Monthly Archives: February 2004

Please Help Cure My Ignorance About Home Networks

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I know from the email and blog comments I get that I have really smart readers. Many of them are people I've met at one time or another, many others are people I hope to meet someday. (By and large they seem more willing to email than to post comments; perhaps shyness comes with wisdom?) Certainly, every time I've asked for any sort of tech help here, the responses have been overwhelmingly useful. So I can't resist asking again.

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Posted in Adventures in Remodeling | 1 Comment

A Day of Remembrance

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Read Eric Muller on why today, Feb. 19, ought to be designated as a day of remembrance.

Posted in Civil Liberties | Comments Off on A Day of Remembrance

Chalabi Unrepentant

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Here's today's compare and contrast: an item in the UK Daily Telegraph with an item in The Dreyfuss Report, which looks to be yet another great blog without an RSS feed (grrr).

Telegraph, Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime:

Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. “We are heroes in error,” he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

“As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. …”

…

Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was “shaky”.

“What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture,” a senior official in Baghdad said. “But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives.”

Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, but his star in Washington has waned.

Dreyfuss Report, Chalabi Scandal (Yes, Another One):

Thanks to Newsday, and to Knut Royce, one of the all-time great reporters, we now know that Chalabi is not just a liar. He's also on the take. Royce reports that Chalabi-connected cronies—including members of his enormous family—have pocketed contracts from the Pentagon worth more than $400 million. One of them, Royce reports, allows former INC militiamen to provide security for Iraq's oil industry, giving huge power to a “private army” and giving Chalabi a lot of clout over Iraq's single most important source of cash. The second one is a deal to supply Iraq's fledgling armed forces.

Interestingly, one of Chalabi's named cronies in the Newsday story also was the beneficiary during the 1980s of millions of dollars from Chalabi's Jordan-based Petra Bank. It was Chalabi's looting of Petra Bank back then that led to the seizure of the bank by Jordanian authorities, Chalabi's fleeing from justice, and his eventual conviction (in absentia) for embezzling and fraud, for which he was sentenced to 22 years at hard labor. (The sentence still stands.)

Posted in Iraq | 2 Comments

Laughter Is a Good Disinfectant

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Karl Rove did a fundraiser in New York. Outside, the natives were restless.

Now in Previews, Political Theater in the Street: At one point, as hundreds of guests with invitations waited to pass through velvet barriers to enter the club, a small group of men in bowler hats and women in gowns marched up, chanting, “Four more wars” and “Re-elect Rove.”

As the group approached, a man who appeared to be a security agent of some type, was overheard whispering into a microphone: “We've got two groups. One for and one against.”

Actually, it was two against. The person was confused by a group that calls itself Billionaires for Bush, a collection of activists who use satire to make a political point. Indeed, members of the Sierra Club, who were protesting on the other side of the street were also confused and began shouting at what they thought was a pro-Bush contingent.

“We want the truth and we want it now!” the Sierra protesters shouted.

The billionaires shouted back, “Buy your own president!”

I hope we see lots more of this. Especially during the Republican convention.

Posted in Politics: US | 2 Comments

Meet Dudley Hiibel

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I'm going to be writing in detail about this case, so I will put off blogging about it until I have my ideas sorted, but let me just say for now that Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, Humboldt County looks to be a major, major privacy/civil liberties case.

Posted in ID Cards and Identification | 1 Comment

Spam Comes From Florida?

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I thought spam came from Taiwan, China and Korea these days. I was wrong.

AOL puts heat on alleged Sunshine State spammers: America Online reported on Wednesday that it has filed a civil suit against four Florida-based individuals who the company believes are responsible for sending massive amounts of spam e-mail to its members.

The giant Internet service provider said it brought the case in the U.S. District Court of Florida, Orlando Division, because the so-called “Sunshine State spammers” violated the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and Florida common law, by sending an avalanche of unsolicited e-mail to its subscribers. In the suit, AOL seeks damages of $1.6 million in addition to other forms of compensation, including potential asset forfeiture.

According to Dulles, Va.-based AOL, the Florida defendants teamed up with parties in Thailand to barrage AOL members with more than 35 million spam messages over the course of several years. The company said it first became aware of the group in January 2003 via a wave of 1.5 million user complaints and immediately launched an investigation into the spammer's operations. The scheme reportedly involved an onslaught of e-mail messages loaded with hypertext links advertising low mortgage rate offers for AOL members.

As part of its investigation, AOL said it was able to procure some 40 pages of text taken from instant-messaging conversations held between the defendants and their alleged Thailand partners. In those conversations, seized under a court order, the parties openly referred to AOL as a potential “goldmine” for spam and detailed their methods for evading the company's spam protection tools.

…

Florida is known as something of a hotbed for spam-related activity, with the Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) identifying three of the world's top 10 known spammers as residing in the state, more than any other in the United States.

I guess at least it shows not everything is outsourced…

Posted in Florida | Comments Off on Spam Comes From Florida?