-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Information Warfare Divorce and the Internet All that cool dirt scattered through cyberspace WASHINGTON - The words flowed without inhibition. In electronic email he allegedly wrote to friends, even to strangers, the 37-year-old lawyer described his sexual trysts, gushed about his partners and agonized over cheating on his wife. ''Right now I am in New Orleans with a man,'' one message read. ''My wife thinks I am here for work, but I'm not. ''I met him on-line. He is married, two kids,'' the e-mail said. ''Italian, muscles like crazy, beautiful face and eyes. ''You must not print this, and delete all files!! It's good to talk it out, but dangerous.'' Dangerous is right. Copies of this and other e-mail messages have been filed at Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, where the lawyer and his now former wife will be fighting for custody of their children. The ex-wife says she found the e-mail messages on computer disks stuffed into a drawer; the lawyer says the messages are forgeries. Records of electronic communication, a growing factor in corporate cases such as the high-profile government antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp., have begun showing up in divorce and custody proceedings across the United States. Electronic infidelity also has become an issue. One Virginia man, according to court documents, learned that his wife was having ''cybersex.'' Furthermore, she ''engaged in chats wherein she has disparaged her husband and her children.'' Some legal scholars say using the messages as a weapon raises questions of privacy and fairness. ''I think we need to look at e-mail as something that has to be protected,'' said Paul Levinson, a communications professor at Fordham University. ''Historically, the law has always been limping behind the technology.'' For now, clients are marching into their lawyers' offices with printouts from their home computers. The search for e-mail, said one lawyer, Marna Tucker, is the modern equivalent of ''looking through the trash can for discarded notes.'' And if the client does not broach the subject, the lawyer often does. ''I ask them, 'Is your spouse computer-literate?''' Mark Sandground, a lawyer, said. ''You're going to say things to your e-mail that you wouldn't say to your priest in confession.'' Glenn Lewis, who heads the domestic-relations section of the Virginia Bar Association, said that even the most sophisticated husbands and wives have let down their guard at the keyboard. ''There are people who wouldn't think about leaving an envelope open on their desk,'' he said, ''yet they leave a computer that has their love letters or pornography or chat-room talk.'' At its headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, America Online Inc. is served with a steady stream of subpoenas for subscriber information, often for divorce cases. AOL, with 17 million customers by far the world's largest base of e-mailers, usually is able only to produce records showing how much time a customer spent on-line, a company spokesman said. But the company occasionally can recover the text of a message or chat-room exchange, said the spokesman, Rich D'Amato. AOL officials said that they responded immediately to search warrants in criminal cases but wait 14 days in civil matters to give their customers time for a court challenge. Spouses most often go after electronic records to prove infidelity or to show that their partner has emotional problems or is simply spending too much time on-line to be a good parent. A 48-year-old Tennessee man asked for AOL records to bolster his claims that his spouse neglected their family. ''The wife does not clean the house during the day,'' according to his complaint, ''but rather spends her day shopping, visiting, meeting her paramours or on the computer.'' Lawyers who use e-mail messages in court argue that such evidence is valuable because, unlike witness testimony, it gives a firsthand record of the writer's feelings. But as with most evidence presented in court, there is plenty of room for challenge. When spouses share a computer, messages can be written under the one another's names and existing files altered. Besides checking files stored on a computer, some people monitor on-line activity through Internet search engines. Eric Hester, 33, a mortgage banker from San Francisco who wanted more time with his sons, age 5 and 7, said he searched under his former wife's screen name for messages she had posted in chat rooms. He looked weekly for four or five months, he said. Mr. Hester gave 30 pages of printouts, including one of a divorce-related discussion in which one of his sons participated, to the mediator in his custody case. The mediator did not change Mr. Hester's visiting rights but did require that his ex-wife, Jennifer Ferrall, no longer include the children in her chat-room sessions. Ms. Ferrall, 32, said she used the chat rooms to help her through a difficult time and described her on-line conversations and her son's involvement as ''totally innocent.'' ''One mom asked how you break the news to a 5-year-old that his mom and dad aren't going to be together anymore,'' she said. ''I asked my son what he thought the most gentle way would be to say it, and I posted it.'' Ms. Ferrall said she felt ''sick'' when she learned her postings were being monitored, but scholars of the Internet say there is no reasonable expectation for the privacy of posted messages. That is also the case, they say, with files stored on a computer used by both partners. Many judges seem to be skeptical of the worth of such evidence, in any case. A lawyer from Fairfax, Marc Astore, said he recently argued that a client should have sole custody of his children in part because his wife had talked in a chat room about feeling suicidal. He and his client thought the e-mail was ''gripping evidence,'' Mr. Astore said, but a judge disagreed and said the wife was ''just venting.'' Still, lawyers say the use of electronic communications in court will grow, and they advise their clients to be cautious on-line. Ms. Ferrall has taken that advice to heart. Now remarried and living in the San Francisco area, she still visits a chat room for mothers. But because of her experience, she said, she chooses each word carefully. ''I have nothing to hide,'' Ms. Ferrall said. ''But the mediator was very sympathetic and said to be careful, and I have been. ''E-mail is another tool for 'he said, she said.''' International Herald Tribune, April 28, 1999 China Spying All U.S. Nuclear Weapons Said to be Compromised by James Risen and Jeff Gerth WASHINGTON -- A scientist suspected of spying for China improperly transferred huge amounts of secret data from a computer system at a government laboratory, compromising virtually every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal, government and lab officials say. The data -- millions of lines of computer code that approximate how this country's atomic warheads work -- were downloaded from a computer system at the Los Alamos, N.M., weapons lab that is open only to those with top-level security clearances, according to the officials. The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, then transferred the files to a widely accessible computer network at the lab, where they were stored under other file names, the officials said. The Taiwan-born scientist transferred most of the secret data in 1994 and 1995, officials said. American experts said the data would be useful to any nuclear power trying to replicate this country's atomic designs. But one American scientist said the codes and accompanying data were not, by themselves, sufficient to produce an exact copy of an American weapon. American officials said there was evidence that the files were accessed by someone after they were placed in the unclassified network. Other evidence suggests that this was done by a person who improperly used a password, the officials said. The investigation is continuing, and officials do not know whether the data transferred by Lee was obtained by another country. In 1996, Lee became the focus of an FBI investigation into a separate case, what American official believe was China's theft from Los Alamos of design data for America's most advanced warhead, the W-88. That theft apparently took place in the 1980s. China has denied stealing the material. Now officials fear that a much broader array of nuclear test data may have been moved to Beijing in the 1990s. Lee has not been charged with any crime. Federal investigators did not discover the evidence of huge file transfers until last month, when they examined Lee's office computer in connection with their investigation of the earlier theft at Los Alamos, a sprawling lab complex about 35 miles outside Santa Fe. They then found evidence that Lee, who held one of the government's highest security clearances, had been transferring enormous files involving millions of lines of secret computer code, officials said. Although Lee had been under investigation in the W-88 case for nearly three years, Los Alamos officials failed to monitor his computer use and let him retain his access to nuclear secrets until late 1998. Lee was fired by the Energy Department for security violations on March 8. His attorney, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles, did not return a telephone call. In the past, Holscher has denied any wrongdoing by his client. President Clinton was first told of the new evidence by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on March 31. During a subsequent meeting at the White House residence in early April, the president told Richardson to "get to the bottom of it," Richardson recalled in an interview Tuesday. Earlier in March, before being briefed by Richardson, the president said he had not been told of any evidence of espionage during his administration. In response to the new evidence and with the president's support, Richardson shut down the classified computer systems at Los Alamos and two other major nuclear weapons laboratories this month. He ordered changes in the computer security procedures to make it more difficult to move nuclear secrets out of the classified networks. "These Wen Ho Lee transgressions cannot occur any more," Richardson said in the interview. Congressional leaders were told of the new evidence in classified briefings last week. The huge scale of the security breach has shocked some officials, and has prompted a new sense of urgency in the FBI to solve the Los Alamos spy case. The bureau is now pouring additional agents and resources into the investigation. The evidence of transfers from his office computer provided the basis for an FBI search of Lee's home on April 10, officials said. Lee is believed to be still living in Los Alamos. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview that the briefings on the new evidence "confirmed my worst fears that China's espionage is ongoing, it's deep and we can't wish it away." There were varying assessments of the gravity of the security breach. One official familiar with the new evidence said, "This is much, much, much worse than the W-88 case." But an Energy Department official said that because it remained unclear whether China actually obtained the data, the case at this point "is serious but not of the scope of the W-88." The fact that the huge data transfers were not detected until the last few weeks has sparked outrage among officials who wonder why computer use by a scientist already under suspicion as a spy was not being closely watched by Los Alamos or the FBI. An internal investigation at the Energy Department into why Lee retained access to American nuclear secrets while he was a spy suspect was begun a month ago and is nearing completion. It is likely to prompt disciplinary action against some lab and Energy Department officials, according to a senior Energy Department official. FBI officials have told Congress that Lee and his wife, Sylvia, had prior relationships with the bureau. In the early 1980s, Lee volunteered information to the bureau, but officials would not provide details. Mrs. Lee provided the bureau with information on foreign visitors to Los Alamos from about 1987 to 1992, but her information was not considered valuable. Until now, Clinton and his aides have portrayed Chinese nuclear espionage as a problem that occurred during previous administrations. Amid the furor over the administration's handling of the earlier theft of the W-88 data from Los Alamos, the White House has stressed that the espionage occurred in the 1980s, long before Clinton took office. But the new evidence raises the stakes of the congressional investigations now under way into how the Los Alamos case was handled after the W-88 theft was first detected in 1995. The information improperly transferred by Lee included what Los Alamos officials call the "legacy" codes. According to John Browne, director of Los Alamos, the legacy codes consist of computer data used to design nuclear weapons, analyze nuclear test results and evaluate weapons materials and the safety characteristics of America's nuclear warheads. "They are codes that integrate our best understanding of the processes that go on in a nuclear weapon," Browne said in an interview. The legacy codes can be used to help design nuclear weapons through computer simulation, and so are valuable on their own. But they become more valuable when combined with specific performance data, which would then enable someone to generate a computer simulation of American warhead designs. Officials said Lee transferred both the legacy codes and the input data for specific U.S. warheads that go with the legacy codes. The codes and performance data provide what a Los Alamos scientist described as a "rough approximation" of the physical processes that occur in a nuclear weapon. Ray E. Kidder, a nuclear-weapons physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the combined data was equivalent to a scientific blueprint. "If you've got the source code and the input data, you can reverse-engineer the thing and have a complete plan for nuclear explosive part of the weapon," Kidder said. One lab official said investigators were still trying to determine the extent of the security breach and exactly how many warheads were involved in the data transfers. The legacy codes and the warhead data that goes with them could be particularly valuable for a country, like China, that has signed onto the nuclear test ban treaty and relies solely on computer simulations to upgrade and maintain its nuclear arsenal. The legacy codes are now used to maintain the American nuclear arsenal through computer simulation. Most of Lee's transfers occurred in 1994 and 1995, just before China signed the test ban treaty in 1996, according to American officials. But officials say Lee may have started transferring files out of the classified computer network as early as 1983. So far, officials have not found evidence of transfers after 1995. Lee, 59, began working at Los Alamos in 1978. His wife worked as a secretary at the lab. Lee also traveled to China on several occasions while working at Los Alamos. In June 1986 he delivered a paper on nuclear-weapons related science at a symposium in Beijing with the approval of Los Alamos officials. In June 1988 he delivered another paper at a conference in Beijing, again with the lab's approval. In 1995 U.S. intelligence officials began to suspect that China had obtained design data from the W-88 warhead. In 1996 the FBI began a criminal investigation of the W-88 theft, and Lee emerged as the principal suspect. Yet by 1997 the bureau's investigation was stalled. The Department of Justice declined an FBI request to seek court approval to gain surreptitious access to Lee's office computer, officials said. Once the the request was rejected, officials of the bureau and the Energy Department determined that they needed Lee's approval to examine his office computer. In April 1997 Lee was transferred to a new job at Los Alamos, where he was responsible for updating legacy codes for five American warheads. Although Los Alamos officials knew he was already under investigation in the W-88 theft, they believed that his continued access to the legacy codes would not be damaging because they knew he had had access to them for years, lab and Energy Department officials said. But Los Alamos officials also assured the Energy Department that there were fire walls in place to prevent the leakage of classified information, they added. It was not until last month, just a few days before he was fired, that the FBI finally asked for and received Lee's authorization to search his computer, officials said. Once the bureau saw the transferred files in the unclassified computer network, investigators realized their significance. Within days, Richardson was briefed, and he then told the president and shut down the lab's computer systems for two weeks. But the FBI still encountered delays in winning Justice Department approval to seek a court-ordered search of Lee's home, officials said, and did not conduct the search until April 10. The FBI has told Congress that it believes that the new information of computer transfers is the strongest evidence they have against Lee, officials said. The New York Times delayed publication of this article for one day at the request of the FBI, which said the latest disclosure could impede its inquiry. The New York Times, April 28, 1999 Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia NATO Bombs a Residential Neighborhood (Al Gore to attend funeral; Hillary to propose aircraft ban) BELGRADE, April 27 – NATO bombs hit a residential area in a town in southern Serbia today, killing at least 16 people and damaging scores of houses, according to government and independent reports. If the casualty toll is confirmed, it apparently would be the deadliest allied attack on Serbian civilians since NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia began last month. A NATO spokesman acknowledged that a Yugoslav army barracks in the town, Surdlica, was targeted but said he had no information on whether any of the bombs went astray. "NATO does not target civilians, but we cannot exclude harm to civilians or to civilian property during our air operations over Yugoslavia," a NATO statement said. The attack on Surdlica, 200 miles southeast of Belgrade, came as NATO stepped up its aerial assault against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia following a decision by allied leaders at their summit in Washington last weekend to grant military commanders broad new authority to strike a wider range of targets, including some that primarily affect civilians. Yugoslav state television showed wrecked single-family homes in Surdlica and rescue workers picking through bricks, beams and tiles trying to reach survivors and recover bodies. According to one civilian source, two bombs struck near the town center – on Belgrade Street and Jovan Jovanovic Maja Street – destroying several houses. An old man who appeared to have a slight head wound yelled, "Fascists! Fascists!" into the state TV camera, in apparent anger at NATO. Belgrade government and independent sources said the attack occurred around midday and was apparently aimed at military installations in the region – which borders the Serbian province of Kosovo, the focus of the conflict. Residents told the Associated Press that the nearest military facility, 500 yards away, was evacuated after an air attack on April 6. Another military installation is situated four miles away, they said. Reports on the number of casualties and the extent of damage varied. Miko Todorov, who identified himself as an investigating magistrate in Surdlica, an agricultural community of 15,000 residents, said in a telephone interview that 16 bodies had been found by tonight – 12 of them children between the ages of 5 and 12. Most of the those killed had gathered in the basement of a house belonging to a man named Alexander Milica, thinking they would be safe there, Todorov said. He estimated that the bomb crater at the site measured at least 30 feet across. Another witness, also reached by phone, said he saw 10 bodies, along with one seriously injured survivor, pulled from the basement of a shattered house close to his. Local authorities told the AP that at least 17 people were killed and 11 others wounded. An Associated Press reporter taken to the scene by police reported seeing 50 houses destroyed and 600 damaged. Rescue workers said 11 people, including five children, were believed trapped in the basement of one house. A town civil defense official said by phone that 11 people were killed, including three children, but he added that the final tally could rise because the search for victims was still underway and many bodies had been blown apart. The Yugoslav military press office put the death toll at 20 and said a medical clinic was among the buildings damaged. If confirmed, the bombing apparently would constitute the largest loss of life among Serbian civilians in a NATO attack since the Western alliance launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia on March 24. The alliance campaign is designed to force the Belgrade government to end its bloody campaign to expel ethnic Albanians from Kosovo – a province of Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation. On April 12, an allied bomb intended for a railway bridge struck a passenger train near the Serbian town of Leskovac, killing 10 people. Last week, allied aircraft targeted the studios of state-run television in Belgrade on the grounds that its broadcasts were propaganda that inflamed public opinion and were prolonging the conflict. The Belgrade government said 16 people died in that attack, although only six bodies are said to have been retrieved from the ruins. On April 14, NATO warplanes mistakenly bombed at least two ethnic Albanian refugee convoys in southwestern Kosovo, killing dozens of people driven from from their homes by Serb-led Yugoslav forces. In addition to bombing Surdlica today, NATO again hit a 23-story building in Belgrade that houses offices of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party and transmitters for eight television and radio stations. An antenna atop the building was destroyed. NATO jets also attacked a military barracks in Belgrade's Topcider district, on the capital's southern edge. Residents of the nearby Dedinje area, where Milosevic and other senior officials have homes, said the explosions shattered their windows. Serbian state media also reported dozens of strikes on Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and said an agricultural school was hit. [Early Wednesday, air raid sirens went off in Belgrade and a series of explosions could be heard, the AP reported. The state-run Tanjug news agency said "planes of the enemy NATO alliance, in a massive onslaught, bombed the wider regions of Belgrade" but gave no details. State media also reported strikes on a fuel dump near the central Serbian town of Pozega, but there were no immediate reports of damage.] The bombing of Surdlica came a day after Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, criticized NATO for causing civilian casualties and damaging Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure with its airstrikes. Today, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council, the Yugoslav government said 1,000 civilians had been killed in NATO air attacks – a number that disagreed with the 400 announced by Serbian Health Minister Leposava Milicevic today. NATO has not released an estimate of civilian casualties. Belgrade, for its part, has offered no accounting of ethnic Albanian dead at the hands of Yugoslav troops and Serbian police and paramilitary forces in Kosovo. At least 600,000 civilians have fled the province, and more than 600,000 more have been displaced from their homes and are believed hiding in the countryside with little food or protection from the elements. Belgrade has insisted that the refugees have taken flight only to escape the NATO bombing. In the letter to the Security Council, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic called the NATO bombing the "most flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations" since the organization was founded more than a half-century ago. He called the April 22 bombing of a residence of Milosevic's in Belgrade an "assassination attempt." The letter asserted that NATO attacks primarily target civilians and have resulted in injuries that will cripple a "few thousand" victims for life. Yugoslav state media has not heavily publicized casualty reports, and visits by journalists to the sites of NATO attacks have been severely restricted. Although Belgrade has suffered some bomb and missile damage, installations in other Yugoslav cities have been targeted more frequently. The Washington Post, April 28, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
