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Technology

November 10, 2001 - 8:59pm -- Uncle Fluffy
News
Technology

Anonymous Comrade writes: There has been a story picked up by the major media outlets about how the
Department of Energy has been pulling "sensitive" nuclear information from
its web site.


in case you want to see that information, simply go to:


http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.energy.gov


WHAT?! that's right... a rather complete set of www archives from all over
the world - including last year's version of the DOE website containing all
of the "sensitive" nuclear information.


so all the creative terrorist needs to do is compare the current pages with the
archived version and he will be conveniently served up with a list of all
the data that our govn't thinks is "sensitive"


damn! i love the internet!

so what next!?? demand that the web.archive.org remove all DOE web page archives? and if so, let the legal debate begin!

November 2, 2001 - 7:33pm -- autonomedia
Technology

Louis Lingg writes: "The Defense Department was roundly (and perhaps unjustly) mocked when it solicited ideas from US citizens on how to fight the war on terror.

cryptome.org has posted the DoD's Technical Support Working Group's 'wishlist' of technologies, resources, and capabilities they hope will be addressed and developed.

Maybe someday soon State Department policy-makers will also call upon the initiatives of US citizens, but don't hold your breath."

November 1, 2001 - 5:15pm -- jim
News
Technology

Louis Lingg writes: "The Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University is offering a course that 'will study the nature of information warfare, including computer crime and information terrorism, as it relates to national, economic, organizational , and personal
security': Information Warfare: Terrorism, Crime, and National Security.

The syllabus, bibliography, and on-line resources have been posted at COSC 511."

October 26, 2001 - 7:15pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Anonymous Comrade writes: "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

by Wendell Berry

I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember

the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the

unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on

that day.

II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living

in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow" on

and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would

be "unprecedented."

October 25, 2001 - 5:25pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes: " ...the following text was written by a codewriter using the handle "Beale Screamer", and was extracted from the zip.file containing a source code and DOS utility and documentation scheme to un-protect .WMA audio files, and claims more generally to have identified means of for circumventing Microsoft's Version-2 digital rights management (DRM). You can read an overview of the story at openflows. You can also read several chapters of Siva Vaidhyanathan's book "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity ", which is extensively cited in the text at Siva's home page. Enjoy!

Mad as Hell about the DMCA


By "Beale Screamer"

This document is intended as a position paper on copyright and the
abuses the copyright system has undergone, especially with the
introduction and abuse of the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA). This document is originally distributed with software
that in fact clearly violates the DMCA, and so this gives background
on why I would write this software. I hope that anyone who uses this
software reads the "README" and "LICENSE" files in the same
distribution, and respects my wishes as to how the software should be
used. I do not want to create massive copyright infringement, but
rather hope to give people the tools to regain the rights that have
existed for centuries with respect to copyright, and are now in danger
of being taken away in a most uncompromising manner.

October 24, 2001 - 7:29pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Louis Lingg writes: "RAND has recently published, and made available on-line, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy.

Chapters include: The Networking of Terror in the Information Age; Gangs, Hooligans, and Anarchists--The Vanguard of Netwar In the Streets; Networking Dissent: Cyber Activists Use the Internet to Promote Democracy In Burma; Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar; Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest Strategy and Tactics; Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy; The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and Its Opponents.

From RAND press release: 'The authors also find that, despite their diversity, all networks built for waging
netwar may be analyzed in terms of a common analytic framework. There are
five critical levels of theory and practice: the technological, social, narrative,
organizational, and doctrinal levels. A netwar actor must get all five right to be
fully effective. The most potent netwarriors will not only be highly networked
and have the capacity for mounting "swarming" attacks, they will also be held
together by strong social ties, have secure communications technologies, and
project a common "story" about why they are together and what they need to
do. Like Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda, these are the most serious
adversaries. But even those networks that are weak on some levels may pose
stiff challenges to their nation-state adversaries.'"

October 23, 2001 - 8:02pm -- nomadlab
Technology

Louis Lingg writes: "Pattern Recognition software has long been used by credit card companies to detect fraud, by banks to detect money laundering, and by brokerage houses to detect stock-trading irregularities. It is once again being proposed for airline use in determining and managing risk in the transportation system. businessweek online has posted Rating Travelers for Risk by Alex Salkever.

Back in April 1999 wired posted a piece by Declan McCullagh examining the privacy implications and other issues arising from implementation of such systems: You? A Terrorist? Yes!"

October 21, 2001 - 11:20pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes: "
Who will watch the watchmen?

-- Richard Stallman, October 2001

Who will watch the watchmen? The question was first posed in Latin, but it is just as important today as it was 2,000 years
ago. Power has to be kept in check, as the founders of our country knew when they designed a system of checks and
balances in the U.S. Constitution. Any agency that has the power to protect us from enemies also has the power to do us
great harm.

Police must be able to search for evidence, if they are to catch terrorists or other criminals. But when police can get access
too information about us too easily, they regularly abuse their power. (See "Cops tap database to harass, intimidate.") It is
vital to protect citizens from police intrusion. In the United States, we do this by requiring the police to go to court and obtain
a search warrant.

October 10, 2001 - 2:51pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Micz Flor writes: "Agreeing on Standards as a Strategy for Independence


New economic models of collaboration such as the Digital
Artisan are still built on a conventional understanding
of the product. If we move attention away from the
product and towards the spaces in-between, literally
nothing seems to stand in our way. It is the interfacing
of products which best describes the new reality. This,
not collaboration per se, holds the strategic key for
independent development.

Micz Flor, Berlin Aug2001 (written for ASU 2)



A few years ago, the sudden surge of a revolutionary scent took hold of
the developed world. The 'Digital' had arrived and melted into all kinds
of discourse. The 'Digital' seemed to bring together the social and the
economic, the information and the product, the communicative and the
competitive. Enthused by the digital era's utopian powers and its free
floating potential of the shockingly new, many alternative economic and
social models were formulated.

October 6, 2001 - 5:37pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Open Source DNA?

Eugene Thacker eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu

Opening the Biomolecular Black Box

What follows here is a series of observations, comments, and reflections on
the current intersections between computer science and molecular biology. In
conjunction with issues pertaining to open source initiatives, this aim of
this paper is to raise similar questions in the domain of biotechnology.



All of us have witnessed the media-hype generated by such biotech issues as
the human genome, human cloning, and debates over the use of embryonic stem
cells. But what often goes unmentioned is that the real generator of radical
change in fields like biotech is not genome mapping, cloning, or genetic
engineering != it is >=bioinformatics.=a technology-driven quest.

But is that all that bioinformatics is? In other words, what other kinds of
developments can emerge out of this intersection between computer science
and molecular biology, between computer code and genetic code, between data
and flesh? Could it be that approaches from computing (network theories,
systems theories, parallel processing, a-life) might have something to teach
us about the complexity of the organism? Could such approaches even
transform the way in which molecular genetics and biotech has traditionally
thought of the organism, the body, and biological >=life

[text continued at:
http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS/text/Eugene-Thacker _OSDNA.htm]

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