday night.

I know these are big files guys, but I'll be posting some lower-quality versions a little later today. (These are up now on my index at: http://www.lisarein.com/videoindex.html#spooky.)
(DV experts -- please email me directly at lisarein@finetuning.com with suggestions about how to compress these files smaller -- I'm committed to perfecting my technique for this stuff!)

I'll be releasing an MP3 of the music too (from the Birth of a Nation Remix). -- And yes, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) gave me his permission to redistribute all of this stuff into the public domain, so no worries there!

So remember - don't try to play these in your browser -- right click (pd) or click and hold (mac) to download these files to your hard drive and play them from there.

First part of DJ Spooky's Presentation

Second part of DJ Spooky's Presentation

Birth of a Nation Remix w/ DJ Spooky talk afterwards

DJ Spooky Holding Up The "AdBusters" Flag

INS Roundup Protest Today!

Come down to the protest in San Francisco this morning at 11:00 AM -- that's Monday, December 23, 2002 at 11:00 AM -- at the INS building at 444 Washington Street, San Francisco.

Here's a map to the event

Here's a gif of that map if the mapquest link above doesn't work.

444 Washington is sort of in between the Embarcadero and Montgomery St. BART stations (a couple blocks west of market street ).

From Embarcadero BART Go south on Market (away from the Ferry Building) and make a RIGHT on Drumm street. Then make a LEFT on WASHINGTON St. to the INS building at 444 Washington.

From Montgomery St. BART, take Montgomery St. to Washington and make a RIGHT on Washington to 444 Washington.

Otherwise bring $5-$10 to park in a parking garage somewhere.

I will, of course, be filming the event, so if you can't make it, check back here for footage tomorrow afternoon.

Photo Essay On Last Week's Demonstration In Los Angeles

What's next? Photo essay: L.A. protests against detention of Iranians
Photos by Ramin Tabib and Dorna Khazeni.

Comparing Repub Leaders-In-Waiting On Health and Civil Rights Issues

Frist and Nickles -- is this the best the Repubs can do for Senate leadership? I say, keep trying Shrub...

I had my first experience with Google Answers over the weekend.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Google Answers could be used for the public good: considering all of its answers are made public and searchable. This means, when one of us pays $10 or $20 to have a question answered, we can all benefit from the results.

So I thought I would try a little experiment, and signed up for the Google Answer service.

I haven't send Google Answers my feedback yet -- what do you think of its answer?

Saturday evening, at 10:25 PM (on 12/21/02) I submitted this question:

Of the top four contenders for Republican Senate Majority Leader, which have
the worst voting record on civil rights? (With specific examples.)

I had my first experience with Google Answers over the weekend.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Google Answers could be used for the public good: considering all of its answers are made public and searchable. This means, when one of us pays $10 or $20 to have a question answered, we can all benefit from the results.

So I thought I would try a little experiment, and signed up for the Google Answer service.

I haven't send Google Answers my feedback yet -- what do you think of its answer?

Saturday evening, at 10:25 PM (on 12/21/02) I submitted this question:

Of the top four contenders for Republican Senate Majority Leader, which have
the worst voting record on civil rights? (With specific examples.)

When I subscribed to the service, I checked the box that said "E-mail me whenever there is new activity about my questions." (They also had an option that would never email me more than once a day with updates, but I'm curious and wanted to know about all of my updates as they happen.)

I looked at the pricing guidelines and decided that my question weighed in at about 20 bucks. (It would easily take someone a half hour and was sort of a compound question in the sense that you had to find one part of it out before you get going on the other. At the same time -- the question certainly wasn't too complicated, and it was arguably a fun question. So I left it at $20.)

At 11:37 pm, I received a "Google Answers Activity Report," asking me to please clarify my question.

So I clicked on the link, and saw that this question had been asked of me:

Request for Question Clarification by mvguy-ga on 21 Dec 2002 22:49 PST

At this point, it doesn't appear there are four top contenders;
according to news reports, Sen. Bill Frist has support from a majority
of the GOP senators for the position, a majority that includes at
least two others who had been considered contenders. Perhaps you
could name the four senators whose voting records you'd like to know
more about, or perhaps you would like to know more about Frist's
record. Thanks.

To which I replied at around 11:50 pm:

Clarification of Question by xmlrein-ga on 21 Dec 2002 23:51 PST

I understand that Frist is in the lead -- but I was not aware that he
is considered to have no competition at this point.

I was thinking of going down the ladder in popularity (From Frist, to
Nickles, to #3? and #4?) -- that's where I got my "top four
contenders."

If you're saying there's no contest, then, sure, let's concentrate on
Frist.

Thanks!

When I woke up in the AM, my question had been answered for me.

It came in at 3:37 AM. (Not bad!)

Here is the answer:

Subject: Re: Republican Leaders and Civil Rights
Answered By: easterangel-ga on 22 Dec 2002 02:47 PST

Hi! Thanks for the question.

It is true that at this point (Dec. 22) and as of the writing of this
answer, there are indeed two contenders for the Republican Senate
Majority Leader Sen. Frist as the front runner with Nickles coming in
second. Due to the withdrawal by Sen. Lott both are now considered
likely prospects. But like Lott both have been criticized and have
been said to be his mirror images when it comes to civil rights voting
records.

In this National Organization for Women article it provides examples
of the civil rights issues voted upon by Sen. Frist. He voted against
the following issues:

1. Sex education
2. International family planning
3. Emergency contraception
4. Affirmative action
5. Hate crimes legislation
6. Employment Non-Discrimination Act

“’Few senators have a worse voting record on civil rights than Trent
Lott—but Bill Frist is one of them,’ Gandy noted. ‘Frist has voted
against sex education, international family planning, emergency
contraception (the morning-after pill), affirmative action, hate
crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This is
the man who is supposed to save face for the GOP in the Senate? Think
again.’"

“NOW President Says Potential Lott Replacement No Improvement”
http://www.now.org/press/12-02/12-20.html The next article is a profile of Sen. Frist.

“Frist Has Quick Rise in Senate”
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:D2piSfXoOJkJ:news.findlaw.com/politics/s/20021220/politicslottfristdc.html+Sen.+Bill+Frist+%22civil+rights%22+%22voting+record%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Sen. Don Nickles is portrayed as well in the media as not so much a
champion in this arena.

1. Opposed a federal holiday for the commemoration Martin Luther
King’s birthday.

2. Voted for the preservation of the tax-exempt status of private
schools like Bob Jones University which is opposed to interracial
dating.

3. “…uphold the first President Bush's veto of legislation to amend
the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban workplace discrimination.”

4. “In 1993, both voted to extend the Confederate flag design patent”

5. “In 1994, both sided with a Helms amendment to strip federal
funding from the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission.”

6. Nickles also voted for the elimination of a disadvantaged business
enterprise program. This program insures that a certain percentage of
federal government contracts go to businesses led by minorities and
women.

“Nickles' voting record on civil rights mirrors Lott's”
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/politics/article/0,1426,MCA_1496_1613863,00.html
In my own opinion, even though there were more samples for Nickles,
Frist’s voting records on the more basic and important civil rights
issues makes him less of a supporter when it comes to these types of
legislation.

Search terms used:
Sen. Bill Frist "civil rights" "voting record"

I hope these links would help you in your research. Before rating this
answer, please ask for a clarification if you have a question or if
you would need further information.

Thanks for visiting us.

Regards,
Easterangel-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Then later that day (3:37 PM) Another Google Answer Researcher added this to my entry:

Comments Log in to add a comment
Subject: Re: Republican Leaders and Civil Rights
From: snapanswer-ga on 22 Dec 2002 14:55 PST

You may also find this comparison of votes for Lott, Nickles,
McConnell, Frist, and Santorum interesting. Obviously, some of these
votes occurred prior to Frist and Santorum joining the Senate, though
that is the exception.

http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/qtr1_2003/1217-127.html I would note that the National Organization of Women's agenda on:
1. Sex education
2. International family planning
3. Emergency contraception

is not universally considered civil rights legislation, so it is not
suprising to not find them listed in the vote comparison linked to
above.

Also, the following article from the USA Today points to some
differences between Frist and Lott beyond voting record. "Frist has
donated his services as a physician at medical missions in Africa and
has worked to address the problem of AIDS there."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-12-18-lott-votes_x.htm

Lessig, Barlow, Valenti at Creative Commons Launch

I'll be putting up a movie every day this week: Lawrence Lessig, John Perry Barlow and Jack Valenti today, DJ Spooky Tomorrow, Brewster Khale and (mini-brewster), Craig Newmark, Aaron Swartz and Vicki Bennett as the week goes on...
(Lower resolultion versions available now.)
First Part of Larry's speech (92.4 MB)

John Perry Barlow and Jack Valenti speeches (75.2 MB)

Second Part of Larry's speech (78.6 MB)

Videos Of Creative Commons Launch Up Soon

I'll be posting video of all the presentations from last Monday's launch, one a day, starting Monday... (Update 12/31/02 - This stuff is all availablel now on my video index.)

I'm going to start with QuickTimes and then am happy to convert other formats from there on request.

I'll be storing all of this at the Internet Archive, so I'm happy to generate as many formats as needed to make the footage viewable on all platforms and systems.

Write me with your suggestions/technical requirements at: lisarein@finetuning.com.

O'Brien Speaks Out On The Complexities of INS Administriva

Danny O'Brien explains how complicated the INS paperwork can be.

When I say, "in the midst of", let me tell you what that involves. I'm on my third attempt to have the documentation even processed. Twice it's been sent back because of a filing error on my part. This is not surprising: the documentation needed to even apply for permanent residency is so vast, and so often changed, that even with the best explanations in the world, there are dozens of ambiguities. And the explanations are not the best in the world. INS requirements differ from office to office: official Website explanations contradict one another. This is hard. Here's the first step in my application process (picture of all of his paperwork here).

Partial Transcripts from ElcomSoft Trial Now Available

Cryptome has made a number of transcripts from the trial available.

Looks like I got most of it right in my accounts! (Give or take a few words!) Cool!

I'll be doing a comparison later. (Later....later.......so much to do...)

I'll also be creating another category for "Comprehensive Coverage" of the ElcomSoft Trial.
(Delays...always delays....)

Brilliant New Technique Temporarily Removes Affected Organ, Nukes It, And Pops It Back In

Out-of-body operation banishes tumours
By Sergio Pistoi for New Scientist.

Instead the surgeons decided to remove the entire liver. The organ was placed in a Teflon bag that neutrons can pass through and taken to a research reactor nearby, where it was irradiated with neutrons. It was then re-implanted, just as in a normal liver transplant operation.

"By explanting the organ, we could give a high and uniform dose to all the liver, which is impossible to obtain inside the body without serious risk to the patient," says Tazio Pinelli, a physicist who coordinated the work together with liver surgeon Aris Zonta.

"It was a bold stroke and has stirred the interest of many in the field," says Paul Busse, a neutron radiology expert at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The technique has been dubbed TAORMINA after the Italian for "advanced treatment of organs by means of neutron irradiation and autotransplant". But with only one person treated so far, it is too early to judge how safe and effective it is.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993193

Out-of-body operation banishes tumours

19:00 18 December 02

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs.
Surgeons remove a liver during a normal transplant operation (Image: AURORA/KATZ)
Surgeons remove a liver during a normal transplant operation (Image: AURORA/KATZ)

Doctors in Italy used the technique to treat a 48-year-old man with multiple tumours in his liver. One year after the operation, which took 21 hours, the man is alive and well. His liver is functioning normally and the latest scans have not revealed any signs of tumours.

The team, which consists of surgeons at the San Matteo Hospital in Pavia and physicists from the local division of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, is now waiting for approval to treat another six patients with multiple liver tumours. If these are successful, the technique could one day be used to tackle hard-to-treat cancers in other organs that can be transplanted, such as the lungs or pancreas.

The patient they have treated had had a colon tumour removed, but the cancer spread to his liver. Scans revealed no fewer than 14 tumours there, and many smaller ones were discovered during the operation. Such diffuse cancers are very difficult to treat by conventional means.

Neutron capture

The tumours proved resistant to chemotherapy. And there was little hope of killing such widespread growth with conventional radiotherapy - which usually involves focusing X-ray beams onto the target - without destroying the liver.

So doctors decided to try a method called boron neutron capture therapy, first attempted in the 1950s, in which boron atoms are attached to the amino acid phenylalanine and injected into a patient. Because they are growing quickly, tumours take up more of the compound than normal cells.

The team has been working on the method since 1987 and has done extensive studies to work out the optimum dose. Two to four hours after the compound is given, a low-energy neutron beam is directed at the organ, splitting the boron into high-energy particles that mainly kill the cancer cells.

But to ensure that all cancerous cells are destroyed, an even dose of neutrons has to be given to the entire organ. That's not easy to do in the body, where obstructions such as bones block the neutron beam. And the tissues surrounding the organ inevitably receive a large dose of radiation.

Teflon bag

Instead the surgeons decided to remove the entire liver. The organ was placed in a Teflon bag that neutrons can pass through and taken to a research reactor nearby, where it was irradiated with neutrons. It was then re-implanted, just as in a normal liver transplant operation.

"By explanting the organ, we could give a high and uniform dose to all the liver, which is impossible to obtain inside the body without serious risk to the patient," says Tazio Pinelli, a physicist who coordinated the work together with liver surgeon Aris Zonta.

"It was a bold stroke and has stirred the interest of many in the field," says Paul Busse, a neutron radiology expert at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The technique has been dubbed TAORMINA after the Italian for "advanced treatment of organs by means of neutron irradiation and autotransplant". But with only one person treated so far, it is too early to judge how safe and effective it is.

Brain tumours

Even if the method proves effective against liver and other cancers, such a drastic operation would be reserved for patients with the worst outlook, and could only be carried out while they were still strong enough to survive the long operation.

It could also be used only in cases where the spreading cancer is restricted to one organ. Once cancers spread widely, there is little that can be done. Another problem is that there are few reactors capable of producing suitable neutron beams.

But the work could also help improve normal boron neutron capture therapy, Busse says, by improving our knowledge of what doses are safe and effective. The technique is currently being tested on patients with otherwise untreatable brain tumours - obviously without removing the organ in question.

Sergio Pistoi, Rome

More On How The Jury Decided

Software firm acquitted in first digital copyright law case
By Howard Mintz for the Arizona Daily Star.

The jury, however, sided with ElcomSoft, which maintained since the case broke into the public spotlight last year that it believed it was marketing a legal product and was unaware that it was violating the DMCA. Jurors said after the verdict that the government failed to prove that ElcomSoft willfully intended to violate U.S. copyright laws, the high standard required to obtain a conviction under the 4-year-old copyright act...

Dennis Strader, the jury foreman, noted that ElcomSoft openly sold its software, taking no steps to conceal its conduct before being warned of problems by Adobe. Strader added that some jurors were concerned about the scope of the law and whether it curtailed the "fair use" of material simply because it was electronic.

"Under the eBook formats, you have no rights at all, and the jury had trouble with that concept," Strader said.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.azstarnet.com/public/startech/wire1.html

SN: Fri 12.20.02
www.azstarnet.com
Clear 50° - Clear
VIEW FORECAST
run date December 18, 2002

Software firm acquitted in first digital copyright law case

By Howard Mintz
Knight Ridder Newspapers

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal jury in San Jose on Tuesday rejected the government's first attempt to enforce the criminal sanctions in a controversial digital copyright law, acquitting a small Russian software company of trying to illegally undermine a popular Adobe Systems product.

After nearly three days of deliberations, the jury cleared Moscow-based ElcomSoft of all charges that it violated the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, frustrating federal prosecutors who used the case as an unprecedented test of the law's teeth against Internet piracy. The verdict stemmed from a two-week trial in which prosecutors accused ElcomSoft of devising a "burglary tool" to allow computer users to copy and distribute electronic books that were supposed to be protected by Adobe's technology.

The jury, however, sided with ElcomSoft, which maintained since the case broke into the public spotlight last year that it believed it was marketing a legal product and was unaware that it was violating the DMCA. Jurors said after the verdict that the government failed to prove that ElcomSoft willfully intended to violate U.S. copyright laws, the high standard required to obtain a conviction under the 4-year-old copyright act.

The ElcomSoft case has been considered a key test of the DMCA, which has come under fire from critics who say it is overly broad and threatens the flow of information on the Internet. In the end, the case produced a mixed legacy — a series of rulings served to clarify and uphold the criminal provisions of the law, but legal experts said the jury's message also gives prosecutors a murky road map for using it in the future.

The case was the first to go to trial under the copyright law; two other prosecutions in the United States have ended in plea bargains. ElcomSoft faced millions of dollars in fines if convicted.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing, who prosecuted the case, said he "accepted" the verdict and downplayed the suggestion that it would discourage future use of the law. Frewing noted that U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte earlier in the case upheld the constitutionality of the 1998 copyright act, establishing strong precedent for future prosecutions.

"I don't think one jury verdict is going to" undermine the copyright law, Frewing added.

San Francisco attorney Joseph Burton, a former federal prosecutor who represented ElcomSoft, agreed with Frewing that the verdict does not throw "a blanket" on the copyright act. But he stressed that he believes ElcomSoft was the wrong target for prosecutors. And ElcomSoft Chief Executive Alexander Katalov, smoking a cigarette while he phoned friends and colleagues after the verdict, was relieved by the outcome.

"This is why I spent a year to demonstrate we were not guilty of this," Katalov said. "It's why we rejected a guilty plea and a deal."

The ElcomSoft case attracted widespread attention in July 2001, when federal agents arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, an ElcomSoft programmer, at a Las Vegas Def Con hacker conference where he was praising the company's technology. Federal prosecutors broke new ground by charging Sklyarov and the company under the DMCA, sparking howls of protest from Internet rights groups and the hacker community.

Prosecutors eventually dropped charges against Sklyarov, but pursued the case against the company. They specifically alleged that ElcomSoft violated the law by marketing a program called the Advanced eBook Processor, which allowed users to unscramble Adobe's eBook Reader. The eBook Reader, designed to prevent copying of electronic books, was relied upon by publishing retailers like Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com to control sales and distribution of e-books.

During the trial, Frewing told jurors that ElcomSoft knew it was violating the law by selling a product designed to crack Adobe's technology. But ElcomSoft succeeded in convincing the jury otherwise, presenting witnesses, including Sklyarov, who testified that they believed the software had legitimate purposes and complied with Russian law.

Sklyarov admitted that when he developed the program, he was not concerned about violating U.S. copyright law, even though ElcomSoft sold the software on its Web site. Jurors, however, said such admissions were not enough to support a conviction.

Dennis Strader, the jury foreman, noted that ElcomSoft openly sold its software, taking no steps to conceal its conduct before being warned of problems by Adobe. Strader added that some jurors were concerned about the scope of the law and whether it curtailed the "fair use" of material simply because it was electronic.

"Under the eBook formats, you have no rights at all, and the jury had trouble with that concept," Strader said.

The "fair use" exception to traditional copyrighted material has been one of the core debates over the DMCA. Critics say the law punishes online use of material even if it could fall under that exception, which, for example, allows owners of copyrighted material to make a copy of a book for academic use or tape a record album.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a strong critic of the law, said the verdict would "send a strong message to federal prosecutors who believe that tool makers should be thrown in jail just because a copyright owner doesn't like the tools they build."

"We have said from the beginning that Sklyarov, ElcomSsoft and technologists like them are not pirates," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Adobe issued a brief statement saying it was disappointed in the verdict but still confident it was correct to bring the case to the attention of law enforcement.

BusinessWeek On The ElcomSoft Case

This is a great article except for the (often incorrectly reported) part about Dmitry testifying "against his former employer."

The facts are: 1) ElcomSoft is Dmitry's current employer, and 2) He didn't do anything against anyone; He just testified. Here's the story on that issue.

Digital Copyright: A Law Defanged?
Cyberlibertarians who denounced the feds' prosecution of a Russian programmer have their victory, but not the precedent they really need
By Alex Salkever for BusinessWeek Online.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2002/tc20021219_4518.htm

DECEMBER 19, 2002

NEWSMAKER Q&A
By Alex Salkever

Digital Copyright: A Law Defanged?
Cyberlibertarians who denounced the feds' prosecution of a Russian programmer have their victory, but not the precedent they really need

In the summer of 2001, the tech slump wrenched Silicon Valley, but the geek masses had more to fret about than layoffs. Dmitry Sklyarov also had them spooked. On July 16 of that year, federal agents arrested the Russian programmer at the Defcon hacker confab in Las Vegas shortly after the waifish code jockey's well-attended lecture on the weaknesses in the copyright protection technology used to guard Adobe's eBook Reader (see BW Online, 7/25/01, "Don't Judge an eBook Case By Its Coverage").

Story Continues Below Ad

Skylarov didn't know Adobe had alerted the G-men that he was the copyright holder of the Advanced eBook Processor, a piece of software designed to crack eBook copyright-protection mechanisms. The software, the feds alleged, violated a controversial provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which allows the government to press criminal charges against any company or individual who "willfully" creates technology to circumvent copyright protection. In the government's view, the Advanced eBook Processor, sold for $99 at the time by Sklyarov's Russian employer, Elcomsoft, represented a criminal offense.

APPELLATE LEVEL. Now, it appears the anti-DMCA side has won this skirmish. On Dec. 17, in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., a jury acquitted Elcomsoft of all criminal charges. (Sklyarov himself was not on trial as he had cut a deal to testify against his former employer in exchange for immunity.) Cyberlibertarians rejoiced, proclaiming that the decision would make it much harder to prosecute criminal cases under the DMCA.

That's probably true, but the outlook is a little more complicated: To set a precedent and broadly affect how the DMCA is interpreted, a similar case will need to reach the appellate bench. So far, not a single criminal DMCA case has gone that far. Two have been settled, leaving the Sklyarov matter as the only one to make it to trial.

While the feds say the Sklyarov ruling won't stop them mounting further criminal cases, it may well make them think twice. "They got slapped around in the press, and then the jury acquitted. It doesn't get worse than that," says Orin S. Kerr, a professor at George Washington University. As Kerr and others point out, the burden of proof in the Sklyarov/Elcomsoft case was particularly difficult. Says Kerr: "This is a good reminder that the statute is more limited than people think."

When Congress inserts "willful" into the definition of a criminal charge, it raises the bar very high. The word means with full knowledge, and that obliged the Justice Dept. to prove that Elcomsoft built the Advanced eBook Processor as a conscious violation of U.S. law. That was hard to prove because the DMCA has no legal equivalent in Russia, where Elcomsoft is headquartered.

DIGITAL LOCK PICK. The government believed that Sklyarov and Elcomsoft made perfect examples of why the DMCA was needed: as a means to punish those attempting to profit by selling technology explicitly designed to circumvent copyright protection. Elcomsoft was offering what amounted to a digital lock pick, the feds argued, a virtual version of something that would be illegal in the physical world.

The feds had their hands full trying to convince a jury, as they might have expected had they been following surveys of Internet users. In 2000, for example, Reston (Va.) market-data outfit PC Data polled 1,560 Web surfers and found that 56% regarded unauthorized music downloads as "harmless."

Nor did it help that the case went to trial in the heart of Silcon Valley, where the chances of assembling a tech-hostile jury must be reckoned among the lowest in the country, and where the very idea that a guilty verdict might lead to a stretch behind bars must have struck many as Draconian. "Juries are much more comfortable finding against [the government] in a civil case as opposed to a criminal case," says Ian Ballon, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Palo Alto, Calif., and the author of E-commerce and Internet Law.

GUN-SHY? If the Justice Dept. becomes increasingly gun-shy about enforcing the DMCA, as Kerr and others predict, one beneficiary will be researchers, who will be able to go about their business with little fear of arrest. On the other hand, lots of problems could lie ahead, however, if copyright holders mount a sustained civil battle against companies like Elcomsoft, which they may perceive to be in violation of the law.

Still, the "Free Dmitry" campaign that became a cause célèbre among cyberlibertarians and technologists now appears victorious. Meanwhile, the DMCA seems far less fearsome than its detractors feared -- and less likely to have an impact on innovation.

Salkever is Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online and covers computer security issues weekly in his Security Net column

Time Gives Lott's Ousting Credit to Bloggers!

If Lott didn't see the storm coming, it was in part because it was so slow in building. The papers did not make note of his comments until days after he had made them. But the stillness was broken by the hum of Internet "bloggers" who were posting their outrage and compiling rap sheets of Lott's earlier comments.

Tripped Up By History
G.O.P. leader Trent Lott's remarks on race raise a storm and a hot question: Have Republicans really outgrown their past?
By Dan Goodgame and Karen Tumulty for Time.

Bush Administration Preparing To Spy On Internet Users

Bush Administration to Propose System for Monitoring Internet
By John Markoff and John Schwartz for the NY Times.

Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who represents some of the nation's largest Internet providers, said, "Internet service providers are concerned about the privacy implications of this as well as liability," since providing access to live feeds of network activity could be interpreted as a wiretap or as the "pen register" and "trap and trace" systems used on phones without a judicial order.

Mr. Baker said the issue would need to be resolved before the proposal could move forward.

Tiffany Olson, the deputy chief of staff for the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said yesterday that the proposal, which includes a national network operations center, was still in flux. She said the proposed methods did not necessarily require gathering data that would allow monitoring at an individual user level.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/technology/20MONI.html?ex=1041051600&en=8b95ba76443ce31d&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

The New York Times The New York Times Technology December 20, 2002

Bush Administration to Propose System for Monitoring Internet
By JOHN MARKOFF and JOHN SCHWARTZ

The Bush administration is planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users.

The proposal is part of a final version of a report, "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," set for release early next year, according to several people who have been briefed on the report. It is a component of the effort to increase national security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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The President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board is preparing the report, and it is intended to create public and private cooperation to regulate and defend the national computer networks, not only from everyday hazards like viruses but also from terrorist attack. Ultimately the report is intended to provide an Internet strategy for the new Department of Homeland Security.

Such a proposal, which would be subject to Congressional and regulatory approval, would be a technical challenge because the Internet has thousands of independent service providers, from garage operations to giant corporations like American Online, AT&T, Microsoft and Worldcom.

The report does not detail specific operational requirements, locations for the centralized system or costs, people who were briefed on the document said.

While the proposal is meant to gauge the overall state of the worldwide network, some officials of Internet companies who have been briefed on the proposal say they worry that such a system could be used to cross the indistinct border between broad monitoring and wiretap.

Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who represents some of the nation's largest Internet providers, said, "Internet service providers are concerned about the privacy implications of this as well as liability," since providing access to live feeds of network activity could be interpreted as a wiretap or as the "pen register" and "trap and trace" systems used on phones without a judicial order.

Mr. Baker said the issue would need to be resolved before the proposal could move forward.

Tiffany Olson, the deputy chief of staff for the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said yesterday that the proposal, which includes a national network operations center, was still in flux. She said the proposed methods did not necessarily require gathering data that would allow monitoring at an individual user level.

But the need for a large-scale operations center is real, Ms. Olson said, because Internet service providers and security companies and other online companies only have a view of the part of the Internet that is under their control.

"We don't have anybody that is able to look at the entire picture," she said. "When something is happening, we don't know it's happening until it's too late."

The government report was first released in draft form in September, and described the monitoring center, but it suggested it would likely be controlled by industry. The current draft sets the stage for the government to have a leadership role.

The new proposal is labeled in the report as an "early-warning center" that the board says is required to offer early detection of Internet-based attacks as well as defense against viruses and worms.

But Internet service providers argue that its data-monitoring functions could be used to track the activities of individuals using the network.

An official with a major data services company who has been briefed on several aspects of the government's plans said it was hard to see how such capabilities could be provided to government without the potential for real-time monitoring, even of individuals.

"Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is to be able to track incidents while they are occurring," the official said.

The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet."

One former federal Internet security official cautioned against drawing conclusions from the information that is available so far about the Securing Cyberspace report's conclusions.

Michael Vatis, the founding director of the National Critical Infrastructure Protection Center and now the director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth, said it was common for proposals to be cast in the worst possible light before anything is actually known about the technology that will be used or the legal framework within which it will function.

"You get a firestorm created before anybody knows what, concretely, is being proposed," Mr. Vatis said.

A technology that is deployed without the proper legal controls "could be used to violate privacy," he said, and should be considered carefully.

But at the other end of the spectrum of reaction, Mr. Vatis warned, "You end up without technology that could be very useful to combat terrorism, information warfare or some other harmful act."

So There It Is! Trent Lott Resigns!

Yippie! The first success of my "Bye-Bye 'insert corrupt politician here'" Series!

As of today, December 20, 2002, Trent Lott has stepped down as Leader of the Republican party.

Good work guys!

The bloggers and the popular press really worked together on this one!

Here's a Washington Post story by Helen Dewar and Mike Allen (with
Jim VandeHei) to flesh out some of the details of his resignation:

Lott to Step Down as GOP Leader

Southern Senator Will Serve Out Term

Today's announcement from Trent "Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out" Lott:

"In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003. To all those who offered me their friendship, support and prayers, I will be eternally grateful. I will continue to serve the people of Mississippi in the United States Senate."

Here's the full text of the glorious article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17080-2002Dec20.html

Lott to Step Down as GOP Leader
Southern Senator Will Serve Out Term

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_____ Biography _____
Sen. Trent Lott
(R-Miss.)

Elected: 1988
Hometown: Pascagoula, Miss.
Age: 61
Born: October 9, 1941 in Grenada County, Miss.
Religion: Baptist
Family: Wife, Patricia Elizabeth Lott; two children
Education: U. of Mississippi, B.P.A. 1963; J.D. 1967
Career: Lawyer; congressional aide
Political Highlights: U.S. House, 1973-89; U.S. Senate, 1989-present (majority leader, 1994-present)

Source: Congressional Quarterly

_____ Lott Statement _____

"In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003. To all those who offered me their friendship, support and prayers, I will be eternally grateful. I will continue to serve the people of Mississippi in the United States Senate."

Embattled Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) announced this morning that he is stepping down from his leadership post, just a day after Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) launched a campaign to oust him.

Lott said he would serve the four years left in his term, thus helping to insure that the Republican Party maintains its narrow control of the Senate.

"In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003," Lott said in a written statement. "To all those who offered me their friendship, support and prayers, I will be eternally grateful. I will continue to serve the people of Mississippi in the United States Senate."

Lott, 61, had come under fire for comments he made Dec. 5 in support of Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation presidential campaign in 1948 during Thurmond's birthday celebration. Since then, the comments have erupted into one of the most remarkable and unusual political storms in recent memory. Lott had battled to keep his leadership job but in the past week a growing number of GOP senators had concluded that if he stayed, he would severely damage the party.

Lott had been the Republican Senate leader since 1996.

President Bush called the senator shortly after he issued his resignation, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, and had a warm 10-minute conversation. In a statement released by Fleischer, Bush said that he considers Lott a "valued friend and a man I respect. I am pleased he will continue to serve our nation."

Earlier this week, Lott had complained that officials in the White House were undermining his efforts to remain leader. His allies said he was hurt that the president and other officials had refused to publicly support him and complained that there were behind-the-scenes efforts from the administration to oust him. White House officials had denied they were playing any role in Lott's future.

Frist, a 50-year-old heart surgeon and close ally of President Bush, yesterday called numerous GOP senators to ask for their support to become the next Senate majority leader if Lott were to leave.

He had no immediate comment today on Lott's decision, but senators from across the GOP spectrum announced their support for Frist. Among them were Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), a close ally of Lott's, Sen. Don Nickles (Okla.), who holds the number two spot in the leadership and had been considering his own run for the post, Sen. Pete Domenici (N.M.), Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.) and both Virginia senators, John Warner and George Allen. The Republican senators will vote on a new leader Jan. 6.

"There's a fast-moving momentum building up for Bill Frist," Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) told reporters last night after meeting with Frist at the Republican Senate campaign headquarters near the Capitol. "I can assure you the [Frist] team is growing very quickly."

Known for a cool demeanor that masks his intense work habits, Frist can get by on four hours of sleep a night, a holdover from his days as a heart-lung transplant surgeon. The Senate's only doctor, he comforted tense officials at a meeting in the Capitol basement after an anthrax-laced letter panicked Capitol Hill. His Senate Web site became a clearinghouse for information about anthrax symptoms and treatment.

Several Republicans said Frist would be a huge help in selling an expected Bush admininstration health care initiative to Congress and the public. Some Senate aides said Frist would help the party portray a more moderate image if he succeeded Lott.

Aides said his goals include adding a prescription drug benefit for Medicare and making health care more affordable and available to low-income people. He promotes childhood vaccinations and wants to encourage the development of new vaccines. Much of Frist's agenda concerns prevention and treatment of AIDS, and he travels to Africa once or twice a year at his own expense to perform operations as a medical missionary.

Frist, who has three sons, earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1974, graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School in 1978 and joined the teaching faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in his native Nashville. He was elected in 1994 by defeating Sen. Jim Sasser (D).

Jim VandeHei contributed to this report.

How Do We Stop This Madness? The INS Roundups Have Begun

Red Flag guys!

Immigrants from a number of Middle Eastern countries are being arrested after coming forward voluntarily to register with the INS.

These people are being treated like as any other criminal suspect while in custody. They have been hosed down before having to sleep on the floor (if there's room) or forced to sleep standing up. (Yeah, I know, even criminal suspects shouldn't be treated like that, but that's another story...)

Now these innocents may be sent away to a jail or internment facility elsewhere -- to be further processed because of the overcrowded living conditions in the Jail they are currently being held in. Their lawyers and loved ones aren't being told when or to where exactly they are to be moved.

These people have committed no crime except that of being a citizen of the country they are from.

This is way to close for comfort to the WWII roundups of Japanese-Americans from 1942-1944.
When Our Government Freaked Out -- and went around rounding up and imprisoning Japanese-Americans in "internment camps" in locations across the country.

I'm not sure yet what it is exactly we can do to help these people, but I'm going to do my best to find out.

We're not going to make let them wait two years like the Japanese had to wait, are we?

Note: There was a big protest (3,000+ people) about this in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.

Here's story by Megan Garvey, Martha Groves and Henry Weinstein (with Greg Krikorian, Teresa Watanabe, Johanna Neuman and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar) for the L.A. Times:

Hundreds Are Held After Visits to INS
Mideast boys and men living in the Southland were complying with an order to register

Hundreds of men and boys from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear at INS offices for a special registration program...

Monday's registration deadline applied to males 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Men from 13 other nations, mostly in the Mideast and North Africa, are required to register next month.

Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely...

"These are the people who've voluntarily gone" to the INS, said Mike S. Manesh of the Iranian American Lawyers Assn. "If they had anything to do with terrorism, they wouldn't have gone."

Immigration officials acknowledged Wednesday that many of those taken into custody this week have status-adjustment applications pending that have not yet been acted on.

"The vast majority of people who are coming forward to register are currently in legal immigration status," said local INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice. "The people we have taken into custody ... are people whose non-immigrant visas have expired."

...Jonoubi said that the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said.

Many objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration. INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being arrested.

Lawyers reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing up, some shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions in jail cells — all for men with no known criminal histories.

Shawn Sedaghat, a Sherman Oaks attorney, said he and his partner, Michelle Taheripour, represent more than 40 people who voluntarily went to register and were detained.

Some, he said, were hosed down with cold water before finding places to sleep on the concrete floors of cells...

Attorney Ban Al-Wardi, who saw 14 of her 20 clients arrested when she went with them to the registration, said that although everyone understands the need to protect the nation against terrorist attacks, the government's recent action went too far.

"All of our fundamental civil rights have been violated by these actions," she said. "I don't know how far this is going to go before people start speaking up. This is a very dangerous precedent we are setting. What's to stop Americans from being treated like this when they travel overseas?"

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-register19dec19,0,436924.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dheadlines

By Megan Garvey, Martha Groves and Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writers

Hundreds Are Held After Visits to INS
Hundreds of men and boys from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear at INS offices for a special registration program.

The arrests drew thousands of people to demonstrate Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesmen refused Wednesday to say how many people the agency had detained, what the specific charges were or how many were still being held. But officials speaking anonymously said they would not dispute estimates by lawyers for detainees that the number across Southern California was 500 to 700. In Los Angeles, up to one-fourth of those who showed up to register were jailed, lawyers said.

The number of people arrested in this region appears to have been considerably larger than elsewhere in the country, perhaps because of the size of the Southland's Iranian population. Monday's registration deadline applied to males 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Men from 13 other nations, mostly in the Mideast and North Africa, are required to register next month.

Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely.

"These are the people who've voluntarily gone" to the INS, said Mike S. Manesh of the Iranian American Lawyers Assn. "If they had anything to do with terrorism, they wouldn't have gone."

Immigration officials acknowledged Wednesday that many of those taken into custody this week have status-adjustment applications pending that have not yet been acted on.

"The vast majority of people who are coming forward to register are currently in legal immigration status," said local INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice. "The people we have taken into custody ... are people whose non-immigrant visas have expired."

The large number of Iranians among the detainees has angered many in the area's Iranian communities, who organized a demonstration Wednesday at the federal building in Westwood.

At the rally, which police officials estimated drew about 3,000 protesters at its peak, signs bore such sentiments as "What Next? Concentration Camps?" and "Detain Terrorists Not Innocent Immigrants."

The arrests have generated widespread publicity, mostly unfavorable, in the Middle East, said Khaled Dawoud, a correspondent for Al Ahram, one of Egypt's largest dailies. He questioned State Department official Charlotte Beers about the detentions Wednesday after a presentation she made at the National Press Club in Washington. Egyptians are not included in the registration requirement.

Beers, undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, was presenting examples of a U.S. outreach campaign for the Middle East, which includes images of Muslims leading happy lives here. Dawoud asked how that image squared with the "humiliating" arrests in recent days.

"I don't think there is any question that the change in visa policy is going to be seen by some as difficult and, indeed — what was the word you used? — humiliating," Beers said. But, she added, President Bush has said repeatedly that he considers "his No. 1 ... job to be the protection of the American people."

Relatives and lawyers of those arrested locally challenge that rationale for the latest round of detentions.

One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year-old pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe that the registration requirements would catch terrorists.

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home — she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients.

Jonoubi said that the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said.

Many objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration. INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being arrested.

Lawyers reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing up, some shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions in jail cells — all for men with no known criminal histories.

Shawn Sedaghat, a Sherman Oaks attorney, said he and his partner, Michelle Taheripour, represent more than 40 people who voluntarily went to register and were detained.

Some, he said, were hosed down with cold water before finding places to sleep on the concrete floors of cells.

Lucas Guttentag, who heads the West Coast office of the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrant rights project, fears the wave of arrests is "a prelude to much more widespread arrests and deportations."

"The secrecy gives rise to obvious concerns about what the INS is doing and whether people's rights are being respected and whether the problems that arose in the aftermath of 9/11 are being repeated now," he said.

Many at Wednesday's protest said they took the day off work to join the rally, because they were shocked by the treatment.

"I came to this country over 40 years ago and got drafted in the Army, and I thought if I die it's for a good cause, defending freedom, democracy and the Constitution," said George Hassan, 65, from the San Fernando Valley.

"Oppressed people come here because of that democracy, that freedom, that Constitution. Now our president has apparently allowed the INS vigilantes to step outside the Constitution."

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, called the detentions doubly disturbing because "a lot of the Iranians are Jews who fled Iran because of persecution, and now they are undergoing similar persecution here.... This is just terrible."

Attorney Ban Al-Wardi, who saw 14 of her 20 clients arrested when she went with them to the registration, said that although everyone understands the need to protect the nation against terrorist attacks, the government's recent action went too far.

"All of our fundamental civil rights have been violated by these actions," she said. "I don't know how far this is going to go before people start speaking up. This is a very dangerous precedent we are setting. What's to stop Americans from being treated like this when they travel overseas?"

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Teresa Watanabe in Los Angeles and Johanna Neuman and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.

ElcomSoft Trial: RegNow! Employee Takes The Stand

I'll have the Final Arguments posted tomorrow morning.

Burton then asked Ryan if there had been a non-standard version of the AEBPR product that remained available on RegNow's website for a few days after the standard version of the AEBPR product had been removed.

"Yes." Ryan said. "A discounted version for previous users of another product was still active."

Burton asked Ryan to explain how that happened.

"It was an oversight on our part." Ryan said. "We were all focusing on the email from Adobe which just mentioned the one product."

Ryan went on to explain that the non-standard version of the product was also disabled as soon as Alexander Katalov contacted RegNow! to inform it of the situation.

10/10/02 "Ryan X", RegNow! Employee

This segment follows this post.

The Defense called a witness that I'm going to call "Ryan X" who was identified as an employee of RegNow!. (RegNow! is a third party transaction service hired by ElcomSoft to handle many of their software sales transactions.)

Defense Attorney Joseph Burton asked Ryan to explain about the exact dates and reasons for RegNow's removing ElcomSoft's AEBPR program for its website.

"I received an email to one of our public email addresses from Adobe requesting that we deactivate one of our products." Ryan said, explaining that he forwarded the email to ElcomSoft and asked them for advisement on the matter.

"And you took it down?" Burton asked.

"Yes, we disabled that product." Ryan said.

Burton then asked Ryan if there had been a non-standard version of the AEBPR product that remained available on RegNow's website for a few days after the standard version of the AEBPR product had been removed.

"Yes." Ryan said. "A discounted version for previous users of another product was still active."

Burton asked Ryan to explain how that happened.

"It was an oversight on our part." Ryan said. "We were all focusing on the email from Adobe which just mentioned the one product."

Ryan went on to explain that the non-standard version of the product was also disabled as soon as Alexander Katalov contacted RegNow! to inform it of the situation.

Next, prosecuting attorney Frewing began his cross-examination, showing Ryan a subpoena and some faxed documents of an email conversation he had participated in.

Frewing confirmed with Ryan that it was a oversight on RegNow's part that the additional version of the AEBPR programs had not been removed from it's website at the same time the standard version had been removed.

When the prosecution asked about RegNow's parent company Digital River and "all of its assets," Burton objected on relevance. Judge Whyte asked them approach the bench so Frewing could explain to the Judge where he was taking this line of questioning.

"Is Digital River based in the United States?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Ryan answered.

"No further questions." Frewing said.

Now on to the Final Arguments!

ElcomSoft President Takes The Stand - Part 4

Here is the final segment of Alexander Katalov's testimony.

The employee from RegNow! is up next after this...

Burton presented the same license agreement that Frewing had presented up on the screen.

"Did ElcomSoft consult with a lawyer before using this license for your software?" Burton asked.

"No." Alexander replied.

Burton showed a more recent version of the same license agreement that had been modified slightly.

"Did you consult with a lawyer?" Burton said.

"No." Alexander replied. "I got it from the ASP (Association Software Professionals) website."

10/10/02 Alexander Katalov - President, ElcomSoft (Part 4)

This segment follows this post.

Below is my account of the cross-examination of Alexander Katalov by the prosecuting attorney (U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing). Also included below is the subsequent re-cross by Defense Attorney Joseph Burton.

Frewing started off asking if ElcomSoft had ever experienced anyone using a stolen credit card to obtain a serial number for one of their software programs.

Alexander said that yes, this has happened to ElcomSoft several times in the past.

Frewing then presented a slide of the software license for ElcomSoft's AEBPR product and used a pointer to highlight the paragraph that says "protected by U.S. Copyright Law and International treaties." He made the point that ElcomSoft used this license to protect itself.

You could tell where Frewing was going with this: ElcomSoft asserts that its software is protected by U.S. Copyright law and therefore should itself be bound by copyright law, right?

Alexander wasn't disagreeing at all with the point Frewing was trying to make.

"Most of our U.S. customers are large corporations." Alexander said. "So it's important."

Frewing projected a screen shot of a webpage from the ElcomSoft website that had been taken on June 28, 2002. The text on the webpage explained that, "unfortunately, you can't buy the AEBPR program anymore." The text on the webpage also explained that the program could still be obtained from one of two other Russian-based (.ru) locations.

Frewing then brought up the testimony of Special Agent Daniel J. O'Connell, who testified that, as of July 3, 2001, this text remained on the ElcomSoft website (with the links to the AEBPR software).

Here's a link to the original complaint against Dmitry Sklyarov and Elcomsoft in which O'Connell describes the same investigation described by his live testimony.

Alexander confirmed that "yes the text described by Special Agent O'Connell and shown in the screen shot was indeed what was displayed on the ElcomSoft website on July 3, 2001.

That was it. Frewing had no further questions.

Next, Defense Attorney Joseph Burton was allowed to re-cross.

Burton presented the same license agreement that Frewing had presented up on the screen.

"Did ElcomSoft consult with a lawyer before using this license for your software?" Burton asked.

"No." Alexander replied.

Burton showed a more recent version of the same license agreement that had been modified slightly.

"Did you consult with a lawyer?" Burton said.

"No." Alexander replied. "I got it from the ASP (Association Software Professionals) website."

Burton thanked Alexander and he stepped down from the witness stand.

Next up: my account of the testimony from a RegNow! employee.

ElcomSoft President Takes The Stand - Part 3

Here's more of my account of Alexander Katalov's testimony from last week's ElcomSoft trial.

I'll be posting the rest of Alexander's questioning within the hour, and then my account of the testimony from a RegNow! employee.

Then off to the final arguments! They should be up tomomrrow.

Back in a flash!

Alexander explained how, on June 28, 2001, he received an email from RegNow! saying that they had been contacted by Adobe. The next day, Alexander sent an email to a RegNow! employee asking him to stop accepting money for the program.

Burton projected an email on the screen in which RegNow! responds to his request.

Burton read the text of the email out loud: "I am really sorry for any inconvenience. Please disable the AEBPR temporarily until we remove the feature Adobe doesn't like or find another solution."

"Why did you stop selling the product?" Burton asked. "Why not wait until more complete information could be provided?"

"To protect RegNow!." Alexander replied. "I decided that it would be better to pull the software first and then figure out the problem."

10/10/02 Alexander Katalov - President, ElcomSoft (Part 3)

Defense Attorney Joseph Burton is questioning defense witness Alexander Katalov.

I am going to repeat the last few lines of the previous post to set the scene.

"Was your company involved with Cox Broadcasting?" Burton asked.

There was an objection from Frewing in here at some point on relevance, but the Judge overruled it and Burton was allowed to continue.

"One of our employees had sent an email to remove our software from the site." Alexander said.

Burton asked Alexander some questions about a series of emails between an ElcomSoft employee and Cox Broadcasting.

Alexander explained that the email exchange involved a discussion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"My letter was rejected by Cox Broadcasting." Alexander said. "Since we were a company from Russia, there was no force of the law behind it."

Burton submitted as evidence an email sent to Alexander from another ElcomSoft employee explaining that Cox Broadcasting had rejected ElcomSoft's request, asking "what can we do?"

There was some discussion here about the employee going on to say (in the email to his boss at ElcomSoft) that he didn't understand American Law.

Burton asked Alexander if ElcomSoft felt their rights had being violated by Cox Broadcasting and he said "Yes." Alexander went on to explain how, because they were only a small Russian software company against a big America company like Cox Broadcasting, the company couldn't really do much about it.

Burton then changed the subject to whether or not ElcomSoft had in fact stop selling the AEBPR software.

"Did you ever stop selling the AEBPR product?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Alexander said.

Alexander explained how, on June 28, 2001, he received an email from RegNow! saying that they had been contacted by Adobe. The next day, Alexander sent an email to a RegNow! employee asking him to stop accepting money for the program.

Burton projected an email on the screen in which RegNow! responds to his request.

Burton read the text of the email out loud: "I am really sorry for any inconvenience. Please disable the AEBPR temporarily until we remove the feature Adobe doesn't like or find another solution."

"Why did you stop selling the product?" Burton asked. "Why not wait until more complete information could be provided?"

"To protect RegNow!." Alexander replied. "I decided that it would be better to pull the software first and then figure out the problem."

Burton asked Alexander a series of questions to help illustrate the dates involved for these emails and the AEBPR takedown:

1) June 28, 2002 - Email sent to ElcomSoft from RegNow!
2) June 29, 2002 - ElcomSoft responds to RegNow and tells them to take it down
3) June 30, 2002 - The software is taken down from the RegNow! website

Burton then asked Alexander another series of questions regarding the undisputed fact (both sides agree) that another non-standard version of the AEBPR software was somehow overlooked by RegNow! that remained available for purchase for 2-3 days before it was removed at the request of ElcomSoft.

This non-standard version of the program was left up on the site until July 3, 2002. Once ElcomSoft was made aware that this other version was still available, it contacted RegNow! to had it removed from the site.

Next up: the prosecution's cross-examination and the defense's re-cross.

ElcomSoft: Back to the Grind

Okay. So, even though we all know how the trial came out yesterday, I'm still going to finish my account of the various testimonies and final arguments -- so you can understand better about where the Jury was coming from with their Not-guilty verdict.

Later this week, I'll be interviewing Defense Attorney Joseph Burton about his experiences with the case.

I had to take a bit of a breather yesterday after this last week's events. Sorry for the hold up on the rest of this stuff. Back soon.

ElcomSoft Found Not Guilty On All Counts!

Yippie!!

Jury Finds ElcomSoft Not Guilty
By Joanna Glasner for Wired News.

Russian software developer ElcomSoft has been cleared of charges that it illegally created a program to disable encryption on Adobe e-books.

The jury verdict, announced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, concludes the first criminal trial of a company accused of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 federal statute that protects copyrights on electronic content...

The verdict comes on its third day of deliberations. Jurors had asked to review several pieces of evidence, including a videotaped deposition of ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, prior to reaching the decision.

Here's the full text of the entire article:

http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56894,00.html

Jury Finds ElcomSoft Not Guilty

By Joanna Glasner

11:13 AM Dec. 17, 2002 PT

Russian software developer ElcomSoft has been cleared of charges that it illegally created a program to disable encryption on Adobe e-books.

The jury verdict, announced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, concludes the first criminal trial of a company accused of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 federal statute that protects copyrights on electronic content.

Moscow-based ElcomSoft had been charged with violating the law by creating and selling a program called the Adobe eBook Processor, which allowed users to foil copyright protections put in place by e-book publishers.

The verdict comes on its third day of deliberations. Jurors had asked to review several pieces of evidence, including a videotaped deposition of ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, prior to reaching the decision.

The government had charged the firm with four counts of violating the DMCA and one count of conspiracy. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing maintained throughout the trial that ElcomSoft was aware it was violating the law by selling the Adobe eBook Processor.

But defense attorney Joe Burton maintained that ElcomSoft's behavior shows that the company was clearly not aware it was doing anything illegal when it began selling the e-book decrypting program in June 2001. Burton asked jurors why the company would have sold and even written press releases about a program it knew broke the law.

Time On Lott and Reagan and Racism

I'm just reading this myself, but I thought I'd bring your attention to it:
Lott, Reagan and Republican Racism
If the GOP wants to attract black voters, argues TIME's Jack White, it must confront the legacy not only of Trent Lott, but also of former President Reagan
By Jack White for Time magazine.

Then there was Reagan's attempt, once he reached the White House in 1981, to reverse a long-standing policy of denying tax-exempt status to private schools that practice racial discrimination and grant an exemption to Bob Jones University. Lott's conservative critics, quite rightly, made a big fuss about his filing of a brief arguing that BJU should get the exemption despite its racist ban on interracial dating. But true to their pattern of white-washing Reagan's record on race, not one of Lott's conservative critics said a mumblin' word about the Gipper's deep personal involvement. They don't care to recall that when Lott suggested that Reagan's regime take BJU's side in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, Reagan responded, "We ought to do it." Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court in a resounding 8-to-1 decision ruled that Reagan was dead wrong and reinstated the IRS's power to deny BJU's exemption.

Republican leaders and their apologists tend to go into a frenzy of denial when members of the liberal media cabal bring up these inconvenient facts. It's that lack of candor, of course, that presents the biggest obstacle to George W. Bush's commendable and long overdue campaign to persuade more African-Americans to defect from the Democrats to the Republicans. It's doomed to fail until the GOP fesses up its past addiction to race-baiting, and makes a sincere attempt to kick the habit.

Photos From Creative Commons Launch Party

Photos by Gohsuke Takama

Me (Lisa Rein), Craig Newmark, DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) and Larry Lessig

Me (Lisa Rein), Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig

Is No. 2 Repub Nickles Much Better Than Lott?

Damn. Just what I was afraid of. The first guy that spoke up to oust Lott is only doing it because he wants the job. Fair enough, I guess.

It also looks like his civil rights voting record isn't much better than Lott's.

Well at least he doesn't come out and say he wishes we were still a segregated nation. (Damn. Talk about the lesser of two evils.)

Does it have to be one or the other? Is there a Repub with enough senority to be Leader that also has an admirable civil rights record?

If not. What does that say about the Repubs? (Yes, my new name for them. I've just coined it here.)

Here's the AP story on CNN:

Nickles, Lott share similar records
Both senators win high marks from conservative groups

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/16/lott.nickles.ap/

ElcomSoft President Takes The Stand - Part 2

Here a bit more of my account of Alexander Katalov on the witness stand last week. More tomorrow!

"Did you believe that it (the AEBPR program) was unlawful?" Burton asked.

"No." Alexander said. "I still believe this program is legal."

"What did you know about the DMCA in 2001?" Burton asked.

"That it was an anti-piracy law." Alexander said. "I was happy that it existed because it would protect my software."

12/10/02 - Alexander Katalov, President, ElcomSoft (Part 2)

This picks up where this post left off.

Alexander explained how he thought Adobe was just trying to shut his website down as some kind of anti-competitive move, since Adobe knew that ElcomSoft's software wasn't truly illegal and didn't have any real legal grounds to sue.

At this point Burton submitted the letter Adobe sent ElcomSoft, and projected it on the screen for the jurors. He used a laser pointer and pointed to a specific section of language in the letter:

ACTION REQUESTED

Adobe is requesting you cease the illegal actions by removing the offending materials. Please respond to us no later than five working days." -- 06/25/01 Letter sent to ElcomSoft from Adobe.

Alexander explained that he understood the above wording to mean that he had a few days to fix the hosting situation and was planning to deal with Adobe after that.

"Why was the software still available after getting this letter from Adobe?" Burton asked.

"Because the letter didn't explain what was going on." Alexander said. "And I had other things to do, like trying to keep my business going."

Alexander explained that the AEBPR program was a small product and not a particularly important product at the time to them, in the scope of all the other business they were doing. Having to deal with a relatively unexplained shutdown took up the majority of his attention at the time.

I wish I had written down more of Alexander's explanation on this point verbatim, but here's the gist of the rest of it.

Alexander woke up one day and found out his ISP was going to shut down his website and ask questions later. His first priority was to get his website back up (by finding another ISP).

He didn't believe that the dispute with Adobe was going to be much of a problem. He was ready to do whatever was necessary to appease them, once he figured out what it was. Whatever it was, he thought it best to let it wait a day while he found another ISP and got his website and business back up and running.

"Did you believe that it (the AEBPR program) was unlawful?" Burton asked.

"No." Alexander said. "I still believe this program is legal."

"What did you know about the DMCA in 2001?" Burton asked.

"That it was an anti-piracy law." Alexander said. "I was happy that it existed because it would protect my software."

"Was your company involved with Cox Broadcasting?" Burton asked.

There was an objection from Frewing in here at some point on relevance, but the Judge overruled it and Burton was allowed to continue.

"One of our employees had sent an email to remove our software from their site." Alexander said.

Burton asked Alexander some questions about a series of emails between an ElcomSoft employee and Cox Broadcasting.

Alexander explained that the email exchange involved a discussion about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"Since we were a company from Russia, there was no force of the law behind it." Alexander said. "And my letter was rejected by Cox Broadcasting.

On to the next segment.

ElcomSoft Trial - One Small Segment...Then More up in the AM

I'm about to post another 500 words or so of my account of Alexander Katalov's testimony, and then that will be all till early am.

Sorry that I didn't get more done today -- I got sucked into a vortex while helping to set up Tonight's Creative Commons Bash.

Be back soon -- and then see you in the am!

Creative Commons Licenses Up!

Hooray! We have just launched our new website, complete with licensing application and...drumroll please.....the licenses!

Here are a few articles by the Seattle Times, Wired News, MeFi and
Slashdot.

ElcomSoft President Takes The Stand - Part 1

Here's the first part (of 2 or 3 total, I'm predicting) of my account of Alexander Katalov's testimony.

Alexander explained how the Night Administrator for his company had called him on the telephone and woken him up about "a strange email from Adobe." Alexander went on to explain how his Night Administrator told him that the email sent to them from Adobe said that ElcomSoft had copyrighted material on its site.

Alexander told the Night Administrator that he thought it was stupid to call him up in the middle of the night over it, and that they would work it out in the morning. The Night Administrator called him back again that night, this time at 3am. This time, it was Verio, ElcomSoft's ISP that was contacting the ElcomSoft, because they too had received a shutdown notice from Adobe over the same AEBPR product, except that the notice they sent to Verio says "within 24 hours".

Verio is telling ElcomSoft at this point that they are about to shut their entire website down.

Alexander tells his Night Administrator that it's 3:00 AM and he's really going to get it in the morning. That it's absolutely ridiculous that they are selling copyrighted Adobe software on their website, and that all of the confusion can be cleared up in the morning.

12/10/02 - Alexander Katalov, President, ElcomSoft (Part 1)

Immediately after Vladimir Katalov testified, Alexander Katalov was called up to testify.

Alexander is the older of the two brothers, at 39. He has short black hair, thinning on the top and he was wearing a black suit.

Defense Attorney Joseph Burton asked Alexander his name and age, and about his position at ElcomSoft.

"I am the President of Elcomsoft." Alexander said.

"What is your role there?" Burton asked.

"Marketing, tech support, hiring new employees..." Alexander named. "Sometimes I even work as a driver when I need to get things from one store to another." Alexander started to hold up his hands to drive an invisible steering wheel for a instant, before thinking better of the gesture and putting his hands back down.

Alexander explained how ElcomSoft started in 1989-1990 when his country was still the Soviet Union.
ElcomSoft formed with two partners (Alexander and Vladimir, his brother) at a time when citizens were just being allowed by the government to have private companies of their own.

Alexander went on to explain more about ElcomSoft's early history, and how the company started in the supercomputer and payroll computers business, providing both hardware and software for their clients.

Although many of these old products aren't sold anymore by the company, ElcomSoft continues to support these older systems for those clients still using them.

"We closed that line in 1995-1996," Alexander explained. "But we continue to support our old customers."

From 1995-1997, ElcomSoft focused on its software outsourcing business. Clients during this time period included VISA. In 1996, ElcomSoft starting selling shareware on the Internet.

"How many employees were at your company at this time?" Burton asked.

"Five to Seven." Alexander said.

"What was your first product you sold on the Internet?" Burton asked.

"Advanced Disk Catalog." Alexander said.

Burton asked Alexander to explain how the creation of the Advanced Disk Catalog came about.

"I asked Vladimir to write a program for my own needs, and we put it on the Internet for free and got feedback." Alexander said. "People wanted to give back. (There are more comments in here about how online users of the program contributed bugfixes to it, etc.)

Next, Burton asked Alexander when they started selling "password recovery" software.

"1997." Alexander said. He went on to explain how one of their business partners sent them some financial information in an ecrypted format with a password that was supposed to be the partner's phone number. When Alexander received the file, the phone number wouldn't work. He tried the partner's business number, home number, and cell phone number, but nothing worked.

Alexander had someone in the company write up a program to come up with all of the available passwords. (This took two weeks.) The program didn't work, however, and they still couldn't access the data until they finally heard back from the business partner. (Turns out, the business partner had included dashes in-between the digits of his business phone number.)

Burton continued to ask Alexander about the company's history and more recent activities. Alexander explained that in 1997, ElcomSoft decided to start "downsizing its outsourcing business and concentrate on shareware and focus on password recovery software."

"In 2000, what were the total sales of the company?" Burton asked.

"$200,000 to $300,000." Alexander said.

"And how many employees?" Burton asked.

"Ten to twelve." Alexander said.

"What were the total sales in 2001?" Burton asked.

"One million." Alexander said.

"In 2002? I know the year's not over yet, but..." Burton said.

"Probably about the same: one million." Alexander said.

Alexander said something about how the bad publicity had hurt their business this year and so they hadn't increased their business sales between 2001 and 2002.

"How many employees do you currently have?" Burton asked.

"Fifteen." Alexander replied. "And some part time employees that telecommute."

Burton said that he wanted to talk about the AEBPR program now.

"When did you first learn that there was a problem (with the AEBPR)?

"Around midnight on June 25-26th." Alexander said.

"Describe how you first learned about the problem." Burton said.

Alexander explained how the Night Administrator for his company had called him on the telephone and woken him up about "a strange email from Adobe." Alexander went on to explain how his Night Administrator told him that the email sent to them from Adobe said that ElcomSoft had copyrighted material on its site.

Alexander told the Night Administrator that he thought it was stupid to call him up in the middle of the night over it, and that they would work it out in the morning. The Night Administrator called him back again that night, this time at 3am. This time, it was Verio, ElcomSoft's ISP that was contacting the ElcomSoft, because they too had received a shutdown notice from Adobe over the same AEBPR product, except that the notice they sent to Verio says "within 24 hours".

Verio is telling ElcomSoft at this point that they are about to shut their entire website down.

Alexander tells his Night Administrator that it's 3:00 AM and he's really going to get it in the morning. That it's absolutely ridiculous that they are selling copyrighted Adobe software on their website, and that all of the confusion can be cleared up in the morning.

"Where were you when this happened?" Burton asked.

"In Russia. Moscow." Alexander said.

Burton asked the Jury to please keep in mind that, in Moscow, where ElcomSoft has just received the letter for the first time, it was already midnight. This is significant because in Adobe's June 25, 2001 letter, it gives ElcomSoft five working days to respond. Since the letter was not received until midnight at the end of the first of day, to ElcomSoft, one of those five days had already passed before they even received the letter.

At this point evidence was submitted and projected on the screen for the jurors...

Stay tuned!

ElcomSoft: Jury Still Deliberating

I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that the Jury is still deliberating and they are scheduled to re-examine Dmitry Sklyarov's video testimony on Tuesday. (I read this in a Wired News article over the weekend, and then confirmed this via email with Judy Trummer, ElcomSoft's PR person.)

I'm about to post the first in a two or three part segment of my account of Alexander Katalov's testimony, which I hope to complete by this afternoon.

Then I still have my notes from the RegNow! employee witness to type up, and finally, my synopsis of the Final Arguments.

It's like a little race for me to finish before the Jury gives their verdict. Lucky for me, it's a very complex case, and it looks like we have a conscienscious Jury that's willing to take the time to make the right decision. (They don't seem to be making any hasty decisions anyway.)

Back in a flash!

Whole Lotta Resignin To Do

We might have to wait till the new year for Lott to be ousted, but perhaps he'll come to his senses and step down with whatever dignity he might have left and save us all a Lott of trouble.

Congress has a ton of other things to do, true, but I'd say this situation could serve to put a lot of other issues on hold until it is dealt with.

I, for one, am ready to keep the pressure on as long as it takes.

Here's an excellent progress report from Howard Fineman (With Eleanor Clift and Martha Brantfor) for Newsweek:
Ghosts of the Past.

He (Lott) had begun his career as a staffer to an ardently segregationist congressman. Blacks have a dim view of his record—against the Voting Rights Act, against a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, in favor of racially restrictive policies at Bob Jones University...

...There were gasps when Lott uttered his remarks. There was enough of a sense of history in the room to know that Lott was praising one of the nastiest, openly racial campaigns of modern times. “People were shocked,” said conservative Armstrong Williams, who was on hand for the festivities...

The ensuing controversy gathered force slowly, helped along by some of the most inept damage control since the Maginot Line was built. Lott first said, dismissively, that he was “winging it”—until it was discovered that he had said the same thing 22 years earlier. Lott made this and other press “appearances” by phone while holed up with his wife on vacation in Key West, Fla. His aides assured White House officials that he would utter the key words “segregation is immoral” on “Larry King,” but he somehow forgot to do so. Bush went ballistic at this point. He also heard that GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel was about to denounce Lott. The president ordered up a harsh condemnation of Lott’s remarks. “Senator Lott has apologized, and rightly so,” a stern-visaged Bush said. Lott got the message, and scheduled his full-dress press conference—with the proper wording included—for the following day...

White House officials, afraid of offending “the base”—the Southern white conservatives who elected Lott and Bush—were careful not to openly work for Lott’s ouster. “They don’t want any fingerprints on this,” said one GOP strategist.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/847739.asp

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IMG: Bush and Lott
During a speech Thursday, President George Bush rebukes Sen. Trent Lott (right) for remarks he made at Sen. Strom Thurmond's birthday party
Ghosts of the Past
It was a Washington classic: History suddenly rears up and threatens a safe pol’s security. Anatomy of the Lott firestorm

By Howard Fineman
NEWSWEEK

Dec. 23 issue — Mitch McConnell, who loves his role as Washington’s coldest-blooded tough guy, got right to the point in a cross-country conference call last Friday night with a score of his fellow Republican senators. The topic: what to do about The Leader?

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IMG: Dec. 23, 2002 Issue TRENT LOTT had just finished his fourth, and most fulsome, apologia for having praised Strom Thurmond’s stridently segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. Many GOP bosses—in and out of the White House—still wanted Lott bounced from his role as majority leader when the Congress returns next month. Lott, in their view, had come across as too much of a “seg,” an embarrassment in a party eager to sell itself as a Big Tent of “compassionate conservatism.”
As the call began, McConnell—second in command and a Lott ally—delivered a history lesson. “Leaders who are ousted tend to leave altogether,” he said in his voice-of-doom baritone. “That is what Newt Gingrich did. That is what Jim Wright did. They don’t stick around.” If Lott left, he noted, the Democratic governor of Lott’s home state of Mississippi would name one of his own as a replacement. Republicans relishing the return of perks, power and committee chairmanships could forget it. Instead, they would face the kiss-your-sister chaos of a 50-50 Senate. “I was just explaining the history,” McConnell told NEWSWEEK. Other participants remember the moment differently. “He was raising the idea that Trent would blow himself up,” said one. Lott, for his part, distanced himself from the threat—even as aides still were making it on his behalf. “My term runs through 2006,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I intend to serve it, whatever happens.”


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This was Lott’s lot late last week: confident enough to discuss the possibility of losing his leader’s role—because, his aides contended, he felt he wouldn’t lose it. Still, behind the scenes, he was desperately trying to cajole support from colleagues warily assessing whether the perfect storm that had engulfed him would abate—or sweep him into oblivion. No one talked of a coup attempt. (“It would be pretty stupid to do that on a conference call,” said one participant.) But a suggestion for a second meeting-by-phone went unheeded, as did an idea, floated by a handful of senators in cross talk, for a signed letter of support.

MORE POWER THAN FRIENDS
The rise and folly of Trent Lott is a classical Washington saga. Here is the plotline: A politician with more power than friends fails to see that times have changed. Oblivious, even giddy, he mistakenly calls attention to an obvious fact about himself that the establishment, for a variety of reasons, has tolerated or ignored. Suddenly, he’s too outrageous for words, and he becomes the scapegoat for a city determined to show its moral rectitude. Think: Tony Coelho and money, Gary Hart and sex. And now Lott and the Southern, segregationist roots of the GOP.

Lott says he won’t quit
December 13, 2002 — Sen. Trent Lott held his first lengthy news conference Friday about his remarks on the 1948 presidential campaign of now-Sen. Strom Thurmond. NBC’s Norah O’Donnell reports.

All of Washington understood that Lott, proud of his background in the Mississippi of the ’50s, was among the last—and most visible—of the Hill barons to have grown up in the segregated Deep South. He had begun his career as a staffer to an ardently segregationist congressman. Blacks have a dim view of his record—against the Voting Rights Act, against a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, in favor of racially restrictive policies at Bob Jones University. Yet these days George W. Bush is trying to portray the GOP as an inclusive party, one that reaches out to all minorities and conveys an aura of tolerance to affluent white suburbanites looking for an alternative to the Democrats. With the GOP back in power on the Hill, and Bush’s pushing centrist themes, Lott was —suddenly in a bigger—more dangerous—spotlight. “He was an accident waiting to happen,” said a GOP strategist.
Should Trent Lott resign his position as incoming senate majority leader?
Yes. His apologies are insufficient and insincere
No. Let's move on
I don't know

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The accident happened, the world now knows, at Thurmond’s 100th-birthday party on Capitol Hill. Thinking he was only among friends—or perhaps in Pascagoula, Miss., in the ’60s—Lott buttered up the honoree by proclaiming jovially that the country wouldn’t have “all these problems” had the Dixiecrats won power in 1948. There were gasps when Lott uttered his remarks. There was enough of a sense of history in the room to know that Lott was praising one of the nastiest, openly racial campaigns of modern times. “People were shocked,” said conservative Armstrong Williams, who was on hand for the festivities.

INEPT DAMAGE CONTROL
The ensuing controversy gathered force slowly, helped along by some of the most inept damage control since the Maginot Line was built. Lott first said, dismissively, that he was “winging it”—until it was discovered that he had said the same thing 22 years earlier. Lott made this and other press “appearances” by phone while holed up with his wife on vacation in Key West, Fla. His aides assured White House officials that he would utter the key words “segregation is immoral” on “Larry King,” but he somehow forgot to do so. Bush went ballistic at this point. He also heard that GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel was about to denounce Lott. The president ordered up a harsh condemnation of Lott’s remarks. “Senator Lott has apologized, and rightly so,” a stern-visaged Bush said. Lott got the message, and scheduled his full-dress press conference—with the proper wording included—for the following day.

The usually brotherly Bush failed to praise Lott personally in any way, leaving it to underlings to issue bland statements of support for Lott as leader. That, in turn, encouraged many conservatives, including the editors of The Wall Street Journal and The National Review, to demand Lott’s ouster. But White House officials, afraid of offending “the base”—the Southern white conservatives who elected Lott and Bush—were careful not to openly work for Lott’s ouster. “They don’t want any fingerprints on this,” said one GOP strategist. Democrats were glad to make trouble, but—on second thought—liked the idea of keeping him around as a convenient target.

Race, Politics, and Trent Lott
• Audio: David Bositis, Senior Political Analyst at Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies David Brooks, NEWSWEEK Contributing Editor; Senior Editor of The Weekly Standard
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As for Lott, he sounded like a man trying to stay calm in a hurricane. He’d been reared in a different day and time, he said. He wasn’t the angry young man he was—no longer “the hot-blooded Scot.” “My daughter told me I’m much calmer than I used to be,” he said. “I’ve grown more mature and accepting as a result of deepening religious faith.” Now he knew that his early views were wrong, unacceptable and, yes, immoral. Whether he was telling the truth about his beliefs was a question to be decided in Another, Better, Place. For now, the more urgent issue was whether Lott had testified in time to help himself in Washington.

With Eleanor Clift and Martha Brant

Big Anti-War Protest Day Tuesday, December 10, 2002

100 Arrested in U.S. Anti-War Protests
By Allen G. Breed for the Associated Press (Associated Press writers Jessica Brice in Sacramento; Mike Robinson in Chicago; Carol Ann Riha in Des Moines; Danny Freedman in Washington; Michael Virtanen in Albany; Karen Matthews in New York; and Elizabeth Zuckerman in Providence contributed to this report.)

About half of the 200 protesters demonstrating outside the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York were arrested for disorderly conduct, including clergy members. Across the country in Sacramento, Calif., nine were taken into custody for blocking the entrance to a federal courthouse...

In the nation's capital, about 300 protesters, many with gray hair, staged a march to a park near the White House. Flanked by police, John Steinbach, 56, of Manassas, Va., an organizer of the Gray Panthers, was pushing the wheelchair of his 97-year-old wife, Louise Franklin-Ramirez, who he said had been protesting since 1917...

Earlier in Washington, several people were arrested after converging on two military recruiting stations chanting, "Hell no, we won't go," and plastering windows with red tape.

Students at the University of Michigan set up a makeshift graveyard on a major walkway through the Ann Arbor campus, using cardboard headstones that read "Iraqi child" and "Iraqi man." About 100 students and faculty at Brown University in Providence, R.I., marched with signs and staged a "die-in" in front of the city's federal building.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-anti-war-protests1210dec10,0,4125576.story?coll=la%2Dap%2Dtopnews%2Dheadlines

100 Arrested in U.S. Anti-War Protests
By Allen G. Breed
Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, 10 December, 2002

>From Goshen, Ind., grannies collecting relief kits to a "die-in" on an Ivy League campus, Americans took to the streets Tuesday in mostly small, low-key events to protest a possible war on Iraq. More than 100 people were arrested.

World War II veteran Ray Kaepplinger was among 40 people picketing outside a Chicago federal office building as 20 others were being arrested in the lobby for criminal trespass.

Kaepplinger, 84, said he had "been through the plume of hell in New Guinea" and didn't want to see another war erupt. "As far as I'm concerned, President George II is as bad as Saddam Hussein," he said.

About half of the 200 protesters demonstrating outside the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York were arrested for disorderly conduct, including clergy members. Across the country in Sacramento, Calif., nine were taken into custody for blocking the entrance to a federal courthouse.

"It's my first time ever," said Maria Cornejo, 41, a mother of four from Dixon, Calif. "That's how important this is."

The group United for Peace counted more than 120 planned vigils, acts of civil disobedience and marches in 37 states from Alaska to Florida. Protests were being organized by fax and over the Internet by anarchists and Communists, evangelicals and Quakers.

In the Mennonite community of Goshen, people gathered soap, bandages, towels and other items to send to the poor of Iraq. Sharon Baker, 64, brought in three kits for shipment through the Mennonite Central Committee.

"I'm opposed to any war, any time, anywhere, any place because war doesn't solve anything," she said.

At the Women's Building in Albany, N.Y., dozens have signed up to fast for one day each to protest the Bush administrations threats of war.

In the nation's capital, about 300 protesters, many with gray hair, staged a march to a park near the White House. Flanked by police, John Steinbach, 56, of Manassas, Va., an organizer of the Gray Panthers, was pushing the wheelchair of his 97-year-old wife, Louise Franklin-Ramirez, who he said had been protesting since 1917.

"The movement was looked on as being mainly youngsters," said Irving Irskin, 84, of Bethesda, Md., "but we want to show it's our war, too."

Earlier in Washington, several people were arrested after converging on two military recruiting stations chanting, "Hell no, we won't go," and plastering windows with red tape.

Students at the University of Michigan set up a makeshift graveyard on a major walkway through the Ann Arbor campus, using cardboard headstones that read "Iraqi child" and "Iraqi man." About 100 students and faculty at Brown University in Providence, R.I., marched with signs and staged a "die-in" in front of the city's federal building.

The White House said President Bush welcomed the protests as part of a "time-honored tradition" of democracy.

While a recent USA/CNN/Gallup Poll found that a majority of Americans still support sending ground troops to remove the Iraqi president, the percentage opposed has nearly doubled to 37 percent since a year ago.

The protests were a far cry from October's mass rallies in Washington, San Francisco and elsewhere that drew an estimated 200,000 participants. But Eric Garris, director of antiwar.com, an affiliate of the nonprofit Center for Libertarian Studies, said those events were sponsored in large part by groups with agendas other than stopping a war with Iraq.

Unlike during the Vietnam War, mainstream groups are not waiting for a full-blown conflict to register their opposition. The National Council on Churches, which represents 50 million Christians, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times last week asking Bush to avert a war.

"It took 12 years for the mainline Christian churches and the Roman Catholic Church to come to an understanding that the war in Vietnam was wrong," said the Rev. Robert Edgar, the council's general secretary and a member of Congress at war's end in 1975.

The day of protest also coincided with former President Jimmy Carter's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil," he said in his acceptance speech. "But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."

-------

Associated Press writers Jessica Brice in Sacramento; Mike Robinson in Chicago; Carol Ann Riha in Des Moines; Danny Freedman in Washington; Michael Virtanen in Albany; Karen Matthews in New York; and Elizabeth Zuckerman in Providence contributed to this report.

Conyers Calls on Lott to Resign

Letter from Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee and Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus to Republican Leader, Trent Lott calling for his resignation

...your remarks are so un-American that they disqualify you from continuing as the Majority Leader of the United States Senate therefore, I must call on you to resign...

Even after you had seen how much you had upset the public, you did not disavow what the Dixiecrat Party stood for. Whatever your choice of words, the plain intent was clear. The Dixiecrat Party's agenda was to preserve segregated schools, segregated public facilities, and segregated armed forces, and to prevent African-Americans from voting.

Were you suggesting that America would have been better off if President Truman had not desegregated the armed forces? Were you suggesting that America would have been better off if the Nation's modern the civil rights legislation had been blocked - if we had no Voting Rights Act, no Civil Rights Act of 1964, no Fair Housing Act and no African-American elected officials in Mississippi?

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.13E.conyers.lott.htm

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t r u t h o u t | Letter

Conyers Calls on Lott to Resign: "He Has Lost His Credibility on Civil Rights"

Wednesday, 11 December, 2002

Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee and Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus sent the following letter today to Republican Leader, Trent Lott calling for his resignation.

December 11, 2002

The Honorable Trent Lott
Republican Leader
S-230 The Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Lott:

I was astonished by your remarks at last week's birthday reception for Senator Thurmond. You claimed that the country would have been better off, and "wouldn't have had all of those problems," if other states had followed Mississippi and had supported the Dixiecrat Party ticket in the 1948 presidential election. Your callous comments were incredibly insulting, and outrageous for any American to make - let alone the prospective Senate Majority Leader. The recent revelation of your similar endorsement, during the 1980 elections, of Senator Thurmond's Dixiecrat campaign is a chilling confirmation that your remarks last week were not a spontaneous slip of the tongue.

President Bush and the Congress currently seek to promote patriotism and to explain America's basic values to the world. Especially at such a time, your remarks are so un-American that they disqualify you from continuing as the Majority Leader of the United States Senate therefore, I must call on you to resign.

I realize you have apologized to anyone whom you might have offended through "a poor choice of words." That only compounds your slap in the face of all African Americans. Even after you had seen how much you had upset the public, you did not disavow what the Dixiecrat Party stood for. Whatever your choice of words, the plain intent was clear. The Dixiecrat Party's agenda was to preserve segregated schools, segregated public facilities, and segregated armed forces, and to prevent African-Americans from voting.

Were you suggesting that America would have been better off if President Truman had not desegregated the armed forces? Were you suggesting that America would have been better off if the Nation's modern the civil rights legislation had been blocked - if we had no Voting Rights Act, no Civil Rights Act of 1964, no Fair Housing Act and no African-American elected officials in Mississippi?

Even worse, your limited acknowledgment that only some people might have been offended by your remarks portrayed gross insensitivity to millions of Americans.

In addition, a key question for the 108th Congress is whether civil rights laws will be enforced and strengthened, or whether the attempts will be made to undermine them. You no longer have credibility on this crucial issue.

Yours truly,

John Conyers, Jr.

Ranking Member

NY Times Says: Fire Trent Lott

Fire Trent Lott

The birthday party controversy is only the latest evidence that Mr. Lott, the second most prominent elected official in the Republican Party, has never figured any of this out, or come to grips with the bad old days in his state. If he had, he could never have said that his state was "proud" of having given its electoral votes to Mr. Thurmond in 1948 -- at a time when most black Mississippians were barred from voting and sometimes killed for making the attempt...

...unless the president wants to spend his next campaign explaining the majority leader's behavior over and over, he should urge the Senate Republicans to get somebody else for the job.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/12/opinion/12THU1.html

here are 51 Republican members of the United States Senate. Surely they can find someone to be majority leader besides Trent Lott.

Mr. Lott was in full-bore apology mode yesterday, trying to explain why, at Strom Thurmond's 100th-birthday party last week, he publicly bemoaned the fact that Mr. Thurmond had not won the 1948 presidential election, when he ran as a segregationist protest candidate. We have since learned that Mr. Lott said much the same thing in 1980, at a campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in Mississippi. Mr. Lott, at that time a congressman, said that if America had elected Mr. Thurmond president "we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

The incoming majority leader certainly was in a mess of his own by Monday, and his first attempt to dodge the controversy began with the classic words of the non-apologetic apologist, expressing sorrow if anyone had taken offense at his remarks, and making an oblique reference to "discarded policies." Discarded is a term best used for worn socks or outdated computers, not poll taxes and lynchings. After being yelled at by practically everybody, including conservative Republicans, Mr. Lott got the message, and yesterday called his remarks "terrible." He also asked an interviewer plaintively whether he was supposed to tell Mr. Thurmond he wished he had lost.

Southern white politicians who lived under segregation and the civil rights movement either repress the thought that anything terrible went on in their region or remember it all the time. They are especially sensitive to the fact that people whom they loved and honored did -- or at least endorsed -- awful things. Coming to terms with it makes them wiser politicians, and perhaps better people.

The birthday party controversy is only the latest evidence that Mr. Lott, the second most prominent elected official in the Republican Party, has never figured any of this out, or come to grips with the bad old days in his state. If he had, he could never have said that his state was "proud" of having given its electoral votes to Mr. Thurmond in 1948 -- at a time when most black Mississippians were barred from voting and sometimes killed for making the attempt.

No one has put more effort than George W. Bush into ending the image of the Republican Party as a whites-only haven. For all the disagreement that many African-Americans have with his policies, few can doubt Mr. Bush's commitment to a multiracial America. But unless the president wants to spend his next campaign explaining the majority leader's behavior over and over, he should urge the Senate Republicans to get somebody else for the job.

Tainted Judge Gives Cheney A Break

Comments on the Judge Rebuffs Effort to Obtain Records on Cheney Task Force By David Stout for the New York Times.
(Quote below from William Rivers Pitt for Truthout)

Federal Judge and Bush appointee John D. Bates has thrown out the case, based on a separation of powers argument that claims the GAO "had not suffered any personal injury and had no genuine stake in the outcome of the litigation." Judge Bates spent two years working for Kenneth Starr and the Independent Counsel's office during the investigation into President Bill Clinton's sex life. Section 455 of Title 28 of the United States Code stipulates that a judge "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." That, and the incredible narrowness of the legal parameters of this decision, almost guarantees this case a contentious trip before the United States Supreme Court.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.11A.bates-cheney.htm

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(*Editors Note [1] -- William Rivers Pitt | When crafting the energy policy for America, Dick Cheney went behind closed, locked doors with the moguls of the energy industry. On at least six different occasions, those moguls belonged to the Enron Corporation, the company that is now the gold standard for corporate fraud. Enron stands accused of a variety of crimes, including the gerrymandering of the California energy grid; they darkened the state on several occasions to line their pockets. The General Accounting Office sued Cheney to try and get to the bottom of these meetings, so as to determine whether or not Enron and the others sought to bend American energy policies around their own profit motives, in defiance of the needs of the people.

Federal Judge and Bush appointee John D. Bates has thrown out the case, based on a separation of powers argument that claims the GAO "had not suffered any personal injury and had no genuine stake in the outcome of the litigation." Judge Bates spent two years working for Kenneth Starr and the Independent Counsel's office during the investigation into President Bill Clinton's sex life. Section 455 of Title 28 of the United States Code stipulates that a judge "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." That, and the incredible narrowness of the legal parameters of this decision, almost guarantees this case a contentious trip before the United States Supreme Court.

(*Editors Note [2] -- Jennifer Van Bergen | D.C. District Court Judge Bates dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Comptroller of General of the United States brought in furtherance of an investigation by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), which Judge Bates referred to as "an agent of the legislative branch." The suit sought "to require the Vice President to produce information relating to the President's decision-making on national energy policy." Bates dismissed the suit because "the Comptroller General has suffered no personal injury as a private citizen, and any institutional injury exists only in his capacity as an agent of Congress -- an entity that itself has issued no subpoena."

The decision is puzzling given that, according to Bates, "[u]nder statute, the Comptroller General is granted broad authority to carry out investigations and evaluations for the benefit of Congress," and is specifically authorized under the same statute "to enforce these investigatory powers by bringing a civil action ... to require 'the head of [an] agency to produce a record." Bates claims, however, that the court does not need to reach the issue of GAO's powers, since the Comptroller has suffered no injury.

The decision stands in stark contrast to statements made by Bates during his tenure as Deputy Independent Counsel during the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to 1997. He declared that the special prosecutors intended merely to "diligently and properly follow[] relevant leads in an attempt to discover the truth.")

Go To Original:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/09/politics/09CND-CHEN.html

Judge Rebuffs Effort to Obtain Records on Cheney Task Force
By David Stout
New York Times

Monday, 9 December, 2002

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 -- In a case involving bedrock constitutional issues, a federal judge today threw out a lawsuit brought by an agency of Congress against Vice President Dick Cheney over the formulation of the administration's energy policy.

Judge John D. Bates of Federal District Court found that Comptroller General David M. Walker, the head of the General Accounting Office, did not have sufficient standing to sue the vice president.

Mr. Walker had asked the judge to order the White House to reveal the identities of industry executives who helped the administration develop its energy policy last year.

In declining to do so, and in dismissing Mr. Walker's suit, Judge Bates said that granting the G.A.O. chief's request "would fly in the face of the restricted role of the federal courts under the Constitution."

When arguments were held before Judge Bates on Sept. 27, lawyers for Mr. Cheney argued -- successfully, as it turned out today -- that the comptroller general lacked standing because he had not suffered any personal injury and had no genuine stake in the outcome of the litigation.

In deciding for Mr. Cheney on relatively narrow grounds, Judge Bates said the Supreme Court has made it clear over the years that a would-be party to a case involving constitutional separation of powers must meet "especially rigorous" standards just to have standing to bring such a suit.

This, Mr. Walker has simply failed to do, the judge said, because he has suffered no personal injury and was merely acting to aid Congress.

The issues raised in the suit are so important that an appeal, perhaps to the Supreme Court eventually, would not be surprising. But Mr. Walker said he would confer with Congressional leaders "on a bipartisan basis" before deciding what to do next.

"We are very disappointed with the judge's decision," Mr. Walker said in a statement. "We are in the process of reviewing and analyzing the decision to fully understand the bases for it and its potential implications."

Over the years, the General Accounting Office, the auditing arm of Congress, has conducted thousands of investigations and evaluations of government programs and activities, submitting stacks of reports to the lawmakers.

But the case of Walker v. Cheney marked the first time in the 81-year history of the G.A.O. that the comptroller general had asked a court to order a member of the executive branch to turn over records to Congress.

The development of the Bush administration's energy policy has been marked by deep differences between the White House and Democratic lawmakers. Numerous energy executives, including some from the Enron Corporation, met on several occasions in 2001 with Mr. Cheney and the energy task force that he headed.

The comptroller general, with the backing of some Democrats in Congress, wanted Mr. Cheney to reveal the names of industry executives who helped the administration develop its policy. The administration argued that such an order would be an unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion into executive branch powers and would hobble an administration's essential, legitimate ability to receive frank information and advice.

Judge Bates, who was appointed to the bench last year by President Bush, noted that neither House of Congress and no Congressional committee had authorized the comptroller general to file the suit. Rather, the judge noted, the suit was filed as the result of a G.A.O. investigation begun at the request of Representatives John D. Dingell and Henry A. Waxman, both Democrats.

Mr. Dingell was the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, while Mr. Waxman was the ranking minority member on the Government Reform Committee.

"Plaintiff is not an independent constitutional actor," Judge Bates said of Mr. Walker. Rather, the judge said, the comptroller general is "subservient to Congress."

Significantly, Judge Bates said, the full Congress had issued no subpoena for the information sought in the suit. The absence of full Congressional backing leaves to "the realm of speculation" whether there is any need, or justification, for the court to try to exercise its power by ordering the executive branch to do something, the judge said.

(Judge Bates's ruling can be read online by clicking onto the Web site of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia: www.dcd.uscourts.gov/.)

-------

You may read the entire decision in Walker v. Cheney here.)

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Vladimir Katalov Takes The Stand In The ElcomSoft Trial (Part 2 of 2)

Here's part two of my account of Vladimir Katalov on the witness stand.

You'll notice that there are more links now within the text. I've decided to start integrating the various documents and evidence I've been collecting since last year (since July 17, 2001) about the dispute between Adobe and ElcomSoft.

Where the documents are still available in their original location online, I link to them there, with a link my version as a backup. However, some of the emails and message board postings have been removed since last year, so I'm really glad I saved my own copies of them.

I will sprinkle links to the evidence accordingly, as they come up. I'm also in the process of creating an "online evidence" page with everything itemized for easy reference.

I'll also be going back to my earlier posts and adding links to evidence wherever they fit in.

Two more witnesses (Alexander Katalov and the RegNow! employee) and then off to the Final Arguments...

Vladimir Katalov Takes The Stand In The ElcomSoft Trial: Part 2 of 2

10/10/02
Witness for the Defense
Vladimir Katalov, Managing Director, ElcomSoft
(Brother of Alexander Katalov, President, ElcomSoft)

This segment follows this post.

When I got to the courtroom at 8:30 am, Defense Attorney Joseph Burton had finished questioning Vladimir Katalov and the Prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing, was just starting his cross-examination.

"You did some marketing?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied.

Frewing asked Vladimir a series of questions in order to establish some of the basic facts about the structure of ElcomSoft's online business. Frewing's questions gradually enabled Vladimir to explain how the actual content resides on the ElcomSoft website, although RegNow! handles the monetary transactions.

Next, Frewing moved on to ElcomSoft's PDF password recovery software (The Advanced PDF Password Recovery program or APDFPR).

"It doesn't really recover passwords, does it?" Frewing asked.

"No. It doesn't really recover passwords." Vladimir agreed.

What they are talking about is how ElcomSoft's "password recovery" products actually bypass the security altogether, rather than actually recovering a password is and providing it for the user to enter into the program to decrypt it.

Frewing used Vladimir's testimony to establish how Vladimir had arranged for the promotion and selling of the AEBPR program.

Frewing then asked Vladimir about his personal knowledge and understanding of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to Frewing, Adobe sent ElcomSoft a letter with some reference to the DMCA in September 2000 (10 months before the AEBPR e-book processor was released).

Sorry, I don't have a copy of the September 2000 letter.

"You said you looked at the statute?" Frewing asked, referring to the DMCA.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"Carefully?" Frewing said.

"Not enough to understand it." Vladimir said.

Vladimir tried to explain his position better, acknowledging that he did research the DMCA after receiving the letter in September 2000.

"Do you understand it (the DMCA)?" Frewing asked.

"I'm not sure, but I think I do." Vladimir replied.

Frewing kept trying to establish that Vladimir had read the DMCA and understood it. Vladimir agreed that he had read it, but was pretty iffy on the "understood it" part. Vladimir was very adamant that, at that time (September 2000) he had thought that he understood it. However, when asked point blank if he now understands the DMCA, he could not seem to answer with complete certainty.

Frewing mentioned that there's no mention of "Fair Use" on the ElcomSoft website. Vladimir replied that language about fair use was included some of the company's press releases.

Frewing showed the Jury a marketing letter from ElcomSoft on the big screen and made the point that the AEBPR software was marketed as "a tool to decrypt ebooks."

Then Frewing moved on to an issue I'm still not sure what to make of: posting to bugtraq, and whether or not it is good or bad to do so. Earlier, when questioning Dmitry, Frewing seemed to be making the point that if ElcomSoft was really trying to use the AEBPR program as a demonstration program to make a point and improve PDF security in the long run, they would have published their information to a bug tracking mailing list to fuel the debate. (An ironic suggestion since publishing information about decrypting (circumventing) copy protected content can be a violation of the DMCA in itself. -- Interesting stance for the Prosecution to take.)

Frewing made the point that Vladimir didn't post the information to bugtraq, and Vladimir brought up that he wasn't a technician and wouldn't be the one to post information like that to a buglist anyway.

Despite Vladimir's comment above, for whatever reason, over a year after this dispute began with Adobe, on July 12, 2002, Vladimir posted to bugtraq about the AEBPR program. (If you have trouble accessing the bugtraq site, here's my own HTML version of the post .) Frewing ended his questions by bringing up this fairly recent bugtraq post.

"After you had already sold the (AEBPR) program, you posted to bugtraq?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"After you heard about Adobe?" Frewing asked. (Meaning the dispute w/ Adobe, I presume.)

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"After you knew the FBI was involved?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"No further questions." Frewing said.

Coming up next, ElcomSoft President Alexander Katalov takes the stand.

ElcomSoft Jury Continues To Examine The Evidence

ElcomSoft Jury Asks for Law Text
By Joanna Glasner for Wired News.

Jurors deliberating in the first trial in which a company stands accused of criminal violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act did not reach a verdict Friday. They did, however, seek further clarifications regarding the law they are being asked to apply.

The jury asked U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte for a full copy of the DMCA to assist in their decision-making. But he declined to provide a copy of the document, which is over 100 pages long.

Instead, Whyte said he would answer specific questions jurors had about portions of the law they must consider in determining ElcomSoft's guilt or innocence. The government brought its case against the Russian software firm for creating and selling a program that illegally removes encryption on Adobe eBooks.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56853,00.html

ElcomSoft Jury Asks for Law Text

By Joanna Glasner | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1

02:00 AM Dec. 14, 2002 PT

Jurors deliberating in the first trial in which a company stands accused of criminal violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act did not reach a verdict Friday. They did, however, seek further clarifications regarding the law they are being asked to apply.

The jury asked U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte for a full copy of the DMCA to assist in their decision-making. But he declined to provide a copy of the document, which is over 100 pages long.

Instead, Whyte said he would answer specific questions jurors had about portions of the law they must consider in determining ElcomSoft's guilt or innocence. The government brought its case against the Russian software firm for creating and selling a program that illegally removes encryption on Adobe eBooks.

Jurors began deliberations Thursday, following six days of trial proceedings in the closely watched federal court case, which is being tried in San Jose, California. Jurors plan to return to court Tuesday morning.

"They appear to be quite serious," said Judy Trummer, spokeswoman for ElcomSoft, of the jury. Throughout the trial, ElcomSoft officials have repeatedly denied government accusations that they sold an allegedly illegal program, the Adobe eBook Processor, in deliberate violation of U.S. law.

Federal prosecutors charge that company executives were well aware they were breaking U.S. law when they began selling the software, which lets users foil copyright protections on e-book documents.

During the course of deliberations, jurors reviewed testimony on Friday from Vladimir Katalov, the company's managing director, who had said in court that he was familiar with the DMCA before the company put the disputed program on the market.

On Tuesday, jurors plan to review portions of the videotaped deposition of Dmitry Sklyarov, the ElcomSoft programmer who created the Adobe eBook Processor program.

Vladimir Katalov Takes The Stand in the ElcomSoft Trial (Part 1 of 2)

I'll be keeping these installments coming over the course of the day.

Next installment - the Prosecution's cross on Vladimir Katalov, Alexander Katalov's testimony and the testimony from the RegNow! employee (Today - Saturday). The Final Arguments Synopsis will go up tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon sometime.

That's the plan stan!

Vladimir Katalov Takes The Stand in the ElcomSoft Trial (Part 1 of 2)

12/09/02 - Witness for the Defense
Vladimir Katalov, Managing Director, ElcomSoft
(Brother of Alexander Katalov, President, ElcomSoft)

The segment follows this post.

I will be referring to Vladimir Katalov and Alexander Katalov by their first names or complete names only, so it won't get too confusing in case if you are reading all of these segments at once.

Vladimir Katalov was called to the witness stand. He's about 5' 9", with short blond hair and wearing a tan/leaning towards yellow-ish suit. (Much like the color of the suit Dmitry was wearing.)

Burton asked Vladimir a few basic questions about himself.

"Your name?" Burton asked.

"Vladimir Katalov." Vladimir answered.

Vladimir explained that he was 33 years old and that he lived in Moscow.

"Are you currently employed by ElcomSoft?" Burton asked.

"Yes. I have worked for them for more than 10 years." Vladimir replied.

"What is your title there?" Burton asked.

"I am the Managing Director." Vladimir said.

Burton displayed a screenshot from the ElcomSoft website and pointed to the list of file types on the page.

"What other file types (besides EBook and PDF) do you sell password recovery programs for?" Burton asked.

"Word Perfect, Microsoft Publisher, other Microsoft software..." Vladimir said. "There are others."

Yeah, I'd say so! more than just a few.

"How many password recovery programs..." Burton started to say when the prosecuting attorney, U.S. Attorney General Scott Frewing, objected.

Judge Whyte overruled the objection.

It seemed like Frewing was trying to down play a couple different assertions that had been made by the Defense during Dmitry's testimony: 1) That the AEPBR program is just another in a long line of "password recovery" programs that ElcomSoft has been offering on the internet for years. 2) That the APDFPR and the AEBPR programs are essentially the same programs with different security handlers.

"Do you sell your software in Russia?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said. "We sell it on the Internet to all countries."

"Are there customers of your software that are in law enforcement?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"Can you give me an example of a customer?" Burton asked.

"Police Departments, FBI, IRS." Vladimir said.

"Police Departments, the FBI and the IRS are customers of yours?" Burton asked.

"Yes. They are purchasers of our programs." Vladimir said.

"Is the U.S. Department of Justice a customer?" Burton asked.

"Yes. We receive orders from them about once a month from different states." Vladimir replied.

"Are there state agencies that are customers of your software?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"Do District Attorneys purchase your products?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"Are there private companies?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied. "Adobe, Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens..."

"Adobe is one of your customers?" Burton asked, emphasizing Adobe ever so slightly as he said it.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

Burton then asked Vladimir some questions about how the AEBPR program was marketed, and about how it was reviewed in PC Magazine and in some books.

Burton then asked Vladimir about ElcomSoft's conference schedule in 2001.

"Did you attend any conferences in 2001?" Burton asked.

"Yes. Two." Vladimir said. "The Techno-Security Law Enforcement conference, which we were a sponsor of, and DefCon."

"So a Law Enforcement conference and a Hacker conference?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied. "We were a sponsor of the Techno Security Law Enforcement Conference. We had a booth."

Burton showed Vladimir, and then the Jury, two exhibits.

"Did individuals from Law Enforcement visit your booth?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied. "They asked questions..."

"Was one of the products that you were demonstrating in the booth the AEBPR program?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied.

"Did those members of law enforcement give you their business cards?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir replied.

He passed around to the Jury the business cards of law enforcement individuals that had been given to ElcomSoft while they were visiting the ElcomSoft booth at the Techno-Security conference.

"When was the date of the Techno Security Conference?" Burton asked.

"April, 2001" Vladimir said.

This date is very significant in that it is more than three months earlier than when the trouble with Adobe started (in late June). (That is, three months before Adobe sent their first correspondence to ElcomSoft and the first correspondence to ElcomSoft's ISP (Verio) about the AEBPR program.) This seems to make a strong case for ElcomSoft's assertion that it was under the impression that its software was perfectly legal, considering they were openly demonstrating it to members of the Law Enforcement community at such high profile Law Enforcement Technology and Security Conferences.

"Are there any competitors in this business?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

"Companies who make products similar to yours?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said. "There are at least four companies with programs that do about the same thing."

"Do those companies still exist today?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said.

The Prosecution objected twice while this line of questioning was going on, but was the Judge overruled the objections both times.

"Did Adobe purchase the program before July?" Burton asked.

"Yes." Vladimir said. "I believe in February or March."

I'm pretty sure Burton had a slide of a transaction email or receipt or something that provided evidence of the date of purchase. (This is a factual detail I should be able to clear up with Joseph Burton after the trial is over.)

Court adjourned for the day at this point.

That's all I have from the Defense's questions, because I missed the first half hour of court Tuesday morning. (By the time I got there, the Prosecution was up.)

Next installment - the Prosecution's cross on Vladimir Katalov, Alexander Katalov's testimony and the testimony from the RegNow! employee.

Weekend Update: ElcomSoft Trial

The Jury is taking the weekend and Monday to consider the evidence further.

I'm going to blog a Wired News story about it in a second.

I've had a power outage the last few hours, so I was unable to post my latest ElcomSoft Trial update, which I will post in a minute.

ElcomSoft: The Rest of Dmitry's Testimony

I've decided to go through this stuff in the order that it took place, rather than jumping ahead and discussing the Final Arguments. If I'm lucky, the Jury won't come up with a decision till Monday, and I can string you along all weekend as I catch up on my notes up until the end of the Final Arguments. And then we can all hear the verdict on Monday morning and it will all be so dramatic.

If we get a verdict today, it will undoubtedly affect my telling of the story. (So that's just another reason I hope we don't get a verdict today.)

I also hope that the Jury is really thinking about these issues, and is taking as much time necessary before hopefully coming to the right decision.

So here's the rest of Dmitry Sklyarov's testimony, and then I'll move on to the other witnesses for the Defense (Vladimir Katalov, Alexander Katalov and an employee from RegNow!).

Defense Attorney Joseph Burton is wrapping up his rebuttal after the Prosecution has cross-examined Sklyarov.

"You were asked (by the prosecution) why you didn't make a program that only makes one backup copy. Is it technically feasible to make such a program?" Burton said.

"I supposed its technically feasible." Dmitry said. "But it doesn't make sense."

Dmitry explained how someone could still use the disabled program that only allows for backup copies to be used on the new copy created, and so on and so on. So the result would ultimately be the same. (Thus it not making sense to create such a product for the reasons the prosecution was getting at: that if the product was supposed to be for making backup copies, it should enable one backup copy to be made, and that's it.)

On to the next subject of why Dmitry didn't submit all his information about how to decrypt ebooks to bugtraq. Dmitry said he wouldn't publish such information in order to protect publishers, because someone could have used that information to create a free product that could have bee used to hurt publishers. (As opposed to the $99 dollar product sold by ElcomSoft that cost more than seveeral Ebooks.)

Next Burton addressed whatever the Government was trying to get at earlier when he asked Dmitry if telling the truth was a condition of his government agreement.

This reminds me that I forgot to mention earlier that Frewing had sort of implied that Dmitry might not be telling the truth when he cross-examined him earlier. He casually reminded Dmitry that if he didn't tell the truth, he would be nullifying his agreement with the government.

"With respect to the agreement with the government and your telling the truth." Burton said. "Who will ultimately decide if you are telling the truth?"

"I decide to tell the truth everyday." Dmitry said. "I tell the truth everyday."

Dmitry was confused by the question. And actually, we all were. You could tell from the looks on the audiences faces. Burton tried again.

"Who will decide if you have told the truth today?" Burton asked.

"Most probably, U.S. Government..." Dmitry sort of half said and half asked.

Not sure if Burton got what he was looking for there or not...

Burton moved on.

"Did you use the Adobe specification?" (When developing the AEBPR program.) Burton asked.

"Yes." Dmitry answered.

"No further questions," said Burton.

That was it for Dmitry.

Next: Vladimir Katalov takes the stand.

ElcomSoft On Trial: Dmitry's Cross-Examination By The Prosecution Here's my next round of notes from the ElcomSoft trial. I haven't heard anything yet about a decision from the Jury. You'll know as soon as I do!

"If I was an unscrupulous student, would I be able to use the AEBPR program to make copies (of the course materials) and give them to the other members of the class?" "Yes." Dmitry replied. "But it would be illegal to distribute them. You would be distributing them yourself. The program doesn't do it." Dmitry volunteered that an unscrupulous student could also open up the Ebook and take screen grabs of its pages and distribute them, or even print the pages out and make copies of them, and distribute those, illegally, to everyone in the class, if one were so inclined. Frewing made a point of having Dmitry clarify that it would probably be cheaper and take less time for the unscrupulous student to spend the $99 on the AEBPR program and email them to do students from his home than to perform any of the other options Dmitry had mentioned. "Yes." Dmitry conceded. "It might be cheaper."

Dmitry Sklyarov's Cross Examination at the ElcomSoft Trial December 9, 2002 - Continued from this earlier post. My editorial comments are in italics. We're still in in the court room with Dmitry, who is being cross-examined by the prosecution. At this point a big screen had been extended out in front of the left side of the Audience box, covering much of the view, so everyone was crowded in on the right side of the courtroom. I decided to take the one spot available on the left next to Jury so I would have a better view of the exhibits and witnesses and the reactions on the Judge's face, if any. (Note: there weren't any. This guy's got a poker face if there ever was one.) "You're a Professor." Frewing stated/asked "Oh no." Dmitry said. "I am not a Professor! I am only an Assistant Professor." "Okay. An Assistant Professor." Frewing said. The room chuckled a bit. "Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a student." Frewing said. He went on to describe a typical scenario where an required Ebook was required (at $?/per Ebook) for a class of 99 students. "If I was an unscrupulous student, would I be able to use the AEBPR program to make copies (of the course materials) and give them to the other members of the class?" "Yes." Dmitry replied. "But it would be illegal to distribute them. You would be distributing them yourself. The program doesn't do it." Dmitry volunteered that an unscrupulous student could also open up the Ebook and take screen grabs of its pages and distribute them, or even print the pages out and make copies of them, and distribute those, illegally, to everyone in the class, if one were so inclined. Frewing made a point of having Dmitry clarify that it would probably be cheaper and take less time for the unscrupulous student to spend the $99 on the AEBPR program and email them to do students from his home than to perform any of the other options Dmitry had mentioned. "Yes." Dmitry conceded. "It might be cheaper." You could telling Frewing was getting really excited about his next line of questioning. "What's the last message that a user of the AEBPR program sees after using the program to decrypt an ebook?" Frewing asked. Dmitry strained to think of it. "Is it 'Protection Successfully Removed?'" Frewing asked. "It's possible." Dmitry said. Still not sure. Then Frewing projected a slide of the final message in question. "Does that say 'Protection Successfully Removed'?" he asked. "Yes." Dmitry re

Danny O'Brien's Coverage of ElcomSoft From Monday

In reading through just now it sounds very much like the final argument synopsis I'm typing up.

Danny's able to figure it all out from Monday's testimony with Dmitry :-)

Here are some of his main points:

The Defence

* ... claimed Elcomsoft produced the software to expose weaknesses in e-book products.

* ... asserted Elcomsoft deliberately kept the price of software high to reduce the damage to ebook publishers. (The claim here is that $100 was enough to dissuade casual copiers of books, but allowed them to release the software into general use.)

* ... said that the software in the case - the Advanced Ebook Processor, is essentially the same as the Advanced PDF password recovery program, which Adobe appears to have no complaint with.

* ... and that Elcomsoft (and Sklyarov) intended the software to be used for non-infringing uses: backup copies, blind users, fair use, etc. (The backup provision is the most important here. Under Russian law, any computer user can make one backup copy - something they claim would not be possible with a standard Adobe ebook.)

The Prosecution

* ...pointed out that Dmitry didn't write a program that exclusively produce copies in accordance with fair use (ie allow you to cut and paste just a few pages, output only in braille, etc.)

* ...asked why, if they wanted to draw attention to the flaws in Adobe's ebook, why Dmitry hadn't released his exploit on Bugtraq. (This is a fascinating attack, given that it seems to imply that it would be *better* for Elcomsoft to release flaws on Bugtraq. Given that many people believe that releasing such circumvention code on Bugtraq is a breach of the DMCA itself, this seems kind of a weird condemnation. The point wasn't examined in detail by either prosecution or defence. Dmitry said that Elcomsoft didn't want to damage ebook publishers by publically releasing the exploit.)

* ...said that by reverse-engineering Adobe's ebook reader, Sklyarov had breached Adobe's download license. Dmitry pointed out that reverse-engeering for compatibility reasons was legal in Russia, so that part of the license didn't apply.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.oblomovka.com/entries/2002/12/09#1039499520

2002-12-09»
Freed Dmitry»

I went down to the San Jose federal courthouse today with Lisa and watched Dmitry Sklyarov give evidence in the Elcomsoft trial. I've been there before, when Dmitry was in handcuffs and a bright orange prisoner garb. Now he wears a suit, like every non-gangster Russian I've seen wear a suit, like I wear a suit: scruffily.

American courts are, naturally, straight from TV land. This separates them from British courts, which are from period drama TV land. Counsel approaches the bench. Objections are sustained. Truths are pledged. I idly noted that this Federal court has a gold-fringed American flag, which must drive nutty tax protestors even more crazy.

I'm not sure how much I can talk about the case. I suppose a great deal, but my old sub judice instincts kick in, so I'll try not to draw too many conclusions. Here's how the arguments appear to be going.
The Defence

* ... claimed Elcomsoft produced the software to expose weaknesses in e-book products. They introduced Dmitry's Defcon speech as evidence for this. Dmitry's speech is rather dry (apart from a hilarious moment at the beginning where another Defcon attendee forces him to say "Where are the nuclear vessels in Alameda?". I laughed a bit too loudly in court here.)
* ... asserted Elcomsoft deliberately kept the price of software high to reduce the damage to ebook publishers. The claim here is that $100 was enough to dissuade casual copiers of books, but allowed them to release the software into general use.
* ... said that the software in the case - the Advanced Ebook Processor, is essentially the same as the Advanced PDF password recovery program, which Adobe appears to have no complaint with.
* ... and that Elcomsoft (and Sklyarov) intended the software to be used for non-infringing uses: backup copies, blind users, fair use, etc. The backup provision is the most important here. Under Russian law, any computer user can make one backup copy - something they claim would not be possible with a standard Adobe ebook.

The Prosecution

* ...pointed out that Dmitry didn't write a program that exclusively produce copies in accordance with fair use (ie allow you to cut and paste just a few pages, output only in braille, etc.) Dmitry answered this by pointing out that there'd be no point - after a few uses, you could essentially decrypt everything.
* ...asked why, if they wanted to draw attention to the flaws in Adobe's ebook, why Dmitry hadn't released his exploit on Bugtraq. This is a fascinating attack, given that it seems to imply that it would be *better* for Elcomsoft to release flaws on Bugtraq. Given that many people believe that releasing such circumvention code on Bugtraq is a breach of the DMCA itself, this seems kind of a weird condemnation. The point wasn't examined in detail by either prosecution or defence. Dmitry said that Elcomsoft didn't want to damage ebook publishers by publically releasing the exploit.
* ...said that by reverse-engineering Adobe's ebook reader, Sklyarov had breached Adobe's download license. Dmitry pointed out that reverse-engeering for compatibility reasons was legal in Russia, so that part of the license didn't apply.

This last point lead to the biggest soundbite of Sklyarov's evidence, where the prosecution asked him "Did you care whether you broke US law when you wrote this program?". Dmitry said no, he didn't care. Prosecution, in a real TV Land moment, seized the opportunity to say "no further questions, your honour", dramatically shuffled their papers and sat down. Defence leapt up and attempted to clarify what Dmitry had said. Dmitry rather stubbornly insisted that he didn't care, and said that he was rather more concerned about whether he was legal under Russian law, which he was convinced it was.

Speaking personally, and given the "Alameda" yukfest at the beginning of the evidence, I would have taken this opportunity to cry out "In Soviet Russia, broken US laws do not care about you!". I guess this is why I'm never asked to be an expert witness.

I missed the second witness, the MD of Elcomsoft. By all accounts, he played one of the better cards of the defence, by revealing that the vast majority of Elcomsoft customers were law enforcement and in the security field.

I'll try and pop along tomorrow, although I'm now a bit late filing for my real work this week.

Send An Anti-TIA Letter To Somebody Who Might Care

I just send a letter to Orrin G. Hatch (Judiciary Comittee Chair) via the EFF's Action Center asking him as chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, to permit either the Technology and Terrorism Subcommittee or the
full Judiciary Committee to hold oversight hearings on Total Information Awareness. A copy was also sent to my Representative, Nancy Pelosi.

I timed it and it took me less than a minute. (Including having them send me a new password.)

Very Cool. (I'd like a round of applause please for Ren Bucholtz, EFF Activisit.)

Think I'll go back and send another one. (This time asking to cut TIA funding.)

(This could be habit forming.)

Just Got Back From the ElcomSoft Final Arguments

This is just a little informational post to let those interested know that I just got back from the last day of the trial and I'll have a brief synopsis of the day's events up soon (within the hour) before getting back to finishing up my extended coverage.

(update: 3:00pm. I'm fried guys. I was up till 2am editing my Trent Lott Daily Show piece, and then I had to be in court this morning at 8:00 am. So I am fr-ied!)

The Jury is planning to deliberate today and tomorrow morning -- so we might have a verdict before I "get there" with my narrative account of it -- but I'm trying to catch up!

Next update late tonight or early am. Juicy stuff!

Then I will go back and finish the long versions of the witness cross-examinations. Promise.

Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott Is A Racist And Proud Of It

Pretty big accusation, huh? Here's my proof:

"What I want to tell you...Ladies and Gentlemen...That there's not enough troops in the Army...to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches."
-- Strom Thurman, 1948.

"When Strom Thurman ran for president, we voted for him! We're proud of it! And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all of these problems over all of these years either."
-- Trent Lott, December, 2002.

"If we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."
-- Trent Lott, 1980.

Strom Thurman, Racist. Trent Lott, Thurman Supporter

(Right mouse click and "save" to download and play the file off of your hard drive.)

Another history lesson, courtesy of the most excellent Daily Show!

Strom Thurman in 1948:



Trent Lott in 1980:

More of Dmitry Sklyarov's December 9, 2002 Testimony

I'm hoping to get another installment up tonight...but it might not be till early morning.

The final argument is in San Jose at 8:00 am, so it's most likely I'll be posting well into the weekend on this thing. Hopefully the Jury will take its time deliberating on the evidence and not make any hasty decisions on Thursday afternoon. I'll keep you posted.

"I still believe that it is absolutely legal," he said.

"I'd like to rephrase the question. When you developed the program, you thought it was lawful. Correct?" Burton asked.

"Correct," said Dmitry.

"And up until July 16, 2001, you thought it was lawful?" Burton asked.

"Correct," said Dmitry.

"What were the reasons you thought it was lawful?" Burton asked.

"The initial idea was taken from the Internet. It had been around for years," Dmitry said.

"Between the time you developed the program and July 16, 2001, did anyone ever tell you that the AEBPR was unlawful?" Burton asked.

"No." Dmitry said.

Continued from my earlier post...
My comments/attempts at humor are in italics so as not to be confused with the often amusing real life events.
It's still Monday afternoon, December 9, 2002 and Dmitry is on the witness stand.

Dmitry explained several positive uses of his company's password recovery program (and of 'password recovery' programs in general). Some examples included: enabling blind people to extract the content of their legally purchased ebooks for their spoken reader applications and using excerpts to make a point within academic research of educational settings. (Dmitry Sklyarov is an Assistant Professor at Moscow University.)

"It's called..." he struggled to remember the right words, and then his eyes widened as he finally remembered, looked at the audience and said, "Fair Use."

Suddenly, thunder struck and lightening flashed wildly inside the court room. The Judge told the court reporter to strike the thunder and lightning from the record and immediately instructed the Jury to please disregard any implied statements made by the deity or supernatural forces that may have caused the thunder and lightning to occur when making their deliberations.

As soon as the issue of whether or not ElcomSoft's AEBPR program violated the law entered the picture, Judge Whyte quickly jumped in. He explained to the Jury that Dmitry's understanding of what was legal or not legal should only be considered regarding whether or not he acted willfully when doing something. He explained again that it should only be considered with regard to his state of mind -- and that it was not being offered regarding whether or not the program actually violated the law.

In general, I liked the way this Judge interacted with the witnesses and Jury -- although counsel on both sides seemed more than a little wary when interacting with him. Anyway, he was very good at clarifying things for the Jury at the right times, and he was paying close attention to the dates of everything -- which are critical factors in this case. Then he wanted more time to carefully prepare his Jury Instructions and give both sides time to prepare their final arguments -- and the Jury a day to digest everything they had seen so far. (Boy what I'd give for a set of those Jury Instructions...)

After the Jury had nodded -- and seemed to have all looked the Judge in the eye to acknowledge that they understood what he had said -- Dmitry was allowed to continue.

"I still believe that it is absolutely legal," he said.

"I'd like to rephrase the question. When you developed the program, you thought it was lawful. Correct?" Burton asked.

"Correct," said Dmitry.

"And up until July 16, 2001, you thought it was lawful?" Burton asked.

"Correct," said Dmitry.

"What were the reasons you thought it was lawful?" Burton asked.

"The initial idea was taken from the Internet. It had been around for years," Dmitry said.

"Between the time you developed the program and July 16, 2001, did anyone ever tell you that the AEBPR was unlawful?" Burton asked.

"No." Dmitry said.

Dmitry went on to explain how the program can only be made to work with legally-obtained ebooks. And how it worked by accessing the protected document and creating an unprotected copy.

"What was your intended use of the program?" Burton asked.

"To allow people who legally own some ebooks to read them on a computer -- any computer they like. Also, it is a demonstration of the weaknesses of PDF security," Dmitry said.

The members of the Jury were all taking feverish notes at this point.

"Was it your intent to violate anyone's rights?" Burton asked.

"No." Dmitry said.

"No further questions." Burton said.

Next came the prosecution's cross-examination by U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing. Frewing asked whether Dmitry had communicated with his lawyers before coming to the trial today, which of course, he had. It seemed as if Frewing was trying to make it somehow suspicious for Dmitry to be communicating with his lawyers.

Frewing then asked if Dmitry knew that the government had wished to question him earlier, prior to his appearance in the court room today. He said that no, actually, he hadn't known that until his counsel had told him earlier that day.

"Do you know that your lawyers declined for you on your behalf?" Frewing asked.

"Yes. I was told today." Dmitry said.

Again, somehow this was supposed to seem shifty. The audience was amused by this, and chuckled a bit. Some of the jurors didn't think it proper that the audience was chuckling, and looked over disapprovingly. (Luckily, I had contained myself.)

Note: Frewing liked to make what sound like statements of fact, rather than questions when he asked his questions. He seemed to expect the witness to say "yes" if they agreed, but he didn't give his voice the right inflection like he was asking a question, and seemed a little nervous, resulting in him sounding a little stiffer still, and confusing things more. So every witness got a bit confused at first until they understood what his style was.

Frewing also spoke very fast (as he admitted himself, and cordially apologized for several times). So the strange inflection combined with the language barrier led to a bit of confusion at first, and every Russian-speaking witness had to ask him to please slow down. After he slowed down, and the witness got the gist of his questioning style, and that they were supposed to say if they agreed or not with his assumptions. Then the questioning went relatively smoothly.

"You testified that it (AEBPR) could be used for a bad purpose?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Dmitry said.

"And you knew that when you were designing the product, that [it could be used for something bad] (or something like that)?" Frewing asked.

"Yes."

Frewing asked Dmitry to explain how ebook protections work, and how the ebooks protected by security technologies will make it so that copies of the ebook files to be non-functional.

"The AEBPR program removes all such protections?" Frewing asked.

"Right." Dmitry said.

"You didn't design it to make only one additional protected copy?" Frewing asked (referring to usage that Dmitry had cited earlier of making a back-up copy of a legally purchased ebook an ebook for the purposes of using it on a machine running the operating system of the purchaser's choosing).

"No. Because the copy is the same as the original copy." Dmitry said.

"You didn't design it so only sight-impaired people could use it." Frewing asked.

"Right." Dmitry conceded.

He then questioned him about why he didn't submit the security info to Adobe's bug tracking system.
He asked him about "bugtraq" and asked him to define it. (bugtraq is a mailing list where people send details of security holes, often with code to demonstrate them.)

This seemed like is a pretty ironic line of questioning considering that 1) Adobe's security flaws were way to extensive to be considered "bugs" and 2) ElcomSoft could have potentially been subjected to additional prosecution under the DMCA for making such knowledge public, had they done so -- making it pretty strange that the prosecution was scolding them for not making the information public.

"You didn't submit the bug to bugtraq, but instead, you wrote a program for ElcomSoft?" Frewing asked.

"Yes." Dmitry said.

"And they sold the program?" Frewing asked.

"Yes."

More to come...

First Hand Account Of Jon Johansen's Trial

Hey sorry I've been amiss in keeping this category up-to-date with the trial going on this week -- I've been covering the ElcomSoft Trial at the same time and it's getting pretty hairy keeping up with everything.

Here's a first hand account of the trial from Edward Welbourne via Declan's Politech.

Given that Økokrim confiscated everything in his home,
at the time, to hunt for pirated DVDs - without success,
not even copies of the DVDs he owns, which he's
*entitled* to copy - it's going to be fairly easy for
the defense to argue that what Jon wanted DeCSS
for was - shock, horror- in order to view DVDs
lawfully in his possession. The prosecutor even
made a big deal of bits of the DeCSS distribution
saying "this is only a decryptor" and how copying
the .vob files off the DVD itself was a separate
operation for which the user didn't need anything
special. I was somewhat at a loss to see how this
was meant to help her case ...

Other folk I spoke to in recesses said that they
thought the prosecutor was mainly aiming to
portray Jon in a bad light, rather than actually
showing any wrong-doing. Apparently she
described the open-source hackers working
on a DVD player as a criminal gang. There
were quotes from some IRC groups frequented
by copyright violators, including someone in one
group outright describing the group as a bunch of
criminals and telling Jon to go away because
he didn't want to hang with a bunch of criminals.
It's hard to see how they expect to dirty his
name with the news that he quit that forum once
this was made plain to him ...

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.politechbot.com/p-04233.html

Click Here
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A first-hand account of Day One of Johansen trial in Norway

* Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 14:29:14 -0500
* To: politech@politechbot.com
* Subject: FC: A first-hand account of Day One of Johansen trial in Norway
* From: Declan McCullagh

Background on case:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=johansen
Photo:
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/950-10/jon-johansen-3.html

---

From: David Harris
To: declan@well.com
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=-5zLS3sP+DPtnUARlEn6Z"
Date: 09 Dec 2002 19:08:45 +0000

declan,
An eye witness account of the first day of Jon Johansen deCSS trial in
Norway
--
David Harris

[long headers snipped --DBM]

From: Edward Welbourne
X-Uri: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/
Message-Id:
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 18:27:49 +0000

So I took a day's holiday to attend the opening of the trial. I showed
up slightly late (being in town by 9am stretches my dormouse tendencies
somewhat) and handed out some pieces of blue ribbon I'd cut before
setting off, and some pins, to familiar faces. My knowledge of
Norwegian isn't up to the intricate cut and thrust of a court-room; and
I have a rather dire head-cold which is adding to the confusion by
messing with: my brain's perception of the boundary between reality and
the semi-dream state I kept nodding off into; and my memory's clarity as
to which things were said in the trial and which things were my
conversations with others. Consequently, the following will swing
between reportage and gonzo in its approach to what was going on;
caveat lector.

Some of the time I had some idea what was going on, but mostly because
someone was quoting from e-mails or IRC logs that were på engelsk.
Maybe Alfred (of www.oplug.org) will reply to this with a clearer
indication of what was said. (A quick introduction: the OPLUG list Cc'd
here is the Oslo Pils and Linux Users' group; while free-sklyarov-uk,
a.k.a. ukcdr.org, is the Campaign for Digital Rights, and the list-name
is a reminder of its origins.)

The court is presided over by a judge/magistrate (I'm not claiming to
know exactly which is the more apt description) assisted by two experts
in the topic area, selected from outside the legal profession by some
kind of negotiation-with-veto protocol between the defense and
prosecution. I doubt I shall ever see a more beautiful judge ;^>

The prosecution is Økokrim, the Norwegian state economic/ecoligical
crime-busting bureau (recently also involved in chasing down some quite
dramatic big financial scandals). Their lawyer did most of the day's
talking, to which I'll return. She had an assistant, who had relatively
little to do: his moment of glory was driving the (windows) lap-top on
which he demoed use of The Matrix game DVD, copying of .vob files from
it to the computer's hard-disk, non-use of these copies (because
encrypted) and use of them with the help of DeCSS.

The defense team had two lawyers; a shaved-bald guy leading the team,
with a grin more-or-less premanently fixed on his face, and an assistant
whose (visible) role was even smaller than that of his opposite number.
Oh, and a 19-year-old accused of pissing off some big American
corporations, back when he was 15 - you may have heard of him ...

The day began with the prosecution setting out the charge and the
substantive form of the case (at least, that's what I *think* she was
doing); that took an hour and a bit, including the Matrix demo. Smiling
man then replied with a somewhat briefer statement of how our Jon wasn't
a naughty boy, or at least that's what I think he was saying. Somewhere
in all that, Jon got asked some questions and I guess one of them was
the formal one about guilt or innocense, but ... it was all på Norsk to
me. Shortly before noon, Jon was called to the witness stand; but he'd
only answered a few questions when we broke for lunch. The entire
afternoon session had Jon in the witness stand, albeit mostly with the
prosecutor reading stuff out and only occasionally asking him questions.

I may have mis-understood, but my impression is that Jon is charged
under some law relating to meddling with someone else's property by
breaking into computers. As such I sort of expected the case to revolve
around issues of how he accessed the windows-player from which I gather
he lifted some keys, whether that access was naughty or legal, etc.
[Not that this would really suffice, since it was *his* computer - it
didn't belong to the proprietor of the DVD program, let alone to the
DVD-CCA.]

Far from it.

The prosecutor went through the whole process of how DeCSS came into
being; Jon involved in discussion of Speed Ripper (or some similar name;
a binary-only DVD player from Drink Or Die) and how there's no way DOD
would be releasing its source, that's not their style; Jon contacting
Nomad, who'd written a decryptor but no front-end or keys; Jon blagging
a copy of this and promissing not to circulate it; Jon writing a GUI for
it [prosecutor asking what a GUI is - pardon ? - yes, really, the
Økokrim counsel didn't appear to know], letting Nomad play with it,
asking for permission to distribute the result; more saga, but I didn't
catch it all. Nothing shocking or naughty. Prosecutor tried to make a
big deal of a quote, from an exchange between Jon and Nomad, "we're
behaving just like Microsoft", rather too obviously in jest to be a big
deal.

There was a fair bit of questioning about how DeCSS came to be released,
including some stress between Jon and Nomad over a `by mistake' upload
which was hastily removed; and a whole lot of e-mails about why not to
release it with the keys `visible' (since this would just lead to the
DVD-CCA revoking those keys and the company whose keys they were being
liable to an ugly law-suit). The defense should have no real problem
dealing with the issues in this as Jon being a naïve 15-year-old who
just wanted to be able to play his DVDs and was eager to let other folk
use his program, without concern over how folk might abuse it.

Somewhere in that there was some coverage of Jon having three OSen
installed (FreeBSD, GNU/Linux and Windows), during which the prosecutor
got confused by Jon referring to "GNU/Linux", rather than "Linux" per
se; and appeared to be confused about how one computer can have more
than one O/S (or, at least, there was a confusion which appeared to be
about dual boot).

The prosecutor devoted a whole lot of attention to the fact that Jon was
working on Windows, writing a program that only ran on Windows, taking
pains to make the result run well on various versions of Windows; not
writing for Linux. This presumably to undermine the `I wanted a DVD
player for my Linux box' argument - though I'd happily argue that, since
he'd only just started playing with Linux at the time and had experience
with Windows, the sane thing to do was to write a Windows version first,
if only as practice; releasing it open source in some form would then
give it plenty of scope to be ported to Linux by folk who knew how to do
that well, so implementing for Windows is an effective way to *get* an
implementation for Linux. In any case, he also has the entirely
legitimate other reason to want a DVD player under his own control: to
by-pass the MacroMedia access control - e.g. to be able to fast-forward
over (trailers/advertising if any, but in any case) the US-specific
legal notice that (IIRC - can anyone confirm/deny ?) gets put up for a
while *even* on DVDs that're region-locked to be unplayable in the US
(d'*uh*).

Given that Økokrim confiscated everything in his home, at the time, to
hunt for pirated DVDs - without success, not even copies of the DVDs he
owns, which he's *entitled* to copy - it's going to be fairly easy for
the defense to argue that what Jon wanted DeCSS for was - shock, horror
- in order to view DVDs lawfully in his possession. The prosecutor even
made a big deal of bits of the DeCSS distribution saying "this is only a
decryptor" and how copying the .vob files off the DVD itself was a
separate operation for which the user didn't need anything special. I
was somewhat at a loss to see how this was meant to help her case ...

Other folk I spoke to in recesses said that they thought the prosecutor
was mainly aiming to portray Jon in a bad light, rather than actually
showing any wrong-doing. Apparently she described the open-source
hackers working on a DVD player as a criminal gang. There were quotes
from some IRC groups frequented by copyright violators, including
someone in one group outright describing the group as a bunch of
criminals and telling Jon to go away because he didn't want to hang with
a bunch of criminals. It's hard to see how they expect to dirty his
name with the news that he quit that forum once this was made plain to
him ...

Smiling man, in his morning response to the charges, told the court
about the glass-master stomping industrial press reality of DVD
counterfeiting, and its lack of any need for decryption of the content
in the process, as opposed to the industry-promoted myth of Peg-Leg Geek
with his cutlass, eye-patch and - presumably - a penguin on his
shoulder.

The press were out in force in the morning - the state television
channel's reporter spoke to me briefly in the lunch recess, I explained
about how a programmer needs to be able to write code to access the data
on legally-acquired media; but when she suggested having her colleague
point a *camera* at me I hastily re-directed them to HÃ¥kon Wium Lie
(co-author of the *other* CSS, Cascading Style Sheets; and he was among
the assorted folk vetoed by Økokrim to be among the judge's advisers),
since he was conveniently on hand and is much better at that stuff.
Plus, being Norwegian, he talks the right language.

The trial is vaguely expected to take a week, but I shalln't be getting
to any more of it.

Eddy.

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Statement on the Cheney Energy Task Force

Statement on the Cheney Energy Task Force from Henry Waxman

The decision is another Bush v. Gore. It is a convoluted decision by a Republican judge that gives Bush and Cheney near total immunity from scrutiny. In Bush v. Gore, five Republican justices gave the election to George Bush and Dick Cheney. Today, another Republican judge has decided that, once in office, Bush and Cheney can operate in complete secrecy with no oversight by Congress.

The only good news is that this decision is not the final word. It is inconceivable that the appellate court will uphold the embarrassing reasoning used by the district judge.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/12.12A.wax.bsh.v.gore.p.htm

t r u t h o u t | Statement
Henry A. Waxman Ranking Member House Judiciary

Statement on the Cheney Energy Task Force

Monday, 9 December, 2002

By Henry A. Waxman

The decision is another Bush v. Gore. It is a convoluted decision by a Republican judge that gives Bush and Cheney near total immunity from scrutiny. In Bush v. Gore, five Republican justices gave the election to George Bush and Dick Cheney. Today, another Republican judge has decided that, once in office, Bush and Cheney can operate in complete secrecy with no oversight by Congress.

The only good news is that this decision is not the final word. It is inconceivable that the appellate court will uphold the embarrassing reasoning used by the district judge.

Under President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the Administration has developed plans to keep secret files on the activities of all Americans. But at the same time, the Administration wants to keep everything it does from the public. In fact, under today¹s court ruling, Americans can¹t even learn the identity of the energy lobbyists who asked for special favors in the White House energy plan.

This is an ominous decision that defies fundamental and traditional American values of open government.

Elcomsoft Trial-- Elaborations On Another's Coverage

My comments on a fellow blogger's coverage -- Peter brought up some really good points and I just want to elaborate on them a bit from what I saw in the courtroom:

More on the Elcomsoft case....The testimony is over
and the two sides are wrangling with Judge Whyte
about the jury instructions.

Actually no, they came up to the bench to haggle about a specific line of questioning the prosecution was about to embark on about Reg Now's parent company, Digital River, and its assets. It seemed as if the defense won on that one because when they came back, the prosecution had totally changed its tune, and only asked one little question about the parent company residing in the U.S. and then said "no further questions".

Whyte did not allow Elcomsoft to introduce evidence
that its program allowed blind consumers to make
their Adobe ebooks readable by text-to-speech
software, or evidence on how any kind of
consumer actually used the program.

Note that the prosecution was also unable to come up with an example of a single infringing use!

Actually, Dmitry did testify about the uses for the blind, and the prosecution cross-examined on that point pretty clearly, by clarifying that the marketing materials and the splash screens that come up in the program don't say "now you can view this text on your braille reader." So the Judge may have felt that point had been made.

Arguments that Elcomsoft's program is protected
by fair use, or that the relevant portions of the
DMCA violate the First Amendment, will have to
wait for an appeal.

Yeah the Judge threw out the First Amendment defense earlier this year. That totally sucks, but that was his call, so I imagine he would stand by it and not allow a line of defense to be presented that he said he wasn't interested in.

That decision sure didn't give me much hope for this case or this Judge. But now, after seeing the Judge in action, I have hope again. He wants the trial to focus on ElcomSoft's intent: The company clearly did not mean to do anything illegal. When they were contacted about the problem, as soon as someone would clearly explain to them what the problem was, they acted accordingly.

Adobe's language in its C and D letter was confusing -- claiming that Elcomsoft had content on it's site that infringed on Adobe's copyrights (rather than ElcomSoft was distributing software on its site which could be used to infringe -- big difference). The bungled letter only served to confuse those being accused (ElcomSoft, its ISP and Reg Now!).

A Reg Now employee testified yesterday that it was their fault, and not ElcomSoft's, for not taking all of the versions from the website, as ElcomSoft had requested.

Even though the prosecutors dropped charges
against Dmitry Sklyarov in exchange for his
testimony, in the end they did not call him as a
witness, but used a taped deposition instead.
The defense called him as a witness, and
asked about his purposes in creating the program.

But the Fair Use stuff came up at little (but not much) in Dmitry's questioning -- but the Judge was quick to instruct the Jury that the testimony can only be used to judge Dmitry's state of mind at the time, not whether or not he is correct about what he thinks will be illegal.

(The DMCA requires wilfulness.) Also see coverage
here and here.

Yes! And it is this willfullness issue that might get ElcomSoft off! If there was one thing that was clear from the testimony, and even from the Prosecution's line of questioning with ElcomSoft President Alexander Katalov, it was that ElcomSoft never intended to do anything illegal. The company has a huge customer base in the Law Enforcement community and it would just be bad business.

That's why these guys came all the way back here to try to clear their name. This lawsuit has heard their legitimate business. They were growing exponentially every year until last year, where there profits remained constant.

Okay back to typing up my notes from the trial...

Dmitry Sklyarov's Testimony Continued

Here's my next installment from the ElcomSoft trial. My next post will be tomorrow in the AM.

When we last left our story, our hero (Dmitry Sklyarov) is being questioned on the witness stand by ElcomSoft defense attorney Joseph Burton (perhaps the real hero), as a video excerpt of Dmitry's July 2001 Def Con presentation is being presented to the Jury...

"One of the things you were trying to do was to demonstrate weaknesses?" said Burton.

"Yes," replied Sklyarov. "Many companies say the Ebooks are copyproofed. But most of the ones I have seen are not secure and can be easily compromised. The program I developed demonstrates such security flaws."

"We are trying to show that E-book distribution on Adobe's Technology is insecure," he said. "We are not trying to hurt publishers."

"By 'publishers', who do you mean?" said Burton.

"I mean copyright holders," Sklyarov said. "Companies that use those (security technologies) can lose money, and that's not fair," said Sklyarov. "The public has a right to know."

12/09/02 - Dmitry Sklyarov's Testimony Continued

When we last left our story, our hero (Dmitry Sklyarov) is being questioned on the witness stand by ElcomSoft defense attorney Joseph Burton (perhaps the real hero), as a video excerpt of Dmitry's July 2001 Def Con presentation is being presented to the Jury.

During the course of the videotaped presentation, Dmitry demonstrated the AEBPR e-book reader and how it worked.

"There is no security at all," he says on the tape.

The video audience appears to be very impressed and claps accordingly.

After the video, in the real live courtroom, Dmitry explained his intentions in writing the AEBPR ebook reader program. "Now you can transfer your e-book to your laptop," he said. He also explained how it was just a demonstration program, only capable of creating a single PDF format copy of an encrypted e-book "one book at a time."

"One of the things you were trying to do was to demonstrate weaknesses?" said Burton.

"Yes," replied Sklyarov. "Many companies say the Ebooks are copyproofed. But most of the ones I have seen are not secure and can be easily compromised. The program I developed demonstrates such security flaws."

"We are trying to show that E-book distribution on Adobe's Technology is insecure," he said. "We are not trying to hurt publishers."

"By 'publishers', who do you mean?" said Burton.

"I mean copyright holders," Sklyarov said. "Companies that use those (security technologies) can lose money, and that's not fair," said Sklyarov. "The public has a right to know."

The discussion then focused on price -- why sell it instead of give it away?

"Why didn't you post the information showing the security flaws to the internet?" said Burton.

Dmitry explained the reasoning behind pricing the software at $99, rather than giving it away free, because that could "hurt publishers," and that his goal was to provide "just a demonstration."

"Did you participate in choosing the price?" said Burton.

"Yes," said Sklyarov. "As I understand it, making the price below $99 or free would hurt publishers. The price was high enough that it was more than the cost of an ebook."

Then the line of questioning shifted to the construction of the APDFPR and AEBPR programs and the alleged deconstruction of the Adobe E-book reader that Elcomsoft may have used in order to create its own ebook reader (later, upon cross-examination by the prosecution).

The defense had prepared a chart detailing the smaller components that make up ElcomSoft's APDFPR (Advanced PDF Password Recovery program) and AEBPR (Advanced E Book Password Recovery program).

At this point the prosecution had an objection of some sort [I believe it had to do with the prosecution wanting to only focus on the ebook program (AEBPR) rather than the other password recovery program (APDFPR)] and the Judge asked for counsel to approach the bench. That took a good minute or two, and I noticed Dmitry smiling at the jury as he sort of inspected them.

The debate continued quietly between the Judge, both attorneys and the court reporter up front at the Judges bench. (Apparently the court reporters are supposed to witness those bench-side tete-a-tetes, although they don't seem to keep a record of them, because he was just standing there listening.)

Finally, both sides appeared satisfied and the trial moved onward. The Judge allowed the defense to continue with its original line of technical discussion, after rephrasing the question slightly.
(I can't remember what the question was, but when he asked it differently, it seemed to me to be clearly the same question -- but I'm sure there was some kind of legal justification for why the prosecution wanted the wording to be changed.)

They went over the different parts of the program: User Interface, Program Protection, Registration, Kernel and Security Handlers.

It was then that I began to feel the watchful eyes of our attentive jurors start to glaze over just a little.

"Are there different kinds of security handlers?" Burton asked.

"Yes," said Dmitry. He then went on to discuss the different kinds of security handlers such as "file-open."

Burton then went on to establish that the two programs were created from the same kernel with modifications to the user interface and the addition of extra security handlers. Dmitry mentioned a number of the handlers by name, including: ROT 13, Adobe PDF Merchant Security Handler, EBX -- Electronic Books Exchange (what was initially Glassbook, which was bought by Adobe and implemented in its Ebook reader), and support for generic document handlers.

Burton asked Dmitry a series of questions to establish to what extent the code base in question was Dmitry's handiwork. Dmitry explained that he wrote the entire kernel and that the kernel consisted of about 60-70% of the ebook reader code. The point was made that besides the user interface and security handler differences, there was no difference between the APDFPR and the AEBPR programs.

Tip, re: Keeping APDFPR and AEBPR straight: I finally figured out that these are the same initials except for a "PDF" or an "EB" (for ebook) in the middle. Once you think of them as "A" (advanced) (insert file format here) PR (password recovery)", they don't seem so complicated.

Stay tuned for the next episode, when Dmitry says the "F" word on the witness stand!

("Fair Use" that is...)

ElcomSoft Update: Court Adjourned Until Thursday

Court wrapped up early today. Both sides have presented all of their evidence and examined and cross-examined each other's witnesses.

Tomorrow will be a day off to let the Judge finalize the Jury instructions (which the Judge explained could not be prepared properly until all of the evidence was heard) and to let both sides prepare for their final arguments, which will be taking place Thursday morning at 8:00 am.

I expect to be writing up yesterday and today's events for the next 24 hours or so.

I'll keep posting them here in 1,000 word incriments.

Here's a little courtroom artwork to tide you over till the next one.

That's the "Jury" on the left and "Reporter" (meaning the court reporter) on the right.

My First Impressions of the Trial


Sketch by Lisa Rein

My First Report From The ElcomSoft Trial

I had a really interesting day in court Monday observing the U.S. vs. ElcomSoft trial.

Dmitry Sklyarov was cross-examined by both sides and Vladimir Katalov had just taken the stand for a bit when it was time for court to adjourn.

I'll be posting more this evening before heading over to the big EFF party tonight.

See you there!

All in all I'd say the Jury was probably just trying to keep up with the conversation more than anything else -- which did get rather confusing from time to time in the context of all of the products, technologies and acronyms flying around.

Even I had to look at the big chart provided by the defense showing the two products being discussed side by side -- the APDFPR (Adobe PDF Password Recovery program) and AEBPR (Adobe Ebook Password Recovery program) -- every so often in order to keep it clear in my mind which one they were talking about as they switched back and forth. And I've been familiar with the case for over a year -- so I can't imagine what it would be like for a juror to try to stomach all of this stuff in a couple of sittings.

One thing about the jury though: they sure looked interested in what was going on. They were paying close attention and were taking everything very seriously -- yet they were also quick to laugh when things were, well, just plain funny.

I'd like to apologize ahead of time for what is undoubtedly going to be a stream of consciousness style of writing for these notes. I'm trying to write all of this up while it's fresh in mind so I don't fall into the trap I've been in for the last few weeks trying to reconstruct what happened from my notes at Eldred.

The whole point of my taking entire week to observe this trial, besides the obviously selfish reasons of wanting to experience history in the making and all that kind of stuff, was to bring the experience to those who couldn't be there. With that in mind, it only seemed fair to enable you to share the experience with me in a timely manner -- and while you're interest is up!

Please do let me know if any of this needs further clarification. It is my intention to eventually have an online account of the trial that is linked to all of the evidence (most of which is already available online in some form or another) so that a reader can follow along and consider all of the evidence presented for and against etc., and try to understand the thought process of everyone involved as the events were taking place.

I believe it is important to have a historical account of this case because, much like the Eldred case, I believe that its outcome will greatly change the course of history.

It was Dmitry Sklyarov's arrest in July of 2001 that got me interested in Copyright Law and the DMCA in the first place. I cared very little about either until I learned that a Russian graduate student had been arrested and was still being held without bail (only for a few days originally -- but eventually he was held for over three weeks in jail and then not allowed to return home for almost six months!) -- and all because a software company alleged that some software his employer had developed could have potentially infringing uses. It didn't seem possible.

I began researching this strange "DMCA" law the technological and legal issues involved, and learned that the plot only thickened with more information I obtained. Webcasting issues became involved, and ultimately, free speech and the public domain seemed the most at risk.

I continued with my research, and decided to move back to the SF Bay Area to see if I could be of any assistance to anyone trying to help the situation. Five months later, I was working for Lawrence Lessig at Creative Commons.

One thing I know for sure -- for me, none of it would have transpired as it did were it not for Dmitry's arrest. For this reason, and the reasons mentioned earlier, I wanted to be there to experience this trial for myself.

12/09/02 - 2:00 pm San Jose Federal Court

I walked in an hour after court started, right as Dmitry Sklyarov was on the stand and Elcomsoft's lawyer, Joseph Burton, was questioning him. (It is my understanding that the prosecution called witnesses last week and now the defense is presenting their witnesses.)

I counted only 21 people in the audience of the small courtroom in downtown San Jose, California.

Burton played a twelve minute video excerpt from Dmitry's July, 2001 (exact date here) presentation at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The tape was played on a TV set placed between the witness stand where Dmitry sat and the jury box. The jurors sat with 4 in front and 8 in the back row, and all of them had note pads that they were all keeping pretty busy with.

All in all I'd say the Jury was probably just trying to keep up with the conversation more than anything else -- which did get rather confusing from time to time in the context of all of the products, technologies and acronyms flying around.

Even I had to look at the big chart provided by the defense showing the two products being discussed side by side -- the APDFPR (Adobe PDF Password Recovery program) and AEBPR (Adobe Ebook Password Recovery program) -- every so often in order to keep it clear in my mind which one they were talking about as they switched back and forth. And I've been familiar with the case for over a year -- so I can't imagine what it would be like for a Juror to try to stomach all of this stuff in a couple of sittings.

One thing about the jury though: they sure looked interested in what was going on. They were paying close attention and were taking everything very seriously -- yet they were also quick to laugh when things were, well, just plain funny.

For instance, during the beginning of the Def Con presentation in the video clip they were showing, when Dmitry attempted to begin his presentation, someone from the audience asks Dmitry if he can please say "where are the nuclear wessels in Alameda?" Which he finally says, reluctantly. (Note: I'm not sure how I would feel exactly if someone stopped my presentation somewhere to ask me to say "Totally Excellent Dude" or something with my American accent, but he was a good sport about it.)

Anyway, it was pretty funny -- and everyone in the court room laughed loudly. It also served to loosen things up a bit.

The video clip itself was also kind of funny because it had this really Tron-like sort of outdated pseudo-flashy opening but then the footage of the presentation itself was very amateurish and low tech. Dmitry was sitting at a table up on stage with a microphone in front of him and two or three other people at the table next to him without microphones. It was very bright in the room and it looked warm. Too warm. Like, Las Vegas in July warm.

After the "talk like Checkov for us" incident, Dmitry went on with his presentation. It seemed like he was shouting into the microphone, but I couldn't tell if it was just turned up too loud at the even itself or if perhaps whoever recorded the video had blown out the levels when they recorded the tape. Dmitry seemed to be reading from his pre-written speech for the most part.

Okay it's midnight and I've got to get some sleep before court tomorrow. But I will say that I've somehow managed to write over 1,000 words already, although I've only gone through one page of the thirty or so pages of notes I took today. So suffice to say that there's a lot more where this came from.

More tomorrow afternoon -- court gets out at noon and I'm going to the EFF party at 7pm, so I'll post as much as I can in-between.

A Lesson On Kissinger History and Current Events From The Daily Show

Jon Stewart's Daily Show is one of the best things on television right now. Lately, the shows are so newsworthy and informative (besides being totally hilarious) that I've decided to start showing clips from them here. (Now that I am set up to do so by recording from my TiVO into my camera and then capturing that into my computer and generating a quicktime from that.)

My first creation is a three minute montage made up of clips from some of last week's sequences on Henry Kissinger, the recent appointee to chair the Shrub's committee to investigate 911 (57 MB):

The Daily Show On Kissinger (from 12/04/02) (MP4 - 10 MB)

Update: 10/23/03 - new format that should work better for everyone and play within the browser.

Note: Let me know if these videos work for everyone ok? And if not, what platform and application you're using to view it, etc. I'm trying to figure out what set of formats I need to provide my footage can be accessible to everyone.

I'm also ready to help walk you through the process if need be getting set up to view video if you're not already so you can follow along on my various video expeditions.

So please email me at lisarein@finetuning.com if you're having trouble of any kind. Thanks!

Headed For ElcomSoft Trial Tomorrow

I'll be reporting from the ElcomSoft Trial going on this week in San Jose, California.

Here are a pair of stories I wrote about Dmitry Sklyarov and ElcomSoft last year if you're interested in refreshing your memory about the situation:

And Justice For Adobe

Dmitry Sets The Record Straight

Here are a pack of stories by Joanna Glasner for Wired News about what's been going on with the trial so far. The prosecution made its case last week. The defense presents its case starting tomorrow afternoon. I'll be posting updates every evening starting tomorrow night.

All Eyes on ElcomSoft Trial

Opening Salvos in ElcomSoft Trial

Adobe: ElcomSoft Outside U.S. Law

Testimony on Tape in E-Book Trial

The Lighter Side Of Total Information Awareness

Here's a great Flash animation by Mark Fiore on
Total Information Awareness.

Alcor Excerpt From Tim Leary's Book

The story I just blogged about the nano tech talks at the cryonics conference reminded me that Timothy Leary wrote about Alcor in the book I worked on with him (Surfing the Conscious Nets). (Contrary to popular belief, however, Tim did not freeze his remains.)


I went and dug up the reference to Alcor, just for fun. For those of you with a copy of Surfing the Conscious Nets around, it's on page 16. For the rest of you, I've created a scan here:




I'm sure this is OK with both Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner, who is a friend of mine, and would consider it promotion for the book, and Tim Leary himself, because he told me in 1995 that it was his dream to have all of his works freely available online. A dying wish, if you will.
(Yeah, we're talking everything. So I'm sure he wouldn't mind a few scans.)

On the bright side of the ledger, John Lilly, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Phillips have escaped with their "souls" intact. So far! Several of the lesser known Gabor sisters, rumor has it, had their pretty heads sliced and diced by Dr. Sidney Cohen's gang. Elvis Presley? Who knows? Walt Disney? Janis Joplin? Jim Morrison? Just who exactly still lives frozen in blessed hibernation in the re-animation vaults of the Alcor-CryoCare Cryonics Foundation, in Riverside, California, as Jimi Hendrix does? -- no thanks to Nick Rogue--all credit to Michael Hollingshead.

Then Andy Warhol started phoning me day and night. Cryonics is all Andy thinks about these days. So he says.

Spam Justice

Mike Wendland Interviewed bragging spam king Alan Ralsky for the Detriot Free Press. The article got Slashdotted, and then someone on the discussion list got the idea to spam back. (I can't find the exact thread, but would love to link to it from here.)

Now the Spam King is complaining that...well...that it really sucks to be spammed.

This is a stretch on "spam tech" -- more like good old fashioned grass roots organizing in action, but I think it's interesting that Ralsky doesn't seem to grasp the irony of the situation.

"They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is," he told me. "These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me."

That they are. Gleefully. Almost 300 anti-Ralsky posts were made on the Slashdot.org Web site, where the plan was hatched after spam haters posted his address, even an aerial view of his neighborhood.

"Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me," wrote one of the anti-spammers.

Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers.

Here is the full text of the first article (1 of 2) in case the link goes bad:

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122.htm

MIKE WENDLAND: Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles

West Bloomfield computer empire helped by foreign Internet servers

November 22, 2002

BY MIKE WENDLAND
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

You might call it the house that spam built.

Alan Ralsky's brand new 8,000-square-foot luxury home near Halsted and Maple in West Bloomfield has been a busy place this month. Outside, landscapers worked against the November cold to get a sprinkler system installed before the ground freezes. Inside, painters prepared to hang wallpaper.

Meanwhile, delivery trucks pulled into the bricked circular driveway with computers, routers, servers and other high-tech gear that will hook up to the high-speed T1 line installed a few weeks ago.

In the lower level of the home, tucked away in a still-unfinished room, will soon be an array of 20 different computers -- the control center of what many believe is the largest single bulk e-mailing operation in the world.

It's an operation still very much in business, despite last month's much-hyped settlement of a lawsuit against Ralsky by Verizon Internet Services. The suit used Virginia's tough anti-spam laws to get Ralsky to promise to stop using Verizon servers and pay an undisclosed fee for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails to its customers.

Anti-spam groups and Verizon hailed the settlement as a major victory in the war against spam. But that war still feels far away, down on the lower level of Ralsky's home, where racks of computers instruct scores of other computers halfway around the world to fire off millions of e-mails every day.

Ralsky said the legal fuss and settlement costs were a big hit and that things slowed down for a while. But now, after moving a few weeks ago into his new $740,000 house, he claims he's back in business.

"I've gone overseas," he said. "I now send most of my mail from other countries. And that's a shame. I pay a fortune to providers to do this, and I'd much rather have it go to American companies. But I have to stay in business, and if I have to go out of the country, then so be it."

The computers in Ralsky's basement control 190 e-mail servers -- 110 located in Southfield, 50 in Dallas and 30 more in Canada, China, Russia and India. Each computer, he said, is capable of sending out 650,000 messages every hour -- more than a billion a day -- routed through overseas Internet companies Ralsky said are eager to sell him bandwidth.

All this is bad news to the anti-spam movement.

"He's very sophisticated in his activities," said John Mozena of Grosse Pointe Woods, a founder of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (www.cauce.org), a national spam-fighting organization. "He uses hundreds of domains (Internet addresses) to send his spams."

In London, Steve Linford of the Spamhaus Project (www.spamhaus.org) has monitored Ralsky for several years.

"There are probably about 150 major spammers who are responsible for 90 percent of all the spam everyone gets," said Linford. "Ralsky has been the biggest of them, and is certainly still in the top five."

Ralsky used to be easy to locate, with a listed address and phone number. But his attorney, Robert Harrison of Bloomfield Hills, said Ralsky is so hated by anti-spammers that he's had to be less visible.

"There were threats against him, cars driving by and people checking out his house," Harrison said. "Someone even left a package of what appeared to be dog feces."

Today, Ralsky says he is trying to keep a lower profile, operating through cell phones and unlisted numbers. Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.

Ralsky admits to using lots of different domain names and Internet providers, but said he does nothing illegal. He prefers to call his e-mails marketing messages instead of spam.

Whatever you call it, unsolicited messages now account for 36 percent of all e-mail, up from just 8 percent a year ago, according to Brightmail, a leading anti-spam software maker.

Ralsky has done his share to account for the increase.

"I'll never quit," said the 57-year-old master of spam. "I like what I do. This is the greatest business in the world."

It's made him a millionaire, he said, seated in the wood-paneled first floor library of his new house. "In fact," he added, "this wing was probably paid for by an e-mail I sent out for a couple of years promoting a weight-loss plan."

Ralsky said he turns down many who want his services.

"I don't do any porn or sexual messages," he said, citing a promise he made to his wife, Irmengard. Instead, he sends e-mail come-ons for things like online casinos, vacation promotions, mortgage refinancing and Internet pharmacies.

Ralsky acknowledges that his success with spam arose out of a less-than-impressive business background. In 1992, while in the insurance business, he served a 50-day jail term for a charge arising out of the sale of unregistered securities. And in 1994, he was convicted of falsifying documents that defrauded financial institutions in Michigan and Ohio and ordered to pay $74,000 in restitution.

He lost his license to sell insurance and he declared personal bankruptcy. But in 1997, he sold a late model green Toyota and used the money to pay back taxes on his house and buy two computers.

A friend had told him about mass marketing on the Internet, and he thought it made sense. He bought a couple of mailing lists from advertising brokers and, with the help of the computers, launched a new career that soon was making him $6,000 a week.

In the lower level of his house, working around a half-dozen computers sitting atop temporary tables, two of Ralsky's associates monitored the operation.

One of them, Ralsky's list man, concentrated on finding new names to add to the 250 million e-mail addresses in his database and weeding out canceled accounts.

The other kept track of current campaigns, connecting with the bank of e-mail servers in Southfield and watching as e-mails scrolled line-by-line in rapid fire down the screen.

"There is no way this can be stopped," Ralsky said. "It's a perfectly legal business that has allowed anybody to compete with the Fortune 500 companies."

Ralsky said he includes a link on each e-mail he sends that lets the recipient opt out of any future mailings. He said 89 million people have done just that over the past five years, and he keeps a list of them that grows by about 1,000 every day. That list is constantly run against his master list of 250 million valid addresses.

Ralsky's list man is named Charlie Brown. That's his real name, he said, describing himself as a native of Louisiana who travels the country working as a consultant to bulk e-mailers, developing custom software called harvesting programs that constantly scour the Internet, gaining access to millions of Web sites and mailing lists every day in search of any and all e-mail addresses.

The response rate is the key to the whole operation, said Ralsky. These days, it's about one-quarter of 1 percent.

"But you figure it out," said Ralsky. "When you're sending out 250 million e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."

Ralsky makes his money by charging the companies that hire him to send bulk e-mail a commission on sales. He sometimes charges just a flat fee, up to $22,000, for a single mailing to his entire database.

Ralsky has other ways to monitor the success of his campaigns. Buried in every e-mail he sends is a hidden code that sends back a message every time the e-mail is opened. About three-quarters of 1 percent of all the messages are opened by their recipients, he said. The rest are deleted.

From that response, Ralsky can monitor the effectiveness of his pitch and the subject line on the e-mail to make sure he's getting maximum return. He said he spends 18 hours a day on the job.

Ralsky said he's frustrated by attacks on his character by the anti-spammers. Linford said his organization has been getting Internet networks around the world to block mail from any Chinese provider that sends Ralsky e-mail.

"When the Chinese providers contact us to ask why their outgoing mail is blocked, we tell them because of Ralsky, and they pull his plug," said Linford. "He moves on to another provider and it starts all over again."

Earlier this month, said Ralsky, somebody told the Chinese government that a Web company from which he leases e-mail servers in Beijing was sending messages critical of Chinese policy.

Police promptly raided the business and confiscated Ralsky's servers. Although they were returned a few days later, Ralsky now tries to cover his tracks better, so opponents won't know what companies and servers he's using.

Linford said he heard of the raid. "It wasn't us that caused it," he said. "But there are a lot of anti-spam activists, and apparently some of them on their own started organizing a campaign to get the Chinese government to think that Ralsky was supporting" the Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual group the Chinese government considers subversive. "We didn't endorse that, but it shows you how deep the anti-Ralsky feelings are."

Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam.

It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.

"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.

"Isn't technology great?"

Contact MIKE WENDLAND at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@freepress.com.

Here is the full text of the second article (2 of 2) in case the link goes bad:

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20021206.htm

MIKE WENDLAND: Internet spammer can't take what he dishes out

December 6, 2002

BY MIKE WENDLAND
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

West Bloomfield bulk e-mailer Alan Ralsky, who just may be the world's biggest sender of Internet spam, is getting a taste of his own medicine.

Ever since I wrote a story on him a couple of weeks ago (www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122.htm), he says he's been inundated with ads, catalogs and brochures delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to his brand-new $740,000 home.

It's all the result of a well-organized campaign by the anti-spam community, and Ralsky doesn't find it funny.

"They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is," he told me. "These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me."

That they are. Gleefully. Almost 300 anti-Ralsky posts were made on the Slashdot.org Web site, where the plan was hatched after spam haters posted his address, even an aerial view of his neighborhood.

"Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me," wrote one of the anti-spammers.

Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers.

Contact MIKE WENDLAND at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@freepress.com.

It's A Nano-Crypto-Cryo Love Fest Baby

Hey man, we're all just doing the same thing: crunching numbers, creating submolecular-sized robots with organic cell-like properties, using those robots to re-animate the frozen remains of the deceased...

Mark Frauenfelder has written an article for Small Times about the Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle talks at Alcor's fifth annual Conference on Extreme Life Extension.

Cryonics Conference Brings Out Nanotech's Extreme Optimists

These nanorobots, Freitas and Merkle believe, could be designed to perform any number of remarkable medical functions. Some could work like superpowered white blood cells that seek out and destroy pathogens. Others could serve as artificial red blood cells, charged with enough oxygen to allow their hosts to hold their breath for up to an hour. Still other nanorobots would repair broken chromosomes, or do a kind of Roto-Rooter on clogged arteries...

The presentations were greeted with enthusiasm by conference attendees, many of whom are members of Alcor, an Arizona-based organization that freezes its recently deceased members in liquid nitrogen in the hopes that they’ll be brought back to life when medical technology becomes sufficiently advanced. Alcor has approximately 1,000 members signed up for “cryopreservation,” and offers either whole-body preservation for $120,000 or “neuro-preservation” (freezing a member’s amputated head) for $50,000...

Freitas is a former research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM), in Palo Alto, Calif., and the author of the book "Nanomedicine." Merkle is the co-inventor of public-key cryptography and a former research scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center...

There are two hurdles to overcome, he said. First, the technology to assemble components one atom or molecule at a time needs to be developed. Positionally assembled nanotechnology is much different than self-assembled, or “shake and bake” forms of nanotechnology that are currently in use. There have been a few examples of positionally assembled nanotechnology, but they are on the order of attaching a few molecules together at temperatures close to absolute zero, which is minus-459 degrees Fahrenheit. Atomic force microscopes could manipulate structures at the molecular level, but they have a long way to go before they can build something as complicated as a chromosome repair robot...

If and when the process of building tiny robots atom-by-atom is perfected, there’s another hurdle to jump over – replication. Because most nanorobots will be built out of billions or even trillions of atoms, it would be impractical to build them atom-by-atom. Scientists will have to develop methods by which the bots either self-replicate, or are built using massively parallel manufacturing processes. Freitas refers to this as “exponential assembly.”

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=5148

CRYONICS CONFERENCE BRINGS OUT NANOTECH'S EXTREME OPTIMISTS
By Mark Frauenfelder
Small Times Correspondent

An artificial white blood cell, or "microbivore," heads off a pathogen at the pass in this artist's conception of nanotech's future.



NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Dec. 6, 2002 – At Alcor's fifth annual Conference on Extreme Life Extension here recently, two well-known scientists presented their visions for the far-out future of nanotechnology.

Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas of Zyvex Corp., a nanotechnology and MEMS research and development company in Richardson, Texas, asked the 200 or so conference attendees to imagine a time in the coming decades when doctors will routinely inject billions of nanosized robots into patients’ bodies.

These nanorobots, Freitas and Merkle believe, could be designed to perform any number of remarkable medical functions. Some could work like superpowered white blood cells that seek out and destroy pathogens. Others could serve as artificial red blood cells, charged with enough oxygen to allow their hosts to hold their breath for up to an hour. Still other nanorobots would repair broken chromosomes, or do a kind of Roto-Rooter on clogged arteries.

The presentations were greeted with enthusiasm by conference attendees, many of whom are members of Alcor, an Arizona-based organization that freezes its recently deceased members in liquid nitrogen in the hopes that they’ll be brought back to life when medical technology becomes sufficiently advanced. Alcor has approximately 1,000 members signed up for “cryopreservation,” and offers either whole-body preservation for $120,000 or “neuro-preservation” (freezing a member’s amputated head) for $50,000.

Alcor froze the late ballplayer Ted Williams after he died of cardiac arrest in July. His corpse was flown from Florida to Alcor’s headquarters in Scottsdale, where it was immersed in a giant bottle of liquid nitrogen at minus-320 degrees Fahrenheit. Alcor members hope that nanomedicine can be employed toward extending their lifespans as well as repair cellular damage that occurs during the freezing process.

Freitas is a former research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM), in Palo Alto, Calif., and the author of the book "Nanomedicine." Merkle is the co-inventor of public-key cryptography and a former research scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.

Both showed the audience a series of artistic renderings depicting nanoscale machines navigating through human blood vessels. Freitas also ran an animated computer graphic of an artificial white blood cell, which looked like a metallic football with a tunnel running through its longitudinal axis. When the nanorobot came in contact with a germ, tiny grapplers rose from its surface, grabbing the germ and passing it hand over hand to the nanorobot’s “mouth.” As soon the robot ingested the pathogen, the mouth snapped shut. A few seconds later, the harmless remains of the devoured germ passed through the bot’s posterior opening.

Sound far-fetched? Maybe, but the only way to really find out whether nanomedicine is achievable is give it a try. In a phone interview following the conference, Freitas stressed that nanomedicine based on mechanically synthesized nanorobots is “at least 10 to 20 years away.”

There are two hurdles to overcome, he said. First, the technology to assemble components one atom or molecule at a time needs to be developed. Positionally assembled nanotechnology is much different than self-assembled, or “shake and bake” forms of nanotechnology that are currently in use. There have been a few examples of positionally assembled nanotechnology, but they are on the order of attaching a few molecules together at temperatures close to absolute zero, which is minus-459 degrees Fahrenheit. Atomic force microscopes could manipulate structures at the molecular level, but they have a long way to go before they can build something as complicated as a chromosome repair robot.

Zyvex is one of a very few number of companies conducting research into positionally assembled nanotechnology. Freitas estimates that Zyvex dedicates between 10 and 20 percent of its resources in this area, and spends the majority of its resources on MEMS-level assembly processes.

If and when the process of building tiny robots atom-by-atom is perfected, there’s another hurdle to jump over – replication. Because most nanorobots will be built out of billions or even trillions of atoms, it would be impractical to build them atom-by-atom. Scientists will have to develop methods by which the bots either self-replicate, or are built using massively parallel manufacturing processes. Freitas refers to this as “exponential assembly.”

With these two big barriers blocking the road to medical nanorobots, few investors are willing to gamble on such an idea. Freitas admits that investors willing to look this far ahead are “rare,” and that it’s not likely for there to be a lot of “bubbling enthusiasm” in investor and research communities until someone can offer solid experimental demonstrations of positional assembly.

Naturally, Freitas would be delighted if Zyvex ends up being the company that cracks the weighty problems of sophisticated nanomedicine. It’s not going to be easy, he said, “but the result is very much worth it. It’s a very powerful technology once you have the ability to do it.”

New Post-Singularity Fiction From Sci-Fi's Dynamic Duo

Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow have written a short story (being published on four parts) that's already considered a classic in my mind.

I've already read the whole thing, and I can't imagine reading this story in pieces -- so I'll re-blog accordingly after all four pieces are up.

I don't want to make any more comments about the subject matter so as not to risk giving any of the story away, but let's just say that since reading this story, I think about meatspace a lot differently now.

I whole heartedly recommend taking ten minutes to treat yourself to a little glimpse of one possible future.

In many ways, we're already there...Jury Service

Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.

Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. Except for the solitary lighthouse beam that perpetually tracks the Earth in its orbit, the system from outside resembles a spherical fogbank radiating in the infrared spectrum; a matrioshka brain, nested Dyson orbitals built from the dismantled bones of moons and planets.

The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander nostalgiawise. When that happens, it casually spams Earth's RF spectrum with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems.

A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden Cox Pippin. There's always someone whom evolution has failed to breed the let's-lick-the-frozen-fencepost instinct out of. There's always a fucking geek who'll do it because it's a historical goddamned technical fucking imperative.

Whether the enlightened, occulting smartcloud sends out its missives as pranks, poison or care-packages is up for debate. Asking it to explain its motives is roughly as pointful as negotiating with an ant colony to get it to abandon your kitchen. Whatever the motive, humanity would be much better off if the Cloud would evolve into something so smart as to be uninterested in communicating with meatpeople.

But until that happy day, there's the tech jury service: defending the earth from the scum of the post-singularity patent office.

Video Footage of Nancy Pelosi's Celebration Party

I finally finished transcribing the speeches and organizing my video footage from Nancy Pelosi's Celebration Party on November 23, 2002 in San Francisco, California.

I say to people "you can take any issue or you can take any day of the week, and there is a case to be made against the Republicans." But let's just take yesterday.

Yesterday, Congress adjourned without passing unemployment benefits for Americas workers -- who worked hard, played by the rules, lost their jobs through no fault of their own but because of the downturn in the economy.

On December 28, 800,000 hard working Americans will no longer have their benefits because the Republicans refused to pass that. There was even a compromise from the Senate, which we still controlled up until yesterday, that said: 'Let's extend the benefits until February at least to give people a chance past the holidays and the rest.' They absolutely refused.

The Democrats said 'We're going to hold up the adjournment of Congress so that we cannot leave until you pass these benefits.' They said 'you can bring the Congress back here every single day from now on. We're never going to pass those benefits.' That's who the Republicans in Congress are...insensitive to the concerns of working families in America."

For The Most Part, Colleges Remember That Education Comes First

How nice to see during this current frenzy of copyright vigilantism.
Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files
By Amy Harmon for the NY Times.

Nor does Cornell consider the trading of copyrighted music files to be among the more serious infractions. Students are typically required to perform a few hours of community service.

"It's theft and you're not supposed to steal, but this is different from someone engaging in credit card scams or breaking into a building to steal a computer," Ms. Grant said. "We're not in the business of trying to punish a student; we want them to learn from their mistake."

Indeed, the push from copyright holders for universities to police their networks has raised questions in the academic world about how to instill students with a sense of morality — and a knowledge of the law — about copyrights without intruding on their privacy and free speech rights.

"The biggest problem that universities are having is they have not openly decided whether their primary responsibility in this regard is law enforcement or education," said Virginia Rezmierski, who teaches in the University of Michigan's School of Information and recently surveyed universities on their monitoring practices. "Right now they're doing more monitoring than education."

Here is the text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/technology/27SWAP.html

The New York Times The New York Times Technology November 27, 2002

Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files
By AMY HARMON

As colleges across the country seek to stem the torrent of unauthorized digital media files flowing across their campus computer networks, students are devising increasingly sophisticated countermeasures to protect their free supply of copyrighted entertainment.

Most colleges have no plans to emulate the Naval Academy, which last week confiscated computers from about 100 students who are suspected of having downloaded unauthorized copies of music and movie files. But many are imposing a combination of new technologies and new policies in an effort to rein in the rampant copying.

"For our institutions this is a teachable moment," said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education. "This is the time for them to step forward and demonstrate the value of intellectual property."

Some students may well emerge from educational sessions on copyright laws and electronic etiquette with a higher regard for intellectual property rights. But many of them are honing other skills as well, like how to burrow through network firewalls and spread their downloading activities across multiple computers to avoid detection.

"If you don't know how to do it, other people will just tell you," said Lelahni Potgieter, 23, who learned her file-trading techniques from an art student at her community college in Des Moines. "There's not much they can do to stop you."

Nevertheless, university administrators are trying, spurred on in part by a barrage of letters from entertainment companies notifying them of student abuses. Many entertainment concerns have hired companies to search popular file-trading networks for unauthorized files and track them to their source.

More pragmatic motivations, like the expense of large amounts of university's network bandwidth being absorbed by students' proclivity for online entertainment, are also driving the renewed university efforts.

Schools have closed off the portals used by file-trading services, installed software to limit how much bandwidth each student can use, and disciplined students who share media files. But nothing, so far, has proved entirely effective.

"It's an ongoing battle," said Ron Robinson, a network architect at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. "It's an administrative nightmare trying to keep up."

In a typical game of digital cat-and-mouse, Mr. Robinson said one of his first moves was to block the points of entry, or ports, into the network used by popular file-trading software like KaZaA.

But the newest version of the KaZaA software automatically searches for open ports and even insinuates itself through the port most commonly used for normal Web traffic, which must be kept open to allow some e-mail reading and other widely used applications to take place uninterrupted.

Even without KaZaA's help, students say they can easily use so-called port-hopping software to find a way past the university's blockades. So Mr. Robinson has rationed the amount of bandwidth that each student can use for file-trading activities.

Software with names like PacketHound, from Palisade Systems, or Packet Shaper, from Packeteer, enable network administrators to distinguish data that comes from the file-trading services and sequester it from the rest of the Internet traffic.

But there are ways around that, too.

To limit the amount of data each student can download, administrators typically link a student ID to the computer in a dormitory room. To exceed those limits, some students find computers registered to others and use them to conduct their activities.

That practice has surfaced recently at Cornell University, where the number of complaints from copyright holders about unauthorized downloading in recent months has stayed at the same level as last year, but the number of students who were found to have been unwittingly downloading for others has risen, according to university officials.

About 50 students at Cornell were disciplined last year for unauthorized downloading, said Mary Beth Grant, the university's judicial administrator. All of those cases resulted from letters from copyright holders, because the university does not monitor what students do with their Internet access.

Nor does Cornell consider the trading of copyrighted music files to be among the more serious infractions. Students are typically required to perform a few hours of community service.

"It's theft and you're not supposed to steal, but this is different from someone engaging in credit card scams or breaking into a building to steal a computer," Ms. Grant said. "We're not in the business of trying to punish a student; we want them to learn from their mistake."

Indeed, the push from copyright holders for universities to police their networks has raised questions in the academic world about how to instill students with a sense of morality — and a knowledge of the law — about copyrights without intruding on their privacy and free speech rights.

"The biggest problem that universities are having is they have not openly decided whether their primary responsibility in this regard is law enforcement or education," said Virginia Rezmierski, who teaches in the University of Michigan's School of Information and recently surveyed universities on their monitoring practices. "Right now they're doing more monitoring than education."

More On The Homeland Security Act

Taking Liberties With Our Freedom
By Lauren Weinstein for Wired News.

Law enforcement interests pushed through a variety of surveillance measures, including some unrelated to terrorism, that had long been rejected as inappropriate in a free society.

Important protections related to monitoring and intelligence gathering, established after serious past abuses, were swept away with the assurance that this time the government won't abuse its powers.

Among various alarming provisions, the law opens up enormous avenues for monitoring Internet communications, without even after-the-fact notifications. Virtually any government agency at any level can initiate surveillance on flimsy grounds. No subpoenas or court oversight are required.

Not to be left off the gravy train, big business also pushed through its own grab bag of perks in the new legislation.

One of the most egregious and potentially dangerous of these travesties is the Homeland Security Act's creation of new and very broad exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.

Businesses now have a new way to evade liability for safety violations, hazards to consumers and other abuses. They need merely report the information about their behavior -- even totally unclassified activities -- to the federal government, and claim it's related to homeland security. In the parlance of the Homeland Security Act, they declare the data to be "CII," or Critical Infrastructure Information.

Instantly, the company filing drops that information into a black hole of secrecy, hidden from public view. If a government employee releases any such data without the permission of the company that submitted it, regardless of its importance to the public, they could be subject to jail time.

That's potentially a major blow to the government's regulation of corporate misdeeds, since it's often not until such abuses become publicly known that officials take steps to deal with them properly. As long as there's cover, the urge to let sleeping dogs lie is strong indeed.

Ironically, the existing statute, the Freedom of Information Act, already had exceptions for information that truly needed to be kept private. The new homeland security law goes much farther, creating a magic rubber stamp that can make a host of problems disappear from the public radar.

The dangers of the new restrictions extend beyond obvious infrastructure risks related to power, water, manufacturing, pollution and the like. They could also strike to the heart of the computer industry and Internet as well.

By invoking the exemptions of the Homeland Security Act, software and computer hardware companies could hide the existence of critical security flaws or other bugs, claiming (with a familiar refrain) that letting anyone know about them was just too big a risk.

Here is the full text of othe article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56600,00.html

Taking Liberties With Our Freedom

By Lauren Weinstein | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1

02:00 AM Dec. 02, 2002 PT

"The fix is in." So said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) of the mammoth new Homeland Security Act, which was signed into law last week.

McCain was upset about an array of goodies that were tacked onto the bill at the last minute by the House of Representatives. These included broad liability protections for makers of vaccines, and an array of other extremely valuable giveaways.

In the end, the overwhelming majority of the Senate, including most Democrats, chose the politically expedient course of supporting the vast legislation.

That said, McCain and other critics were right to be concerned. While it has some positive aspects, the Homeland Security Act is also full of worrisome surprises for U.S. citizens concerned about their freedoms, particularly when combined with last year's USA PATRIOT Act.

Since the events of 9/11, a range of legislation detrimental to fundamental freedoms and privacy rights has been rammed into law, without any assurance that our safety will improve as a result.

Law enforcement interests pushed through a variety of surveillance measures, including some unrelated to terrorism, that had long been rejected as inappropriate in a free society.

Important protections related to monitoring and intelligence gathering, established after serious past abuses, were swept away with the assurance that this time the government won't abuse its powers.

Among various alarming provisions, the law opens up enormous avenues for monitoring Internet communications, without even after-the-fact notifications. Virtually any government agency at any level can initiate surveillance on flimsy grounds. No subpoenas or court oversight are required.

Not to be left off the gravy train, big business also pushed through its own grab bag of perks in the new legislation.

One of the most egregious and potentially dangerous of these travesties is the Homeland Security Act's creation of new and very broad exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.

Businesses now have a new way to evade liability for safety violations, hazards to consumers and other abuses. They need merely report the information about their behavior -- even totally unclassified activities -- to the federal government, and claim it's related to homeland security. In the parlance of the Homeland Security Act, they declare the data to be "CII," or Critical Infrastructure Information.

Instantly, the company filing drops that information into a black hole of secrecy, hidden from public view. If a government employee releases any such data without the permission of the company that submitted it, regardless of its importance to the public, they could be subject to jail time.

That's potentially a major blow to the government's regulation of corporate misdeeds, since it's often not until such abuses become publicly known that officials take steps to deal with them properly. As long as there's cover, the urge to let sleeping dogs lie is strong indeed.

Ironically, the existing statute, the Freedom of Information Act, already had exceptions for information that truly needed to be kept private. The new homeland security law goes much farther, creating a magic rubber stamp that can make a host of problems disappear from the public radar.

The dangers of the new restrictions extend beyond obvious infrastructure risks related to power, water, manufacturing, pollution and the like. They could also strike to the heart of the computer industry and Internet as well.

By invoking the exemptions of the Homeland Security Act, software and computer hardware companies could hide the existence of critical security flaws or other bugs, claiming (with a familiar refrain) that letting anyone know about them was just too big a risk.

These kinds of cover-ups rarely succeed in the long run. When the bad guys ultimately find ways to exploit the flaws, the ordinary folks who are at risk will be the last to know what's going on.

In a similar vein, ISPs and telecommunications firms may now avoid taking responsibility for security flaws in their systems. Just sweep the problems under the homeland security rug and, with luck, nobody on the outside will be the wiser.

It's been hard enough in the best of times to get companies and government agencies to admit their mistakes and abuses. Now, thanks to the Homeland Security Act, we may have more of a reason to fear those very actions than we do the terrorist threats that the new law is supposed to address.

Lauren Weinstein has been involved with the Internet for decades, beginning with ARPANET. He is the co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, the creator and moderator of the Privacy Forum and an outspoken commentator on technology and society.

Ms. Magazine Blogs The Radar

Yes I am getting a kick out of this. Thanks for asking:
Ms. Musings

She is wary of generalizations, however, admitting that many women, such as Leslie Veen, Lisa Rein, and Lynne Kiesling, are writing about current political, legal and economic issues. Guernsey, in fact, sees her own blogging about technology as “a chance to bend sexual stereotypes.”

Some Constructive Suggestions Towards Stopping Identity Theft

Here's a nice article about the subject that isn't just trying to scare you, and actually tries to answer the question "What can really be done about it?":
Some Simple Solutions to Identity Theft
Credit agencies must be more vigilant. A first step: quickly and routinely alerting consumers that their credit histories have changed
By Alex Salkever for BusinessWeek.

Most of the damage could easily have been prevented if the credit agencies adopted the common-sense practice of directly notifying individuals whenever a change on his or her report occurs, and whenever a third party accesses their credit report. Yes, it might cost the credit agencies more in overhead. But credit agencies spread such costs around to customers, banks, car dealerships, and others that pay to access consumer credit ratings. How hard is that?

This criminal case has many security experts worried because it points up some glaring weaknesses in credit reporting. Your credit information -- in effect, your financial identity -- can easily be stolen by alert thieves with access to sensitive information. Yet, credit agencies don't share with individuals what's going on with their credit reports -- unless consumers ask. This anomaly will become a national economic issue as identity theft grows.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2002/tc20021127_4748.htm

NOVEMBER 27, 2002

COMMENTARY
By Alex Salkever

Some Simple Solutions to Identity Theft
Credit agencies must be more vigilant. A first step: quickly and routinely alerting consumers that their credit histories have changed

So it has come to this. On Nov. 25, federal prosecutors charged three men with operating an identity-theft ring that had stolen credit reports of more than 30,000 people -- the largest case in history. The defendants include a computer help-desk employee at a Long Island software outfit who had access to sensitive passwords for banks and credit companies. The ring allegedly emptied bank accounts, took out loans with stolen identities, and ran up fraudulent charges on credit cards.

The most appalling part of the whole mess? Most of the damage could easily have been prevented if the credit agencies adopted the common-sense practice of directly notifying individuals whenever a change on his or her report occurs, and whenever a third party accesses their credit report. Yes, it might cost the credit agencies more in overhead. But credit agencies spread such costs around to customers, banks, car dealerships, and others that pay to access consumer credit ratings. How hard is that?

GLARING HOLES. This criminal case has many security experts worried because it points up some glaring weaknesses in credit reporting. Your credit information -- in effect, your financial identity -- can easily be stolen by alert thieves with access to sensitive information. Yet, credit agencies don't share with individuals what's going on with their credit reports -- unless consumers ask. This anomaly will become a national economic issue as identity theft grows.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the solution is pretty simple. Tighten up internal handling of credit information, while making individual reports even more transparent to consumers -- in real time if possible, with password-protected access, just like banks and other financial institutions.

Truth is, identity theft remains more an offline problem. Someone steals your mail. A restaurant worker double-swipes your credit card. That's theft, pure and simple, and not the stuff of a national crisis. But when identity thieves get sophisticated and use the power of the digital revolution to leverage their operations, such fraud could become massive. Many financial institutions pull thousands of credit reports each day. And most of them have Web access to credit reports. So if a thief were able to score a password from a big bank, it would be fairly simple to write a computer program allowing someone to log in with the bank's ID and download thousands of these reports in a heartbeat.

INEXCUSABLE RESISTANCE. Identity theft's direct cost is already considerable -- police estimated that the latest ring defrauded victims of at least $2.7 million, and investigators aren't done counting. Indirect costs could be even higher in lost productivity. If the problem isn't checked, many thousands of victims over the next decade will have to take on the equivalent of a second full-time job cleaning up their credit histories. This latest case had 30,000 victims -- that's the size of Cisco Systems' workforce.

Consumers can now pay between $70 and $80 a year to receive timely e-mail updates of any activity on their credit report. An important step toward fuller disclosure, yes, but more should be done. There are three main credit agencies today -- TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. As anyone trying to get a credit card these days can attest, credit approvals and denials are coming faster and faster thanks to high-speed data links.

A savvy thief could do a lot of damage by applying for a credit card or loan and using a report through, say, TransUnion, but not Equifax or Experian. Even if you're paying Equifax for the updates, you might not find out until it's too late. Yet, the three credit agencies have resisted creating a unified format to allow consumers to easily observe changes in any of the three profiles. If credit agencies won't act, then the federal government should step in and mandate changes.

Then, there's the issue of snail mail vs. e-mail for notifying consumers of suspicious activity involving their credit history. More than half the U.S. population now has an e-mail address, and such correspondence is free. The rest of the country could be contacted via regular mail -- an expensive process, but one that should be considered a cost of doing business.

On their Web sites, each of the three credit-reporting agencies should offer to send consumers an e-mail notification whenever their credit reports change. They could even charge a nominal fee for the service. The fees that Equifax and Experian now charge for timely updates are way too high. This shouldn't be a profit center. In the Digital Age, this should be a universally available service, just like a dial tone.

SECURING ACCESS. As I have pointed out in past columns, American Express provides an ideal model. Whenever someone makes an account change, Amex sends a letter informing its customer of it. If the customer changes address, Amex sends a letter to both the old and the new addresses. That would tip off a customer to any untoward changes. Applied to e-mail, the same principle works beautifully. Yet credit agencies don't collect e-mail addresses. That, too, should change. All credit agencies would have to do is send out letters to consumers requesting their e-mail address. A consumer response would be voluntary.

None of this is to say the credit-reporting outfits aren't concerned. Equifax played a major role in helping to break up the Long Island identity-theft ring. After years of consumer complaints and government prodding, they're allowing individuals easier access to their credit histories than ever before. But the age of ubiquitous connectivity and high-speed information movement means high-speed identity crime will likely become more damaging. The best way to combat this scourge is by making access to credit histories tougher for thieves -- and easier for individuals.

Salkever is Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online and covers computer security issues weekly in his Security Net column
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht

Great TIA Links (From The Same Great CSM Article)

article cited previously

Information Awareness Office - Scientia Est Potentia ("Knowledge is Power")

Total Information Awareness System Description Document (PDF file - 150 pages - first draft, May 1, 2001)

Keep Big Brother's Hands Off the Internet Senator John Ashcroft, 1997

Meet Big Brother - John Poindexter and the Iran Contra Reunion Tour HereInReality.com

Refuting 'Big Brother' Charge Newsday

Sacrificed for Security Mother Jones

Total Information Awareness Electronic Privacy Information Center

Total Information Awareness Resource Center

1984 e-text

More On Total Information Awareness

Why the Pentagon will watch where you shop
New Total Information Awareness project will sniff company databases for terrorists.
by Faye Bowers and Peter Grier for the Christian Science Monitor.

See the ton of good links at the bottom too!

Credit-card companies already carry out such paper profiling as an antifraud device, say proponents of the new effort. That's why you get a call when you suddenly start spending lots of money far from home, or exceed your daily allotment of transactions. Using such techniques to prevent another Sept. 11 may thus be simply a natural progression in technology.

But the recent theft of thousands of identities from commercial databases points out what can happen when such data falls into the wrong hands, say critics. And the federal government is not American Express. It has far greater power, and citizens thus need to assiduously protect their privacy from its snooping.

"Data files that become available [to the government] are likely to be used beyond their initial purpose, and we need to guard against that somehow," says Robert Pfaltzgraff, professor of international security at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1203/p01s01-usgn.html

Why the Pentagon will watch where you shop
Yes, quarterbacks can run. But this one's a revolution.
Testing limits of police tactics in interrogations
How far Bush will go on conservative agenda

USA
from the December 03, 2002 edition

Why the Pentagon will watch where you shop
New Total Information Awareness project will sniff company databases for terrorists.
By Faye Bowers and Peter Grier | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – Should Uncle Sam know as much about you as MasterCard does?

In essence, that may be the key question posed by the Pentagon's new Total Information Awareness (TIA) project.

This effort - whose Latin motto translates as "knowledge is power" - aims to create huge databases that sift through the purchases, travel, immigration status, income, and other data of hundreds of millions of Americans. Its purpose: to sniff out the terrorists among us.

Credit-card companies already carry out such paper profiling as an antifraud device, say proponents of the new effort. That's why you get a call when you suddenly start spending lots of money far from home, or exceed your daily allotment of transactions. Using such techniques to prevent another Sept. 11 may thus be simply a natural progression in technology.

But the recent theft of thousands of identities from commercial databases points out what can happen when such data falls into the wrong hands, say critics. And the federal government is not American Express. It has far greater power, and citizens thus need to assiduously protect their privacy from its snooping.

"Data files that become available [to the government] are likely to be used beyond their initial purpose, and we need to guard against that somehow," says Robert Pfaltzgraff, professor of international security at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.

A prototype of TIA - funded at $10 million this fiscal year and expected to grow in the next few years - is now being set up, using mostly fabricated information, although some "real" data will be used from public records.

"There are three parts to the TIA project," says Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics.

The first part of the technology is voice recognition, which would include sifting through electronically recorded transmissions and provide rapid translations of foreign languages.

The second part is to develop a tool that would discover connections between transactions, such as passports, airline tickets, rental cars, gun or chemical purchases, as well as arrests and other suspicious activities.

And the third part is collaborative - a mechanism to allow information- and analysis-sharing among agencies.

"If [the testing] proves useful," Mr. Aldridge says, "TIA will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence, and law enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism."

To some, this concept is a no-brainer in light of the 9/11 attacks and subsequent terror activity. "We're talking about data-mining systems that credit-card companies in particular use," says Lee McKnight, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University in New York. "Lots of this they can buy off the shelf."

He cites an example of how the government could have utilized technology used by credit-card companies to alert airport personnel to some of the hijackers boarding planes on Sept. 11.

Dr. McKnight recently tried to purchase a washing machine in upstate New York after moving to the state, and ended up getting a call from his credit card company on the store's phone after it detected that he - a Massachusetts resident - was accruing big charges in upstate New York.

Similarly, shouldn't an alarm bell go off if three known terrorists board planes within minutes of each other, he asks.

The government should be able to have this technology up and running within a year, McKnight says. Some of the more advanced - like voice recognition and face recognition - may take longer.

The key seems to be in information sharing among departments. The CIA, for example, had information linking at least two hijackers to Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and knew they were in the US. But CIA employees did not get the names into FBI or State Department computer systems. If it had, at least those two may have been prohibited from boarding planes.

Getting government agencies, who have guarded information for their own reasons for decades, to cooperate is one thing. Motivating credit card, telephone, and other private companies to share valuable marketing information, like a customer's personal shopping practices, is another.

"A credit-card company that knows your purchasing patterns can market to you in a way that makes you happier, and makes you a better customer," says Jean Camp, an expert on the interaction of technical design and social systems at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It's good for them not to share that information."

(Attention shoppers: think those strategically timed $25-rebates from your favorite clothier.)

Moreover, the technology to mine these data sources is there, but developing systems to "talk" to other systems is much more challenging. Professor Camp says it was pretty easy to develop an online checking account system. But it has been much more difficult to get those programs to talk to banks, all of which have their own coded systems. She says it's the same with most industries - getting those systems to talk are multiyear projects.

Germany is one country that has long experience with this. In the 1970s, its federal police pulled together databases from private and public records. From crosschecking data, they were able to determine where terrorists belonging to the Red Brigades Faction lived, and even the places they frequently visited.

After the group was crushed, Germany's privacy protections were enhanced. But this past fall, Germany attempted to launch the world's largest computer dragnet after it was discovered that the principal 9/11 hijackers had lived in Germany while plotting their attacks.

Some 4,000 German companies were asked by the police to dump their electronic files into the government's database. The plan was to run all these transactions through a computer against a basic profile of hijackers - men 18 to 40 years old from Arab or Muslim countries with technical expertise or training.

Only 212 of the 4,000 companies reportedly complied with the request to give up their records, due to privacy concerns.

It also became evident that German states each had their own systems of coding, as did private companies.

"They haven't got far due to the incompatibility of computers between states and the federal government," a German official says.

The program has now stopped and has been outsourced to a private company to determine how to develop a new computer system, like the one the Pentagon is trying to design.

E-mail this story Write a letter to the Editor Printer-friendly
version Permission to reprint/republish

For further information:
• Information Awareness Office - Scientia Est Potentia ("Knowledge is Power")
• Total Information Awareness System Description Document (PDF file - 150 pages - first draft, May 1, 2001)
• Keep Big Brother's Hands Off the Internet Senator John Ashcroft, 1997
• Meet Big Brother - John Poindexter and the Iran Contra Reunion Tour HereInReality.com
• Refuting 'Big Brother' Charge Newsday
• Sacrificed for Security Mother Jones
• Total Information Awareness Electronic Privacy Information Center
• Total Information Awareness Resource Center
• 1984 e-text
Please Note: The Monitor does not endorse the sites behind these links. We offer them for your additional research. Following these links will open a new browser window.

"Trials of Henry Kissinger" Author Explains The Facts

The Latest Kissinger Outrage -- Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?

By Christopher Hitchens for MSN Slate.

On Memorial Day 2001, Kissinger was visited by the police in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and handed a warrant, issued by Judge Roger LeLoire, requesting his testimony in the matter of disappeared French citizens in Pinochet's Chile. Kissinger chose to leave town rather than appear at the Palais de Justice as requested. He has since been summoned as a witness by senior magistrates in Chile and Argentina who are investigating the international terrorist network that went under the name "Operation Condor" and that conducted assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings in several countries. The most spectacular such incident occurred in rush-hour traffic in downtown Washington, D.C., in September 1976, killing a senior Chilean dissident and his American companion. Until recently, this was the worst incident of externally sponsored criminal violence conducted on American soil. The order for the attack was given by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who has been vigorously defended from prosecution by Henry Kissinger.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074678

The Latest Kissinger Outrage
Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 3:36 PM PT

The Bush administration has been saying in public for several months that it does not desire an independent inquiry into the gross "failures of intelligence" that left U.S. society defenseless 14 months ago. By announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing the inquiry that it did not want, the president has now made the same point in a different way. But the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it represents has to be analyzed to be believed.

1) We already know quite a lot, thanks all the same, about who was behind the attacks. Most notable in incubating al-Qaida were the rotten client-state regimes of the Saudi Arabian oligarchy and the Pakistani military and police elite. Henry Kissinger is now, and always has been, an errand boy and apologist for such regimes.

2) When in office, Henry Kissinger organized massive deceptions of Congress and public opinion. The most notorious case concerned the "secret bombing" of Cambodia and Laos and the unleashing of unconstitutional methods by Nixon and Kissinger to repress dissent from this illegal and atrocious policy. But Sen. Frank Church's commission of inquiry into the abuses of U.S. intelligence, which focused on illegal assassinations and the subversion of democratic governments overseas, was given incomplete and misleading information by Kissinger, especially on the matter of Chile. Rep. Otis Pike's parallel inquiry in the House (which brought to light Kissinger's personal role in the not-insignificant matter of the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds, among other offenses) was thwarted by Kissinger at every turn, and its eventual findings were classified. In other words, the new "commission" will be chaired by a man with a long, proven record of concealing evidence and of lying to Congress, the press, and the public.

3) In his second career as an obfuscator and a falsifier, Kissinger appropriated the records of his time at the State Department and took them on a truck to the Rockefeller family estate in New York. He has since been successfully sued for the return of much of this public property, but meanwhile he produced, for profit, three volumes of memoirs that purported to give a full account of his tenure. In several crucial instances, such as his rendering of U.S. diplomacy with China over Vietnam, with apartheid South Africa over Angola, and with Indonesia over the invasion of East Timor (to cite only some of the most conspicuous), declassified documents have since shown him to be a bald-faced liar. Does he deserve a third try at presenting a truthful record after being caught twice as a fabricator? And on such a grave matter as this?

4) Kissinger's "consulting" firm, Kissinger Associates, is a privately held concern that does not publish a client list and that compels its clients to sign confidentiality agreements. Nonetheless, it has been established that Kissinger's business dealings with, say, the Chinese Communist leadership have closely matched his public pronouncements on such things as the massacre of Chinese students. Given the strong ties between himself, his partners Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the oil oligarchies of the Gulf, it must be time for at least a full disclosure of his interests in the region. This thought does not seem to have occurred to the president or to the other friends of Prince Bandar and Prince Bandar's wife, who helped in the evacuation of the Bin Laden family from American soil, without an interrogation, in the week after Sept. 11.

5) On Memorial Day 2001, Kissinger was visited by the police in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and handed a warrant, issued by Judge Roger LeLoire, requesting his testimony in the matter of disappeared French citizens in Pinochet's Chile. Kissinger chose to leave town rather than appear at the Palais de Justice as requested. He has since been summoned as a witness by senior magistrates in Chile and Argentina who are investigating the international terrorist network that went under the name "Operation Condor" and that conducted assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings in several countries. The most spectacular such incident occurred in rush-hour traffic in downtown Washington, D.C., in September 1976, killing a senior Chilean dissident and his American companion. Until recently, this was the worst incident of externally sponsored criminal violence conducted on American soil. The order for the attack was given by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who has been vigorously defended from prosecution by Henry Kissinger.

Moreover, on Sept. 10, 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court, charging Kissinger with murder. The suit, brought by the survivors of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile, asserts that Kissinger gave the order for the elimination of this constitutional officer of a democratic country because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Every single document in the prosecution case is a U.S.-government declassified paper. And the target of this devastating lawsuit is being invited to review the shortcomings of the "intelligence community"?

In late 2001, the Brazilian government canceled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in Sao Paulo because it could no longer guarantee his immunity. Earlier this year, a London court agreed to hear an application for Kissinger's imprisonment on war crimes charges while he was briefly in the United Kingdom. It is known that there are many countries to which he cannot travel at all, and it is also known that he takes legal advice before traveling anywhere. Does the Bush administration feel proud of appointing a man who is wanted in so many places, and wanted furthermore for his association with terrorism and crimes against humanity? Or does it hope to limit the scope of the inquiry to those areas where Kissinger has clients?

There is a tendency, some of it paranoid and disreputable, for the citizens of other countries and cultures to regard President Bush's "war on terror" as opportunist and even as contrived. I myself don't take any stock in such propaganda. But can Congress and the media be expected to swallow the appointment of a proven coverup artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offenses? The shame of this, and the open contempt for the families of our victims, ought to be the cause of a storm of protest.

Is This Some Kind Of Joke?

Surely there is a better candidate for heading up the 911 investigation than a highly controversial alleged
war criminal who was quoted as saying this in 1992:
(from Quotes by Henry Kissinger)

"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops
entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow
they will be grateful. This is especially true if they
were told there was an outside threat from beyond,
whether real or promulgated, that threatened our
very existence. It is then that all peoples of the
world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from
this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown.

When presented with this scenario, individual rights
will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their
well being granted to them by their world
government."

-- Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21,
1992 Bilderburg meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger,
his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.

More allegations     More allegations    More allegations    More allegations    More allegations     More allegations...

Shrub Threatens To Eliminate Due Process For Select Individuals

This kind of policy scares the hell out of me. In a nutshell, what it means is that if you were mistakenly thought to be a terrorist for some bizarre reason, you could basically disappear off the face of the earth and be denied the right to contact a lawyer, your family, or anyone else. (Yes -- even if you are a U.S. citizen!)

Of course, this can't be legal. But how can it ever be challenged if the prospective challengers aren't allowed to exercise any of their rights?

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects -- Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections
By Charles Lane for the Washington Post.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

Administration officials, noting that they have chosen to prosecute suspected Taliban member John Walker Lindh, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in ordinary federal courts, say the parallel system is meant to be used selectively, as a complement to conventional processes, not as a substitute. But, they say, the parallel system is necessary because terrorism is a form of war as well as a form of crime, and it must not only be punished after incidents occur, but also prevented and disrupted through the gathering of timely intelligence.

"I wouldn't call it an alternative system," said an administration official who has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all know and love. It's a separate track for people we catch in the war."

At least one American has been shifted from the ordinary legal system into the parallel one: alleged al Qaeda "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, who is being held at a Navy brig, without the right to communicate with a lawyer or anyone else. U.S. officials have told the courts that they can detain and interrogate him until the executive branch declares an end to the war against terrorism.

The final outlines of this parallel system will be known only after the courts, including probably the Supreme Court, have settled a variety of issues being litigated. But the prospect of such a system has triggered a fierce debate.

Civil libertarians accuse the Bush administration of an executive-branch power grab that will erode the rights and freedoms that terrorists are trying to destroy -- and that were enhanced only recently in response to abuses during the civil rights era, Vietnam and Watergate.

"They are trying to embed in law a vast expansion of executive authority with no judicial oversight in the name of national security," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit group that has challenged the administration approach in court. "This is more tied to statutory legal authority than J. Edgar Hoover's political spying, but that may make it more dangerous. You could have the law serving as a vehicle for all kinds of abuses."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58308-2002Nov30.html

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

Administration officials, noting that they have chosen to prosecute suspected Taliban member John Walker Lindh, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in ordinary federal courts, say the parallel system is meant to be used selectively, as a complement to conventional processes, not as a substitute. But, they say, the parallel system is necessary because terrorism is a form of war as well as a form of crime, and it must not only be punished after incidents occur, but also prevented and disrupted through the gathering of timely intelligence.

"I wouldn't call it an alternative system," said an administration official who has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all know and love. It's a separate track for people we catch in the war."

At least one American has been shifted from the ordinary legal system into the parallel one: alleged al Qaeda "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, who is being held at a Navy brig, without the right to communicate with a lawyer or anyone else. U.S. officials have told the courts that they can detain and interrogate him until the executive branch declares an end to the war against terrorism.

The final outlines of this parallel system will be known only after the courts, including probably the Supreme Court, have settled a variety of issues being litigated. But the prospect of such a system has triggered a fierce debate.

Civil libertarians accuse the Bush administration of an executive-branch power grab that will erode the rights and freedoms that terrorists are trying to destroy -- and that were enhanced only recently in response to abuses during the civil rights era, Vietnam and Watergate.

"They are trying to embed in law a vast expansion of executive authority with no judicial oversight in the name of national security," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit group that has challenged the administration approach in court. "This is more tied to statutory legal authority than J. Edgar Hoover's political spying, but that may make it more dangerous. You could have the law serving as a vehicle for all kinds of abuses."

Administration officials say that they are acting under ample legal authority derived from statutes, court decisions and wartime powers that the president possesses as commander in chief under the Constitution.

"When you have a long period of time when you're not engaged in a war, people tend to forget, or put in backs of their minds, the necessity for certain types of government action used when we are in danger, when we are facing eyeball to eyeball a serious threat," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who leads the administration's anti-terrorism legal team in the federal courts, said in an interview.

Broadly speaking, the debate between the administration and its critics is not so much about the methods the government seeks to employ as it is about who should act as a check against potential abuses.
Executive Decisions

Civil libertarians insist that the courts should searchingly review Bush's actions, so that he is always held accountable to an independent branch of government. Administration officials, however, imply that the main check on the president's performance in wartime is political -- that if the public perceives his approach to terrorism is excessive or ineffective, it will vote him out of office.

"At the end of the day in our constitutional system, someone will have to decide whether that [decision to designate someone an enemy combatant] is a right or just decision," Olson said. "Who will finally decide that? Will it be a judge, or will it be the president of the United States, elected by the people, specifically to perform that function, with the capacity to have the information at his disposal with the assistance of those who work for him?"

Probably the most hotly disputed element of the administration's approach is its contention that the president alone can designate individuals, including U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants, who can be detained with no access to lawyers or family members unless and until the president determines, in effect, that hostilities between the United States and that individual have ended.

Padilla was held as a material witness for a month after his May 8 arrest in Chicago before he was designated an enemy combatant. He is one of two U.S. citizens being held as enemy combatants at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The other is Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi Taliban fighter who was captured by American troops in Afghanistan and sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana.

Attorneys are challenging their detentions in federal court. While civil libertarians concede that the executive branch has well-established authority to name and confine members of enemy forces during wartime, they maintain that it is unconstitutional to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite confinement on little more than the president's declaration, especially given the inherently open-ended nature of an unconventional war against terrorism.

"The notion that the executive branch can decide by itself that an American citizen can be put in a military camp, incommunicado, is frightening," said Morton H. Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Open Society Institute. "They're entitled to hold him on the grounds that he is in fact at war with the U.S., but there has to be an opportunity for him to contest those facts."

However, the Bush administration, citing two World War II-era cases -- the Supreme Court's ruling upholding a military commission trial for a captured American-citizen Nazi saboteur, and a later federal appeals court decision upholding the imprisonment of an Italian American caught as a member of Italian forces in Europe -- says there is ample precedent for what it is doing.

Courts traditionally understand that they must defer to the executive's greater expertise and capability when it comes to looking at such facts and making such judgments in time of war, Bush officials said. At most, courts have only the power to review legal claims brought on behalf of detainees, such as whether there is indeed a state of conflict between the United States and the detainee.

In a recent legal brief, Olson argued that the detention of people such as Hamdi or Padilla as enemy combatants is "critical to gathering intelligence in connection with the overall war effort."

Nor is there any requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant, Olson argues.

"There won't be 10 rules that trigger this or 10 rules that end this," Olson said in the interview. "There will be judgments and instincts and evaluations and implementations that have to be made by the executive that are probably going to be different from day to day, depending on the circumstances."

The federal courts have yet to deliver a definitive judgment on the question. A federal district judge in Virginia, Robert G. Doumar, was sharply critical of the administration, insisting that Hamdi be permitted to consult an attorney. But he was partially overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond.

The 4th Circuit, however, said the administration's assertion that courts should have absolutely no role in examining the facts leading to an enemy combatant designation was "sweeping." A decision from that court is pending as to how much of a role a court could claim, if any. The matter could well have to be settled in the Supreme Court.
Secret Surveillance

The administration scored a victory recently when the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled 3 to 0 that the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gives the Justice Department authority to break down what had come to be known as "the wall" separating criminal investigations from investigations of foreign agents.

The ruling endorsed the administration's view that law enforcement goals should be allowed to drive Justice Department requests for special eavesdropping and search warrants that had been thought to be reserved for counterintelligence operations. But the court went further, agreeing with the administration that "the wall" itself had no real basis in pre-Patriot Act law. Instead, the court ruled, "the wall" was a product of internal Justice Department guidelines that were, in turn, based partly on erroneous interpretations of the law by some courts.

There is no clear line between intelligence and crime in any case, the court said, because any investigation of a spy ring could ultimately lead to charging U.S. citizens with crimes such as espionage.

The decision overruled an earlier one by the lower-level Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in which seven judges sharply criticized past Justice Department misstatements in applications for permission to do secret surveillance.

Administration officials say that the ruling permits what is only sensible -- greater sharing of information between federal prosecutors and federal counterintelligence officials.

Thanks to enforcement of "the wall" by FBI lawyers, they note, pre-Sept. 11 permission to search Moussaoui's computer was not sought, a crucial missed opportunity to prevent the attacks.

In practical terms, the ruling means that the attorney general would still have to convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that he has probable cause to believe that a given subject of a wiretap or search is an agent of a foreign terrorist group, a standard that is not dissimilar to the one required for warrants in ordinary criminal cases.

Yet civil libertarians say that targets of such investigations who end up being ordered out of the country or prosecuted would lose a crucial right that they would have in the ordinary criminal justice system -- the right to examine the government's evidence justifying the initial warrant.

"So the government starts off using secret surveillance information not to gather information upon which to make policy, but to imprison or deport an individual, and then it never gives the individual a fair chance to see if the surveillance was lawful," Martin said.

Cheney Continues to Use White House Influence To Defy Federal Judge's Demands

Judge Again Bars Effort to Keep Cheney Files Secret
By Katharine Q. Seelye

A federal judge today again rejected Bush administration efforts to protect as confidential documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy committee.

The 36-page ruling is the latest step in a lengthy procedural dispute between the White House and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.

Nothing of substance was resolved in the ruling. The White House has ignored Judge Sullivan's rulings, going over his head by asking a higher court to exempt Mr. Cheney from having to comply with the judge's orders over the last five months to turn over the documents.

The judge set Dec. 12 as the next time for the administration to meet back in court with the two groups, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, that brought the case. The earlier order compelling the White House to release the documents by Dec. 9 remains in effect.
The case is also in two other forums, and either could see action before Dec. 9.

First, the administration has gone directly to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to appeal Judge Sullivan's earlier orders that require it to produce nonprivileged documents or explain in detail why it does not want to.

Second, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is suing Mr. Cheney, arguing that the White House has to disclose whom Mr. Cheney met as he formulated energy policy and what they discussed.

The Sierra Club suit says the administration violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by refusing to tell the public how it developed that policy. Environmental groups say energy companies that were big contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 wielded undue influence in formulating the policy.

Here is the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/politics/28CHEN.html

The New York Times The New York Times Washington November 28, 2002

Judge Again Bars Effort to Keep Cheney Files Secret
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — A federal judge today again rejected Bush administration efforts to protect as confidential documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy committee.

The 36-page ruling is the latest step in a lengthy procedural dispute between the White House and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.

Nothing of substance was resolved in the ruling. The White House has ignored Judge Sullivan's rulings, going over his head by asking a higher court to exempt Mr. Cheney from having to comply with the judge's orders over the last five months to turn over the documents.

The judge set Dec. 12 as the next time for the administration to meet back in court with the two groups, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, that brought the case. The earlier order compelling the White House to release the documents by Dec. 9 remains in effect.
The case is also in two other forums, and either could see action before Dec. 9.

First, the administration has gone directly to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to appeal Judge Sullivan's earlier orders that require it to produce nonprivileged documents or explain in detail why it does not want to.

Second, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is suing Mr. Cheney, arguing that the White House has to disclose whom Mr. Cheney met as he formulated energy policy and what they discussed.

The Sierra Club suit says the administration violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by refusing to tell the public how it developed that policy. Environmental groups say energy companies that were big contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 wielded undue influence in formulating the policy.

The administration says that it has made public 36,000 pages of documents and that releasing additional files would jeopardize the ability of advisers to speak candidly with the president and vice president.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Monica Goodling, said: "What is at issue at this point is a limited number of additional documents from the president's closest advisers, the disclosure of which would raise serious constitutional concerns.

"We believe that the president's constitutional authority to gather candid advice from his advisers is so important that we are appealing this issue through the court of appeals and an application to the D.C. Circuit."

A lawyer for the Sierra Club, Sanjay Narayan, said the administration had not produced any of the documents that his group sought.

"The question is whether the White House is subject to discovery at all," Mr. Narayan said. "The administration says the White House is beyond the court's reach and can't be asked any questions. The judge has rejected that. So they went to the Court of Appeals, saying that what Judge Sullivan did was so extraordinary that it requires their immediate intervention."

In his ruling today, Judge Sullivan said the administration's merely disagreeing with his opinions was not a sufficient basis for circumventing his court.

"Sullivan," Mr. Narayan said, "basically said he doesn't want to hear this anymore and that he thinks they are basing their arguments to the Court of Appeals on mischaracterizations of the law and of the record."