Re: Italy finally holds USA to the world standard!
On 6/24/05, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=2560 Italian Judge Orders 13 CIA Agents Arrested Over Kidnapping John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. -- There are no bad teachers, only defective children.
Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
It's an appalling decision, and as Alif says, it's nothing that hasn't been happening for years already. Sad to see it formalized, though. Bush's favorite judges are radical activists when it comes to interference with most civil rights, especially for non-citizens or people outside US boundaries, or when it comes to letting the Administration get away with whatever it wants, but this case *is* about *property*, so that's as close as they're going to get to an invitation to do the right thing. (There was another case recently where Clarence Thomas voted the right way; I don't remember the issue, but it surprised me.) How do you stop a bulldozer? [various destructive options.] Nah. Paper. Applied before the bulldozer heads to your property. Occasionally you need it in mass quantities. However, there are times you need to stop construction equipment that's doing bad things - ATT at least used to fly small planes over our main cable routes, looking for backhoes that hadn't checked in with the Don't Dig Here Center. They'd drop them a package with some papers about calling the Call Before You Dig people, a couple of bribes (typically a pair of good work gloves and a pack of gum), and a pack of playing cards to give them something to do while waiting around.
[dave@farber.net: [IP] CIA agents tracked through sloppy cellphone use.]
- Forwarded message from David Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: David Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:29:13 -0400 To: Ip ip ip@v2.listbox.com Subject: [IP] CIA agents tracked through sloppy cellphone use. X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.730) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: Francesco Callari [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: June 24, 2005 4:43:12 PM EDT To: Dave Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [For IP, if you wish] CIA agents tracked through sloppy cellphone use. Dr. Farber, I thought the following may be of interest to IP readers. --- Today's US news sources show several reports on Italian prosecutors writing arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents in the kidnapping of a Muslim preacher in Milan in 2003. The Italian newspapers, however, provide some interesting technical details on the investigation, which hinged on tracking their cellphones. Excerpt translations follow. [Repubblica, 6/24/2005] Milan closes the inquiry - CIA, 12 agents face arrest. [...] The CIA team bungled a lot, leaving clues everywhere. A group of cell phones is in Via Guerzoni [where the kidnapping occurred] around noon. The same cell phones moved toward Aviano Air Base shortly thereafter. Calls from those cell phone were made to the U.S. consulate and to numbers in Virginia. One of the same cell phones was located in Cairo the day after. From the cell phones [the investigators] tracked [...] the hotels in Milan where the team members stayed and the car rental agency where the van used in the operation was rented. [...] In those days of February 2003 the American team in Milan showed a surprising ignorance, or lack of care at least, in the use of their cellphones. Using the words of one of our sources, they showed to know less than one of our homegrown thieves. Apparently they thought that replacing the phones' SIM cards was enough to prevent successful tracking. Not so, the Americans apparently ignored the unique hardware identifier of each GSM phone (the IMEI), which can be tracked regardless of the SIM card and the phone carrier. [Corriere della Sera, 6/24] Milan' prosecutors: jail the CIA agents. [Lots of details on the investigation results, including $120,000 of U.S. taxpayer's money spent by CIA team members to reside in 5 luxury hotels, plus a note about two couples of team members that took a vacation in romantic hotels in Valmalenco and along the Poet's Gulf after the kidnapping. The interesting bit involving cellphones is toward the end:] All the cellphones were irregular, since the registered owners were fake names, non-existing corporations and even innocent Milan women and a Rumenian bricklayer. However, the CIA operatives showed their own U.S. passports to register themselves in a total of 23 hotels and 4 rental car companies, and the phones could be placed in the same locations at the same times. The police tracked the photocopies of the passports, and determined that they were genuine documents, even though probably using showing cover names. - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: MISC: Education of lusers about spam
[Note: Silently crossposted [bcc] to another list due to content fitting both places.] On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, Dave Warren wrote: How much would it cost to put photos on all ATM + credit cards? That would significantly reduce stolen-card theft, and while it's not their biggest challenge, it's a *huge* business with no overhead, and very little risk. If Cost co can do it, and the $96/year park in my neighbourhood can issue 4 photo-ID cards to each household (plus maintain the park all in that $96 annual fee), surely banks could manage to make it work. Not only that, but they could pass the cost on to the end user and sell it as a service -- I'd pay a bit extra simply because there are a number of stores that always ID me, and I'd rather not bother digging out my gov't ID, plus the fraud prevention aspect. There was a local bank in New York City that did this in the early 1970s - I can't remember the name now (they ended up being borged into Chemical bank [Comical Bank for you Mark Simone fans:-)]. The tellers were all on the 2nd floor, and they interacted with the customers via two way TV and vacuum transport. When you opened an account, you received a photo ID card that associated you with the account: all in person banking had to be done with this photoID and two way [taped] TV system. If you wanted a third party [wife, kid, lawyer, etc.] to have access to an account, you'd bring em in and get an ID for it (no charge). In the 70s this was considered wildly intrusive, as opposed to wildly secure, and the bank went bust on the back of it's feature. I suspect today it would have a much warmer reception. Especially by the Fedz. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty. Joseph Pulitzer 1907 Speech
Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
At 10:36 AM 6/24/2005, J.A. Terranson wrote: Not surprising at all. The Bush camp's court agenda is spearheaded by members of the Federalist Society which wants to roll back many of the SC's decisions of the early-mid 20th century (esp. the Social Security Act and the expansion of the Commerce Clause during FDR's reign). You're on crack. They just expanded the Commerce Clause to it's logical limits with the California medical maryjane case. The Bushie agenda may seem traditional reactionary on the surface, but look carefully and you;ll see significant differences in modern neocon vs old family Nixon. Shrub doesn't want Federalism, he wants full theocracy with a Federal bent. Its true that he and many of is supporters are conservatives and not libertarians. Perhaps I'm misrepresenting the essence of the Federalist Society also. Its not clear that they adhere to a single strong ideology, but rather to a vague view of limited government and an 'originalist' interpretation of the Constitution.http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/fedsoc.htm But I can't think of a single case where the SC limited an important authority the government thought it had granted itself. It seems such rollbacks historically only occur on the heels of major protests, threat or actual civil war. So it will be interesting if Bush gets to appoint some of the judges he desires on the SC and if this indeed leads to an eventual rollback of Commerce Clause interpretation. For me an equal bone of contention is the very questionable passage of the 14th Amendment. Even worse than the lack of serious debate which surrounded the Patriot Act, the 14th was passed with Congress violating its own rules of majority and plurality. They simply refused to allow already seated members into the chambers for the vote. They also 'manipulated' the state voting results and neglected to send the result to the President, as Constitutionally required. When a case challenging the 14th was brought to the SC, it ruled that they had no authority to rule on Congresss' failure to follow the Constitutional processes. A total cop-out. But what did anyone expect with 500,000 Americans recently killed on the battle field to keep the Union together. When push comes to shove, the Constitution is only a piece of paper to those in power. Lenny Bruce was certainly right when he said.. In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls. Steve
Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
What the hell are all of you smoking? This court has *talked* about restricting inappropriate use of the commerce clause, but when it comes to *doing*, they're 100% behind 100% Federal expansion *through* the Commerce clause. Well, ya' gotta a point there. Actually, I WISH I were smoking something. California's medical marijuana laws allow you to use it for just about any medical condition you can get a doctor to prescribe it for, and there are doctors happy to oblige. This set of mostly really bad decisions by the Supremes is really stressing me out, so I'd better go get something to help me manage the stress :-) Eminent Domain decision looks really bad, though I haven't read it yet. Brad Templeton suggested, though, that the Constitution does still require just compensation, and that the obvious value of the property that's taken is not just the value that the property owner would have taken if he felt like moving out and selling to another homeowner, but the value that the private company would have had to pay to get everybody they're stealing land from to sell out. So it may still be possible to get paid decently by going to court. The Medical Marijuana decision, while appallingly bad, seemed pretty obvious - straight stare decisis from the FDR-era decision that a farmer growing grain on his own land to feed to his own hogs was still engaged in interstate commerce, and therefore subject to FDR's agriculture quasi-nationalization rules. If the Supremes had wanted to overturn that, they could have done so (unlikely), or they could have decided that the case was sufficiently different because it's about medicine and not just commerce (also unlikely), but they didn't. That's a problem with activist lawsuits - you need to have the resources to win, or else you usually end up making the legal situation worse for everybody than if you hadn't done it. At first glance, the cable modem decision looks right, though; haven't had time to read all the fine print yet.
Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
What the hell are all of you smoking? This court has *talked* about restricting inappropriate use of the commerce clause, but when it comes to *doing*, they're 100% behind 100% Federal expansion *through* the Commerce clause. Doesn't anyboy actually LOOK at whats going on anymore, or are we all fixated on what these slimballs *say*? Well, ya' gotta a point there. Actually, I WISH I were smoking something. But saying is at some point important. At least, prior to this a number of individual landholders might have been able to work together (ie, amass legal funds) to prevent the bulldozement of their properties by The Donald or whoever else's mouth has been watering recently. Now it just comes down to who can buy more guns: the poor or rich guys their hired hands (ie, local government). Also, it will probably end up being a kind of turning point. Now, knowing what the SC has decided, there are lots of plans going to drawing boards that have nice big fat red X's over low-income dwellings...Don't worry about the new Brooklyn stadium, we'll just set off the ED roach bomb and clear 'em all out of there. -TD
Re: Private Homes may be taken for public good
-- Bush's favorite judges are radical activists when it comes to interference with most civil rights For the most part, it was conservative judges, judes hated by the democrats with insane extravagance, that voted for against this decision. Bush's favorite judge is probably Thomas, who voted against this decision. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OATUYUUD6X16QdQnFd2ZgGItmw0TrkkNoR5SYYAZ 4HZTgkPgkgTwPSGrDGUeYo6QjGZU5psCanKPMN479
