-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 124 December, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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QUOTE:
"Every ill we deplore in society...is rooted in the institution of power,
that is, in the state and the institution of private ownership...Man is at
the mercy of these two social afflictions which escape his control: they
make him petty, stingy, and lacking solidarity when he is rich, and cruelly
insensitive to human suffering when he wields power. Poverty degrades, but
wealth perverts."
--Isaac Puente, 'Libertarian Communism'
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How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.)
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Contents:
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--When The FBI Knocks, A First-Person Account
--Wireless tracking devices raise privacy concerns
--International Arms Shows -The year in review
--Engaged in an endless pursuit of dissenters
Linked stories:
*Anti-Hacking Law to take Effect
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Begin stories:
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When The FBI Knocks, A First-Person Account
<http://devrandom.net/~dilinger/>
Preamble:
I'm writing this for three reasons:
1) I'm getting tired of explaining it over and over to friends.
2) I wanted to try out mozilla composer. ;)
3) To make people aware that they're not being paranoid enough. This
story should scare you.
Those of you who know me know that I am in no way a script kiddie,
l33t h4x0r, or any other variation. I'm simply an RPI student, admin,
and programmer (C/perl/whatever) who likes to dabble in cryptography,
kernel hacking, data compression, and whatever else the topic of the
week happens to be. I also have a short attention span, skipping from
project to project, subject to subject. I do not claim to be an
expert in any field, but I know my way around.
Story:
Last saturday afternoon (Oct. 28, ~4 PM), the FBI let themselves into
my dorm (good ol' RPI gave them the keys), waking me up. They showed
me a badge, handed me a warrant, and took me into another room to ask
me questions. They had every intention of seizing all my computer
hardware before even questioning me, which should worry you greatly.
They initially began asking me if I was a baseball fan, which confused
me. After answering with a "no", they explained that I was under
investigation for the break in that had occurred the previous day to
the Yankees website. I breathed a sigh of relief (my initial reaction
was "oh shit, someone's pissed about my 30 gig mp3 collection"), as I
figured I could simply explain to them what happened, and they'd leave
my stuff alone. I was wrong.
The previous day, I was doing my usual routine for a friday with no
class; up at 7 AM, catch up on slashdot/k5/lwn/sinfest/etc, do some
coding on the project of the week (mdidentd/avifile/pharmacy/etc), and
do some homework. Of course, the whole time, I'd be on IRC (EFNet,
OPN), talking with people. During a conversation about Microsoft's
break in, and how the stolen source code would affect things like
wine, a friend mentioned that Yankees.com had also just been hacked (I
found out later that he got that information from The Register,
specifically here, which in turn found out from here).
Being the curious individual that I am, I went to the webpage, and
discovered that it had, indeed, been cracked (and replaced with a
rather amusing picture, and a "yankees suck!" banner). I then began a
post-mortem inspection; I always find this to be very interesting, as
several friends have basically handed me linux boxes (not physically
handed, of course), and asked me to rid them of a pesky cracker. The
last time I did this, I discovered the intruder had gotten in through
a (well-known) wu-ftpd exploit that affected redhat 6.2, and was using
the box as a "zombie" (a daemon was listening for UDP packets, and was
then running a DoS against the IP supplied by the client).
I first checked port 21 of www.yankees.com, noticing that it was
running wu-ftpd-2.6.0; the same version that had been exploited in the
aforementioned cleanup. That didn't sound right to me; it was
www.yankees.com, they had to have better security than that. So, I
did a zone transfer of yankees.com (host -l -t any yankees.com), and
noticed an old.yankees.com. Upon going there, I saw what I thought to
be the original site, so I figured this whole "crack" was simply a dns
redirect. I checked the bind version that yankees.com's primary
nameserver was running (dig @ns1.icsnet.net version.bind chaos txt),
and saw that it was running the latest version (well... patch ;) of
bind. I figured they wouldn't have broken in through this (at least,
I HOPED not), and checked other ports on ns1 for banners; 21, 25, 110,
143, etc; the most commonly exploited daemons. I got no where with
this (whether it was due to a firewall, I do not know), so I returned
to my IRC client, said "Looks like a dns hack...", and and the
conversation went elsewhere. The entire thing lasted possibly five
minutes, and occupied no more than 3 or 4 lines on IRC.
The next day, I was sitting in a chair in the lounge, with an older
FBI agent and another person who had not identified himself (but had a
clue about computer stuff). I tried to explain the situation as best
as possible; I probably did a horrible job, as they had just woken up
(brutal LAN party the night before :) and really didn't remember many
of the details. It was a 5 minute segment of my previous day, and I
had spent much time coding and on IRC. The FBI started grilling me on
IPs; if I had accounts on various machines, etc. At first, I had no
idea where they were going with this. I assumed they had RPI's
firewall logs, and saw many, many connections to my machine.. After a
while of this (which was quite exhaustive, and seemed to piss off the
older FBI agent when I answered with "sf.home.com? I probably know
someone there.. well.. I think.. maybe.. give me a second"), I
realized that they were seeing hits from my webpage, which had such
things as a hacked version of xmms-avi (I posted it in freshmeat's
comments), a hacked version of popwatch (exim authentication through
pop3. Good stuff ;). I answered their questions as best I could,
even though I was told I did not have to; I had nothing to hide.
Overall, they were pretty nice. They took 3 computers, 2 books (ORA's
DNS & Bind, and a book on kernel hacking), and various scraps of
papers, which contained jotted down algorithms, code, and other stuff
I had written while bored or designing. They let me go through these
notes, and pick out stuff I needed for class; they also (upon my
request) let me keep my "junk box" (cardboard box w/ various pieces of
hardware), as well as 80 cd-r's, which contained MP3's, DIVX's, and
porn (they just wanted to make sure there was no kiddie porn) that
were clearly marked as such. As you can see, they really only cared
about cracking, which I had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately,
they took all my backups (jaz disks).
I have not been formally charged yet, nor do I fear I will be. I'm
worried most about the data on my drives, which is a combination of
source code (much of it not checked into any CVS servers), various
scripts and tweaks I had done to my Debian boxes over the 2 years I've
been running it, and essential data (email addresses of friends,
developers; class projects, some of which I HAVE needed since then;
email itself; etc).
This brings me to the whole point of this: you are not being paranoid
enough. The FBI managed to get a search warrant based on logs from a
firewall, that showed my IP only connecting, not even logging in,
hours after news of the cracking had appeared on news sites. If they
can get a search warrant this easily, your data is not safe, sitting
on your hard drive. For the past two months I've been living in this
dorm, I locked my doors, securified my boxes, and backed up my
essential things. I never even imagined the federal government would
just let themselves in and take it.
The moral of the story is: encrypting all sessions, through ssh, scp,
and tunnels, is not enough. Nor is making back ups. Make off-site
backups. The FBI can arrive at your doorstep, with every intent of
taking your precious data, and not returning it for a loooong time.
To those interested, mozilla composer still has some annoying bugs (I
had to remove a lot of extra spaces afterwards, for example. No
crashes, though. The formatting is mozilla's.). Oh well. :)
Andres Salomon
P.S. Many thanks to people have given me advice (yes, I have talked to
a lawyer, and no, I have not heard back from the FBI yet), lent me
computers (ian, you rock! :), or otherwise helped me through this.
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Wireless tracking devices raise privacy concerns
By ANICK JESDANUN, Associated Press
NEW YORK (October 29, 2000)
Imagine walking by a Starbucks in an unfamiliar city. Your
mobile phone rings, and a coupon for coffee appears
on its screen, good only at that location.
How did your phone know you were even near that particular Starbucks?
What else does it know about you?
Enter location tracking, coming to a mobile device near you. Features that
one day can pinpoint your whereabouts to within the length of a football field
raise enormous privacy concerns, but they also offer enormous benefits.
The challenge will be determining where to draw the line.
Consider a technology to be unveiled Monday. Called Digital Angel, a
microchip worn close to the body promises to record a person's biological
parameters and send distress signals during medical emergencies.
But misused, these types of capabilities could amount to virtual stalking.
Cell phones, handheld devices, even car navigation systems will soon have
detailed tracking abilities, if they do not already. Services could begin
appearing within a year or so.
Much of the drive will come from a federal law that requires cell phones to
identify callers' locations to speed 911 emergency responses. If the
industry has to install expensive equipment anyway, why not use it also to
make money?
"There's going to be a dramatic increase in the amount of tracking that's
made possible, in part by services they don't know they have," said Daniel
J. Weitzner of the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets technical
standards for the Web.
Such tracking will let someone visit a Web site and automatically get
weather, movie showings or neighborhood restaurants, based on their
current location. If they're lost, they will be able to ask for turn-by-turn
directions. Those short of cash can be pointed to the nearest bank
machine.
But if the information is stored, location tracking could result in a
24-hour-a-day record of a person's whereabouts.
So what if a divorce lawyer wants to check if someone's been cheating, or
if a social service agent wants to know how many times a person has
visited a candy store with his child?
"You have to ask, `Who gets how much information?"' said Jason Catlett,
chief executive of Junkbusters Corp., a non-profit privacy monitoring group
in Green Brook, N.J.
"Telephone records are routinely subpoenaed. They can be very intrusive,
but far more intrusive is a complete log of your physical movement."
Companies looking to gain business from location tracking say that the
worst-case scenarios presented are impractical to implement in reality.
"There's no way a database is large enough or cost effective for Starbucks
to monitor everyone's location on the offchance they can acquire a
customer," said Jason Devitt, chief executive of Vindigo, which offers 11
city guides through Palm organizers.
Lee Hancock, founder and chief executive of go2 Systems Inc., said any
short-term gains from such tactics would be offset by losses if they alienate
customers.
Leading wireless and advertising companies agree that they must tread
carefully because mobile devices are inherently more personal than
desktop computers.
At DoubleClick Inc., whose ad-targeting system generated much of the
Net's privacy complaints, officials won't deliver location-based ads right
away. The company wants to develop privacy standards first, using lessons
from the desktop.
"We've all learned what to do and what not to do, and we can port that over
to the wireless market," said Jamie Byrne, strategic director for emerging
platforms at DoubleClick.
Any such ads will likely target a metropolitan region, rather than a city
block, because audiences for block-by-block ads would be too small, Byrne said.
Ultimately, he said, such targeting will help subsidize wireless services that
customers want.
Jonathan Fox, director of business development at advertising company
Engage Inc., says location-based profiles would not carry names and other
personal information.
TRUSTe, which runs a seal-of-approval program for Internet privacy
policies, is looking to develop guidelines for mobile applications. Details
that remain to be worked out include how to notify customers on a phone's
small screen.
"It's more difficult to retrofit policies if you're already down the road,"
said Robert Lewin, TRUSTe chief executive. "Here, we have the opportunity to
do it right the first time."
In many ways, a person's whereabouts are already being tracked.
Employee security cards record when people enter buildings. Discount
grocery programs track what people buy, where and when. Electronic toll-
payment systems know when someone traverses a tunnel or bridge.
Current phones can pinpoint callers to a few miles by determining the
location of the cell tower used to handle the call.
Palm VII organizers use similar techniques to narrow a user to a particular
zip code, and an optional global-positioning receiver can pinpoint that
person even further.
Marketers can also get clues from the items people search for or the sites
they visit - a city guide, for instance, tells in what city a person is likely
located or where they plan to visit.
But for the most part, marketers have yet to take full advantage of such
knowledge, and consumers have yet to complain.
"We're providing value," Palm spokesman Ted Ladd said. "Mobile users
are inherently in a hurry."
Wireless providers are not likely to have a use for storing location
information, except perhaps for applications that help with driving
directions.
Paul Reddick, vice president of product management and development
with Sprint PCS, said such storage is not practical, necessary or even
desirable.
"It takes years to build a brand and build trust," he said, "and you can blow
it pretty fast."
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International Arms Shows -The year in review
October 27, 2000
MP staff editors Oleg Kustov · Yuri Babushkin, Mark Ivtushok,
Anatoly Ilyin, Alexander Mozgovoi, Yuri Churyanov
A series of international exhibitions of armaments and military equipment
were held in May and June. At each of the exhibitions Military Parade Ltd.
had a stand of its own, featuring the Military Parade magazine. This article
offers a summary of this year's arms shows and the participation of Russian
exhibitors in them.
Hemus 2000
From May 30 to June 3, Bulgaria's Plovdiv hosted the 4th International
Exhibition of Defense Equipment, Hemus 2000. The Russian Government named
the Promexport company the organizer of the Russian exposition at the show.
Hemus exhibitions are of much interest to Russia as they can help it restore
the broken ties with other East European countries. The Russian defense
industry can offer these countries its services in modernizing their
armaments and combat vehicles and in supplying spare parts.
The interest in the Russian exposition at Hemus 2000 manifested a change in
the views of East European countries in favor of Russia's return to their
markets. Right were the analysts who predicted that the West would provide
only token financial aid to East European countries, wishing to join NATO,
for modernizing their armies and only at the stage of the Soviet bloc's
self-destruction. It became apparent soon that the economies of these
countries were too weak to support the re-armament of their armies according
to NATO standards.
Combat equipment in service with their armed forces now needs to be
modernized. As most of it was bought from Russia, its modernization can be
carried out only by Russian companies. This idea was repeatedly voiced in
Plovdiv. The need to cast aside old grudges was expressed particularly often
by Bulgarian business people.
Special interest in this connection was displayed in Promexport which can
supply the Bulgarian Army with spare parts and set up a series of joint
ventures to repair and modernize Bulgarian armaments and military equipment.
The Bulgarians expressed their interest in spare parts for the T-55, T-62
and T-72 tanks and in ammunition for the RPG-7 hand-held antitank grenade
launcher, Osa air defense missile system, and Gvozdika self-propelled
howitzer.
Promexport's exposition showed the company's extensive capacity for
modernizing armaments by using the latest technological achievements.
In particular, the Signal All-Russia Research Institute, based in the town
of Kovrov, offered a unique method for considerably increasing fire
effectiveness of artillery systems made decades ago. The method provides for
comprehensive fire control automation, from target reconnaissance to
automatic guidance and aiming.
The Novosibirsk Instrument-Making Plant showed night sights for small arms,
grenade launchers and artillery, which are easy to use and which are highly
resistant to light interference.
The Rosvertol company's helicopters remained in the focus of public
attention throughout the exhibition. They included the Mil Mi-26 heavy
transport helicopters which have no counterparts in the world, and the
Mi-24/35 multitask helicopters. Rosvertol offered a program for their
comprehensive modernization.
Bulgarian specialists also showed much interest in modernized projectiles
for the Grad multiple launch rocket system produced by the Splav State
Research and Production Enterprise.
The Plovdiv exhibition demonstrated that relations between Russia and its
former East European allies are slowly yet steadily developing. This factor
alone makes Russia's participation in the exhibition successful.
Border 2000
In late May, Moscow's All-Russia Exhibition Center hosted the 2nd Border
International Specialized Exhibition and the 2nd conference and workshop on
criminal law. The coincidence of the two events in time and venue was very
felicitous. It enabled specialists of the Federal Border Guard Service and
law enforcement bodies to get acquainted with the latest achievements in the
development of facilities for guarding borders, obtaining reliable
information and providing it promptly to border guard units.
The Border 2000 organizers - the Federal Border Guard Service and the
Bizon-95ST company - invited enterprises of Russia and the Commonwealth of
Independent States whose products cover all aspects of the border guard
service.
The border guard equipment displayed at the exhibition included technical
border control facilities; alarm systems; optical instruments (sights,
binoculars, night vision devices, target designation devices); devices for
detecting optronic instruments; video surveillance systems; communications
and navigation systems; uniforms outfit; armored vests; paper authenticity
identitification equipment; identification systems; etc.
Military attaches of many countries and representatives of foreign companies
displayed keen interest in the exhibition, which indicated the invariably
high quality of Russian-made armaments and equipment.
ILA 2000
From June 6 to 12, Schoenefeld, near Berlin, hosted the 5th International
Aerospace Exhibition, ILA 2000. This prestigious exhibition involved 941
companies from 38 countries, including Russia which participated in it for
the fourth time.
This year, the Russian Government named the Rosvoorouzhenie State
Corporation and the Russian Aerospace Agency co-organizers of the Russian
exposition.
Eleven enterprises and organizations of the Russian defense industry
displayed their products under Rosvoorouzhenie's aegis. The exposition was
aimed at maintaining the Russian defense industry's positions in Central and
East European countries which still use a large number of
Soviet/Russian-made armaments and military equipment.
The latest modification of the MiG-29 aircraft - the MiG-29SMT-2 fighter -
was the centerpiece of the exposition. The fighter, presented by
Rosvoorouzhenie jointly with the MiG Aircraft Corporation, had made a
nonstop flight from Russia to Germany.
A Russian-German joint venture, MAPS (MiG Aircraft Product Support GmbH),
offers various modernization packages of MiG-29 to Central and Eastern
Europe which bring the aircraft into line with NATO standards. MAPS was
founded in 1993 by Rosvoorouzhenie, MiG and Germany's DASA (DaimlerChrysler
Aerospace) for authorized modernization of Soviet-made aircraft. MAPS has
modernized 23 MiG-29 aircraft in service with the German Air Force, making
them into modern multitask planes that will remain in line with European Air
Force requirements for at least another 15 to 20 years.
The Sukhoi Design Bureau displayed at ILA 2000 its modern Su-30MK, Su-32 and
Su-33 aircraft, and programs for modernizing the Su-24MK bomber and the
Su-22M4 fighter-bomber.
The Nizhni Novgorod-based Sokol Aircraft Plant showed models of its main
products - the MiG-31 interceptor fighter and MiG-21-93 fighter which is a
modernized version of the MiG-21, the most widespread fighter in the world.
The Moscow Chernyshev Machine-Building Enterprise and the Ufa
Engine-Building Industrial Association displayed several types of engines
for MiG and Sukhoi aircraft.
The Urals Opto-Mechanical Plant displayed its optronic sighting systems,
laser rangefinders and some other optronic devices for Sukhoi and MiG
aircraft and helicopters.
The Tranzas company showed simulators for helicopter crews, and the Kamov
company displayed models of all its helicopters, which evoked great interest
among specialists.
The Myasishchev Electromechanical Plant demonstrated a unique electronic
surveillance aircraft, M55RTK, derived from the M-55 Geofizika high-altitude
plane.
The Directorate for the Overhaul of the Russian Armed Forces Aircraft
offered its overhaul programs to potential customers.
The Smolensk Aircraft Plant displayed the SM-92 Finist, and Yak-18T aircraft
and offered a program for re-equipping the Yak-40 aircraft.
The Kazan Helicopter Plant showed models of the Mi-38, ANSAD and Mi-17
helicopters.
The space section of the exposition featured developments by the
Mashinostroyenie Research and Production Association, the Kometa Central
Research Institute, the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space
Center, the Progress Central Specialized Design Bureau, and other companies
and organizations.
The exhibition revealed that Russia has everything it needs to feel
confident on the market of aerospace equipment, which has always been the
focus of Military Parade publications.
EUROSATORY 2000
The 5th International Land Defense Equipment Exhibition, Eurosatory 2000,
was held at Le Bourget, near Paris, in June. More than 830 companies from 38
countries participated in this most prestigious arms show.
Russia, which participated in Eurosatory for the third time, was represented
by Rosvoorouzhenie which mounted an exposition of small arms and mockups of
advanced weapon systems made by 16 Russian defense industry enterprises.
The exposition featured the latest and modernized versions of armored
personnel carriers and infantry combat vehicles (BTR-90 and BMP-3), and
missile/gun and antitank weapons (Iskander-E, Smerch, Uragan and Grad
multiple launch rocket systems, Khrizantema antitank guided missile system,
and others).
Air defense missile systems (Igla, Pechora-2, S-300PMU2 Favorit and S-300VM)
occupied a traditionally prominent place at the exhibition.
Small arms displayed at the exhibition included the 7.62mm Pecheneg
machine-gun, SPP-1M pistol and APS underwater assault rifle, Kashtan
submachine gun, and the new 30mm AGS-30 grenade launcher.
At Eurosatory, Military Parade Ltd. introduced its catalog Russia's Arms
2000. The catalog evoked great interest among Russian and foreign
specialists. Military Parade Ltd. has already begun work on an updated
version of the catalog, Russia's Arms 2001, which is due to come out next
March and be introduced at the IDEX International Defense Exhibition in Abu
Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates.
UDT EUROPE 2000
In late June, London hosted the UDT Europe 2000 exhibition of undersea
defense technologies, which involved over 60 companies.
This year, the exhibition focused on mine detection and demolition
facilities. Sonars and remotely controlled underwater vehicles, displayed by
French, U.S., British, Dutch and German companies, are intended to ensure
antimine defense at a large range.
Much to the disappointment of visitors to the exhibition, Russia's
participation in UDT Europe 2000 was far too modest. The Military Parade
magazine helped, to some extent, meet the high demand for information on
Russian undersea technologies. Its articles about the modernization of
Kilo-class submarines, mine-search sonars made by the Taganrog-based Priboi
plant, a portable hydroacoustic range developed by the Marine Heat
Engineering Research Institute, and other equipment evoked much interest
among visitors to the exhibition and participants in a conference held
within the exhibition's framework.
Balt-Military-Expo 2000
A stroke of a ship's bell marked the opening of the 3rd Baltic Defense
Exhibition in Poland's Gdansk in late June. The exhibition traditionally
featured naval armaments and military equipment.
Naturally, the largest exposition at Balt-Military-Expo 2000 was mounted by
Polish companies. Foreign companies that are particularly active on this
market include Germany's Lurssen, and Blohm & Voss, and the Swedish-German
HDW group which includes Germany's Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG and
Sweden's Kockums AB. These companies displayed their capacities for
designing, building, modernizing and repairing ships and training their
crews.
The U.S. Raytheon offered missile systems for the Navy, Air Force and Air
Defense Forces, which can be used from various carriers.
The French-Italian Eurotorp concern has been actively promoting its torpedo
technologies. In former years, Russia held a leading position in this field.
However, Russian torpedoes were not displayed at Balt-Military-Expo 2000.
The Military Parade representatives at the exhibition were often asked about
the exposition of Russian producers. Much to our visitors' regret, the
Russian shipbuilding industry was not represented at the show. Russian
producers of naval armaments and military equipment seem to be yielding this
market without even trying to retain their positions, although Russia's
neighbors still display interest in its products.
During the exhibition, the United States presented to Poland a missile
frigate which had been in service with the U.S. Navy for 20 years. The
official ceremony was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright. Commenting on this event in private conversations, Poles said
jokingly that the frigate's utilization at a U.S. shipyard would apparently
have cost the U.S.A. more.
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Engaged in an endless pursuit of dissenters
Thursday, October 26, 2000
His findings helped Phila. police get a warrant for a key
convention-protest raid.
By Craig R. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and Linda K. Harris [PHILADELPHIA] INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
BALTIMORE - Sipping tea, surrounded by jammed bookcases
filled with weighty nonfiction and spy thrillers, John H.
Rees lays out a dizzying tale.
He talks of millions of missing rubles, riches that
disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. Of how that
money resurfaced to bankroll a new anticapitalist movement.
He talks of his network of informants, of his prodigious
research, and of the naivete of those who think the
communist threat is gone.
It is a threat, he says, that recently manifested itself in
Philadelphia.
"I believe that elements of communism still exist and are
advanced internationally and in America by groups such as
those that tried to disrupt the GOP convention."
Though his critics see Rees as an imaginative latter-day Joe
McCarthy, Pennsylvania State Police used Rees' findings in
seeking a warrant to raid a West Philadelphia warehouse that
protesters used as a puppet-making factory and as a staging
area. On Aug. 1, the second day of the Republican National
Convention and the day of the most intense protests, more
than 75 people at the warehouse were arrested and charged
with misdemeanors.
In hearings today and in coming weeks, defense lawyers hope
to convince a judge to dismiss those prosecutions and
others, on grounds that the use of Rees' information by
police shows the political nature of the arrests.
"With a warrant that reads like a political tract, the
Philadelphia Police entered the Haverford Avenue workshop
and arrested everyone who happened to be present," declares
one motion filed by the Defender Association of
Philadelphia, whose lawyers represent dozens of protesters.
The motion derided the affidavits as being "replete with
McCarthyite allegations. Such statements have no role in a
probable-cause affidavit, except to smear the defendants as
subversives."
In court last week, Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon
questioned the use of Rees' allegations. "Who are these
people who gave you this information and what makes it so
reliable?" he asked prosecutors.
Who, indeed, is John Rees?
For four decades, Rees, 74, onetime Washington editor for
the John Birch Society, has tracked protest and dissent -
from antiwar demonstrators in the 1960s to today's
anti-globalization movement.
He feeds his research to a special audience -
law-enforcement agencies - publishing his findings in a
series of obscure periodicals. His alliances in the past
with police in Washington, New York state, and Los Angeles
have left behind a trail of outrage.
Sometimes, Rees has infiltrated groups himself, using a
false name on occasion. He also says he has many sources.
"We have stringers," Rees said in an interview at his home
and office here. "We don't do what the FBI does, which is to
go to an unemployment line, give them $10, and ask them to
go to the meetings."
Rees says that much of the time he draws upon
already-published information from newspapers or public
petitions and the like. Of late, he has been relying heavily
on the Internet.
Since 1985, the Maldon Institute - relying on nearly
$2million from Pittsburgh philanthropist Richard Mellon
Scaife - has churned out monographs on everything from
protests against the World Bank to rebel movements in
Colombia and Uzbekistan.
In the search-warrant affidavits, the state police quoted
from a recent Maldon Institute report, citing unnamed
sources, that linked protesters to Communist money.
"Funds allegedly originate with Communist and leftist
parties and from sympathetic trade unions," the police
declared in the affidavits.
Rees said he was surprised that state police had used his
information, but he seemed delighted that they had.
"The material in the report was, in my opinion, accurate and
in the public domain," he said.
Moreover, he said, the radical protesters who have torn up
property last year in Seattle, and more recently in Prague,
were well-deserving of scrutiny.
"Do you think it's McCarthyite to criticize people who broke
up small businesses?" Rees said.
[Note: the Black Bloc specifically avoided attacking small
businesses -- their targets were giant, multinational
corporations. -- DC]
After Rees moved to the United States from England, his
career as an anticommunist began in the late 1960s. He had a
rocky start.
Though Rees has been invited by the FBI to speak at
antiterrorism conferences and has addressed one as recently
as April, a confidential FBI memo written in 1968, made
public later through a civil lawsuit, urged agents not to
deal with him.
"Rees is an unscrupulous unethical individual and an
opportunist who operates with a self-serving interest.
Information from him cannot be considered reliable," the
memo stated.
One of his earliest publications was the mimeographed
Information Digest. Rees gathered some of its material by
posing as a leftist himself. Among other things, it
contained lists of license plates of cars at a Black Panther
rally.
His activity went largely unnoticed until a scandal broke in
New York state as legislators learned that state police had
kept files with information on a million citizens. A
legislative committee conducted an inquiry.
"What was reported by Information Digest was casually used
to create dossiers on a wide spectrum of Americans whose
only crime was to dissent," the committee's 1976 report
found.
"Information Digest was the string that held together a
network of hidden informants whose information was recorded
by police departments throughout the nation without the
individual involved knowing of the process and without
independent checking by the police as to the validity and
source of this derogatory information."
The New York State Police abandoned that system of
intelligence gathering. In the next decade, a new furor
flared involving Rees - this time in Los Angeles. Police
officials there disclosed that a detective with the
"public-disorder intelligence division" had leaked
information to a private intelligence organization called
Western Goals, whose editor was Rees. The officer, Detective
Paul Jay, had a $30,000 contract with Western Goals to
create a data bank of suspected Communists and left-wing
groups.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued Western Goals in
1984 and won a court order forbidding it to disseminate the
information.
Undeterred, Rees, in 1985, founded the Maldon Institute -
the most polished undertaking of his long career. While the
ACLU and others criticized him in those years, he also
forged the relationship with the arch-conservative Scaife
and met with President Reagan, as memorialized in
photographs in Rees' home.
The institute, named after an obscure English battle,
publishes 10 bound monographs a year and a twice-monthly
newsletter called Early Warning.
Its board has been made up of conservative journalists,
clergy and lawyers. A board chairman in the early 1990s,
Michael G. Flanagan, pleaded guilty in 1996 to grand larceny
and was sent to prison after the Manhattan District
Attorney's Office charged him with stealing $1million from
clients in his private practice.
Rees still likes to gather information firsthand. In
Philadelphia for the convention, Rees said, he toured the
puppet warehouse the day before the raid - one more bit of
surveillance for an aging agent.
To get inside, Rees used media credentials from a previous
protest march and he knew how to dress.
"Obviously, I don't wear a collar or tie," he said.
Rees said he was surprised, however, at the inadequate
security at the door.
"I just walked in," he said, speaking as a man who clearly
enjoys his work. "It's something I'll do."
His tour produced little fodder for publishing.
"I saw nothing extraordinary," Rees recalled. "Nothing to
write about. Not at all."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linked stories:
********************
Anti-Hacking Law to take Effect
<http://securityfocus.com/templates/article.html?id=107>
Under the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA), it will be unlawful for anyone to "circumvent a technological
measure that effectively controls access" to a copyrighted work. To do so
for commercial advantage or personal profit will be a felony carrying up
to five years in prison.
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti
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