Thursday, February 25, 2010






We would like to notify you that Microsoft has contacted us regarding www.cryptome.org. Microsoft has withdrawn their DMCA complaint. As a result www.cryptome.org has been reactivated and this matter has been closed. Please allow time for the reactivation to propagate throughout the various servers around the world.

WTF IS MICROSOFT DOING THROWING ITS' WEIGHT AROUND ANYHOW? IT IS NOT LIKE JOHN YOUNG PUBLISHED THE CODE FOR INTERNET EXPLORER. I HOPE ALL THE DISGRUNTLED MALCONTENTS AT MICROSOFT START LEAKING TONS OF "SENSITIVE DATA" TO CRYPTOME. MICROSOFT HAS AN INCOME STREAM UNRIVALED BY MOST COMPANIES, JOHN YOUNG RUNS CRYPTOME BECAUSE IT IS HIS PASSION. IF IT WERE NOT FOR LEAKERS, WE WOULD NOT HAVE, "THE PENTAGON PAPERS", NEWS OF THE "WATERGATE SCANDAL", "THE DOWNING STREET MEMO" AND A TON OF OTHER INFORMATION, "THEY" PREFER TO KEEP HIDDEN FROM YOU SO "THEY" CAN CONTINUE THEIR BUSINESS, UNFETTERED. F*** MICROSOFT! HURRAY FOR JOHN YOUNG AND CRYPTOME! http://cryptome.org/

Wednesday, February 24, 2010










We will host Cryptome on our multi-jurisdictional network-outside the US-if required.
FIND SPY PDF HERE;
or here
Network Solutions also appear to have also seized Cryptome.org's domain name over the Microsoft threats. via bit.ly

CONFIRMED: Cryptome, venerable anti-secrecy site, entirely gagged over Microsoft-spy-manual. Abuse of DMCA to coverup. via bit.ly
Background on outrageous Cryptome take down http://bit.ly/dicBtN via bit.ly

We will host Cryptome on our multi-jurisdictional network-outside the US-if required. via bit.ly

Privatized prior restraint? Cryptome disabled after recent threats by Microsoft over MS spy-guide. http://cryptome.org/ via bit.ly

Site Leaks Microsoft Online Surveillance Guide, MS Demands Takedown Under Copyright Law (UPDATE 4)
by Robert Quigley 9:31 am, February 24th, 2010

Cryptome, a whistleblower site that regularly leaks sensitive documents from governments and corporations, is in hot water again: this time, for publishing Microsoft’s “Global Criminal Compliance Handbook,” a comprehensive, 22-page guide running down the surveillance services Microsoft will perform for law enforcement agencies on its various online platforms, which includes detailed instructions for IP address extraction. You can find the guide here (warning: PDF). not anymore.

Microsoft has demanded that Cryptome take down the guide — on the grounds that it constitutes a “copyrighted [work] published by Microsoft.” Yesterday, at 5pm, Cryptome editor John Young received a notice from his site’s host, Network Solutions, bearing a stiff ultimatum: citing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Network Solutions told him that unless he takes the “copyrighted material” down, they will “disable [his] website” on Thursday, February 25, 2010.
So far, Young refuses to budge.

Cryptome is no stranger to controversy: last year, when it leaked a detailed surveillance guide from Yahoo, which, embarrassingly enough, included a pricing sheet tallying up the costs of its various services, Yahoo demanded its takedown, also under DMCA. (The Microsoft guide doesn’t contain a pricing list.) Cryptome refused to back down, and the guide is still up.
Geekosystem swapped emails with Young about the situation, and he said that if Network Solutions follows through and takes Cryptome down on the 25th, “we will set up elsewhere, arrangements are always ready for that.”

He had this to say when we asked him what he found most repugnant about Microsoft’s guide:
Most repugnant in the MS guide was its improper use of copyright to conceal from its customer violations of trust toward its customers. Copyright law is not intended for confidentiality purposes, although firms try that to save legal fees. Copyright bluffs have become quite common, as the EFF initiative against such bluffs demonstrates.
Second most repugnant is the craven way the programs are described to ease law enforcement grab of data. This information would also be equally useful to customers to protect themselves when Microsoft cannot due to its legal obligations under CALEA.
There are other means to maintain confidentiality of legal obligations as lawyers well know. Claims of copyright violation is merely the cheapest and quickest way to coerce a service provider, no expensive lawyers needed. And it is a cheap and fast way to hide information from competitors as Yahoo intended with its false copyright claim.
There are many firms with similar obligations to law enforcement who do not use copyright to hide the compliance process — Cisco for one puts its compliance procedures online, as do others.
We think all lawful spying arrangements should be made public, not necessary the legally-protected information under CALEA. Microsoft should join the others who openly describe the procedures, and just may do so if there is a public demand for it.
We would like to aid that demand by publishing and refusing to take down the document which provides very important public benefits.
Microsoft’s lawful compliance guide is one of a dozen or so (below) we have published recently and only Microsoft and Yahoo have behaved like assholes — probably because they are more afraid of the authorities than they are of customer wrath, having been burned repeatedly for not being sufficiently official ass-kissing.
So, briefly:
1. Microsoft’s use of copyright rather than other mechanisms to try to take down the guide [note that Yahoo tried to do the same thing],
2. The asymmetry of information Microsoft provides to consumers and law enforcement agencies under CALEA, or the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which Cryptome is meant to rectify, and, implicitly,
3. The strength and speed of Microsoft’s response: this past weekend, Cryptome also published electronic surveillance guides from Facebook, AOL, and Skype, among others (warning: all PDFs), but according to Young, none of those companies “behaved like assholes” by calling for a takedown, much less by using copyright law to do so.

Since the mid-’90s, Cryptome has been an unrelenting clearinghouse of information, and its all-text, minimalist look bespeaks the Wild West vibe of the early Internet days. In 2007, its ISP, Verio, booted it for some of its leaks. At the time, Young wrote, “Cryptome is now on a new ISP, Network Solutions, another US giant like Verio, closely linked to the authorities. We’ll see if it can take the heat or cave.”

Well, with the Microsoft surveillance guide leak, the heat is on. Whether Network Solutions backs down from its takedown threat or enforces it, it’s not likely that February 25th will be the end for Cryptome: it’s weathered bigger leaks and fallouts in the past.

Update, 1:47pm EST: Young has received another notice from Network Solutions asking that he provide a counter-notification in compliance with the DMCA. His response can be found on Cryptome.
Update 2, 2:20pm EST: Well, it looks like Network Solutions didn’t even wait for their February 25th deadline; Cryptome is down.They took the site down as soon as they received the counter-notification.

Young says there is a “NetSol ‘Legal Lock’ on the domain name to prevent it being transferred to another ISP until the “dispute” is settled; All Cryptome pages other than the home page now generate a 404 message.”
Currently, Cryptome’s files are being transferred to a new domain, http://cryptomeorg.siteprotect.net/; Young says they will be transferred back when the lock is removed.
(Minor) Update 3, 4:30pm EST: As one Hacker News reader points out, Network Solutions is 4chan.org’s ISP. How about that.

Update 4: Wikileaks has offered to host Cryptome for the time being, via Twitter. “We will host Cryptome on our multi-jurisdictional network-outside the US-if required.” They’re currently hosting a copy of the surveillance guide. (warning: PDF.)

Microsoft Online’s Global Criminal Compliance Guide does not do this. The Microsoft guide is a description of the ways in which the Microsoft Corporation retains your data, providing law enforcement easy access to some of your most intimate information, including private messages. The publication of such material is clearly protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, regardless of any copyright claims.

* As a side note, the recent glut of new spying documents on Cryptome as well as the Microsoft Online’s Global Criminal Compliance Guide were taken from the same server on which Public Intelligence found the Network Intrusion Responder Program (NITRO) Course. The files were a part of a 292 MB file containing all slides, documents, and information from the 2009 Crimes Against Children Conference. While we do not begrudge Mr. Young for publishing these documents prior to us, which we had intended to do, we are concerned with the fact that access to the files had already been disabled at the time that we notified Cryptome regarding the U.S. Secret Service’s notices to us about the NITRO course. This is clearly stated in the Secret Service messages and was subsequently verified by us. In fact, there are only four ways that Mr. Young could have obtained the documents:
Via the owner of intelizone.com (not likely)
Via the Secret Service (not likely)
Via a visitor to both Cryptome and this site who had the foresight to download the 292 MB zip file, search through its contents, and systematically provide the documents to Mr. Young (less likely)
Via us (not true)
This perplexes us. We have the entire 292 MB file and will likely make the information available in the coming days.
Related posts:
German government warns against using MS Explorer
U.S. Secret Service Requests Removal of Documents from Public Intelligence
NSA helped with Windows 7 development
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook

Anyone with money and an army of lawyers can control the dissemination of information. Even when there is a compelling reason for the public to have access to that information, such as the policies concerning retention of their own information, companies may simply invoke a set of laws and statues designed to protect the legitimate contributions of artists, intellectuals, and creators.

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE FOR THIS STORY.http://publicintelligence.net/

Radar has just published an extensive profile feature on John Young, the New York-based architect who is better known as one of the net's most ardent foes of government secrecy:
Cryptome is, in the words of washingtonpost.com columnist and NBC News military analyst William Arkin, "the Google of national security." It is a meticulously maintained online compendium of information—some previously available to the public, some not—devoted to plumbing and exposing the secrets of the intelligence world. With a clean, crisp design, it presents, in no discernible order, simple red links to documents and text files against a white background. Much of the material Young collects is stultifyingly dull—"RFC Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code" will take the reader to an announcement in the Federal Register concerning a "mechanism for message authentication using cryptographic hash functions and shared secret keys" from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for 
instance—but some of it is dangerous and even breathtaking.
During the past few years, Young has published detailed overhead satellite imagery of Site R, a military installation in Pennsylvania that he claims is Vice President Dick Cheney's undisclosed location. Hours after the FBI announced charges in June against four men for plotting to blow up jet-fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Cryptome ran photos of the airport tank farms, pointing out the exact route of a jet-fuel pipeline buried beneath nearby residential neighborhoods. He regularly publishes satellite photos of the homes of intelligence officials, including CIA Director Michael Hayden's Washington, D.C., residence. He has exposed the names of what he claims are 276 British agents covertly working for MI6, the names of 400 secret Japanese intelligence agents, and the names and home addresses of what he claims are 2,619 CIA sources.
(...) The closest Young comes to explaining to me why he created Cryptome is this: "I'm a pretty fucking angry guy."Link to "Secrets and Lies," by John Cook. (Thanks, David Cho)
Previously on Boingboing:
Cryptome.org, repository of sensitive docs, gets shutdown notice
ABC News story on Cryptome.org

INTERESTING READ-HERE; http://www.wired.com/vanish/

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

























Thank you for your interest in this little blog, written on the shores of the Great Lakes! Just remember-we have the water!

We are living in interesting times, the speed of media is unreal, and changes are happening at an accelerated rate. Hang on for the ride, it is just starting to get really intense!






THESE RICH AMERICAN BLUEBLOODS SURE KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE SYSTEM! McCOURT HAS PAID 0 TAXES FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS. THE AUDITORS OUGHT TO LOOK UP THIS GUYS ASS WITH A MICROSCOPE AND DO A FORENSIC AUDIT ON ALL OF HIS MONEY MAKING ACTIVITIES. I'M SURE HE HAS AN ARMY OF HIGH PRICED LAWYERS AND ACCOUNTANTS ON THE PAYROLL TO "PROTECT HIM FROM PAYING ANY TAXES". DIVORCE COURT BRINGS ALL THIS OUT-MRS. WANTS ONE MILLION A MONTH SUPPORT!

from the LA Times,
By Michael Hiltzik
February 24, 2010

To everyone who claims that our wealthiest citizens pay more than their fair share of income taxes and we should cut them a break because they're the ones who, you know, create jobs in our economy, I have four words for you:Frank and Jamie McCourt.

The McCourts, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers (so she says; he says he's the owner and she's not), jointly pocketed income totaling $108 million from 2004 through 2009, according to documents Jamie McCourt recently filed in the couple's divorce case in Los Angeles County Superior Court. On that sum, they paid zero federal and state income tax. Jamie suggests that some tax breaks will apply this year too.
This reminds me of the old line about how true scandal lies not in what's illegal, but what's legal. It's certainly an edifying window into the lengths some people will go to avoid paying taxes. The court papers indicate that the McCourts deliberately structured their business at least partially to allow them to live tax-free.
Frank McCourt's lawyer, Marc Seltzer, didn't directly dispute Jamie's characterizations of the couple's tax planning or the details of their finances. He did, however, call her document filings "selective" and complained by e-mail that she made public "information which most people would respect as private." According to Jamie, the McCourts employed two mechanisms to live tax-free. One was to claim enormous tax losses from their business, which was mostly commercial real estate before they bought the Dodgers. These could be carried forward, offsetting income year after year until they were finally netted out. Jamie's documents say that in 2008 the net loss carry-forward from previous years was $109 million -- in other words, the McCourts could have earned that much without paying a penny of income tax.A year later, the loss carry-forward had increased to $135 million, which makes it sound as if 2008 was one horrible year. Yet according to another document Jamie filed in court, one of Frank's partnerships paid him $23 million that year.Did the McCourts really lose $135 million in the years before 2009? Probably not in the sense that you or I suffer a loss when a dollar bill slips through a hole in our jeans, or even when we sell that stock our brother-in-law described as "a slam dunk" for less than we paid for it.
"They're tax losses. I don't mean real losses," Jamie's lawyer, Bert Fields, told me.Fields, who assured me that everything the McCourts have done is legitimate, tax-wise, wasn't entirely clear on how the losses were generated. But Jamie's accountant states in a court document that some is due to depreciation, which is a way of accounting for wear and tear on a property. Depreciation is a non-cash expense that can be applied against cash income, reducing your income taxes or creating a loss to show the tax man, even though you're making money. It's common in real estate, though it can also be applied to things like a sports team's player contracts.
Depreciation is technically a tax deferral, not an exemption, but the reckoning can be years off.In any case, one would also think that if the McCourts' business were truly suffering operating losses of such magnitude, eventually it would no longer have the proverbial urn to fill. It's unclear whether this is so -- the document dump includes a 2007 e-mail from an officer of the McCourt Group, one of the family's major holding companies, observing that the group "has squat for assets" and needs "start up capital and cash flow" -- but that's just one subsidiary.
Another McCourt maneuver involves financing and refinancing their assets. The tax rules allow real estate owners to refinance properties with rising values and take out cash tax-free. (Many homeowners engaged in similar "cash out" refis during the housing boom). Land developers can transfer tax credits from property to property, like an NFL team booting a fumbled ball toward the goal line, until time runs out or the market crashes.
The McCourts have also borrowed against future business income -- in 2007 they took out a $140-million loan against future Dodger ticket sales, of which $20 million went to fund their lifestyles, tax-free. Of course, when the loan comes due, the piper will have to be paid, but interest on the loan will be tax-deductible for the Dodgers, Jamie's lawyers say. It's proper to acknowledge that tax breaks like these can have a legitimate purpose. The idea is that they encourage certain investments, such as real estate development, that may energize the economy and create jobs. Is that what's happening here? The tax benefits reaped by the McCourts helped turbocharge their lifestyle. There are eight houses, including four in Holmby Hills and Malibu. The McCourts treated their family and business checkbooks as "largely one and the same," according to an e-mail from a McCourt executive Jamie filed in court. (Oddly, the e-mail ascribes to her the philosophy of "why have a family business but to support the family lifestyle.") This paid for meals in the best restaurants, floral arrangements for home and office from the finest florists, country club dues, personal travel on the Dodgers plane, Jamie's makeup "for Dodger events" ($386 a month). The point is not to begrudge the McCourts these luxuries. The point is to question why we as taxpayers should subsidize them. Jamie asserts that, although the state of Massachusetts is auditing the couple's personal returns for 2006 (they used to be based in the Bay State), neither California nor the Internal Revenue Service is doing so.
This raises another question: Why not?Can we as taxpayers be confident we aren't paying more than our fair share? Jamie alleges that for the purposes of the divorce, Frank has manipulated the business accounts to make himself look $670 million poorer than he is. Delivering fake numbers to the IRS is a rather different matter from delivering them to your spouse in a divorce action, but the McCourts structured their business as a stew with a lot of complicated ingredients, which makes it hard to verify that all the tax breaks are fully warranted.
People who practice tax avoidance on this scale don't often emerge with their images unsullied. When a Senate committee revealed in 1933 that J.P. Morgan Jr. and his partners had paid no income taxes for 1930, 1931 and 1932, their reputation for probity was shattered; the uproar helped the New Deal bring Wall Street under regulation.
Leona Helmsley's 1989 conviction for tax evasion wrecked her elegant image forever (I am not suggesting the McCourts broke the law, as she did). But she did bequeath us the credo of the wealthy non-taxpayer. "Only the little people pay taxes," she reportedly told a maid.
The lesson of the McCourts is slightly different: The little people pay taxes for the big people.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. E-mail michael.hiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at www.latimes.com/hiltzik, and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.


Sunday, February 21, 2010











If Teamsters General President James Hoffa is correct, there will never be another Mexican truck to come into the U.S. past the commercial trade zone and vice versa because the border will remain closed.
“Wall Street and big business got NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and CAFTA (Central America Trade Agreement) and the workers got the SHAFTA,” Hoffa told a rally of some 200 representatives from a local union here today in a play on acronyms. “We’re telling Washington to stop with these bad trade deals.
“We got the border closed to unsafe Mexican trucks and we’re keeping it closed. The Teamsters did that, nobody else did that – the Teamsters did that.”
Hoffa ended the rally by calling for more action.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us. There’s change going on. The tea-baggers show up and are against Social Security and Medicare,” Hoffa told those gathered at the rally. “They even want to shut down the VA hospitals. The Republicans are moving to the far, far right. We have to have a government that fights for us. We have to change everything that we’re doing to put Americans and Teamsters back to work. That’s our message. Let’s get to work.”
Congress killed the Cross Border Demonstration Project last March.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told a news conference in Mexico last week that the Obama administration had taken the first step in coming up with a new program when it convinced Congress not to prohibit a cross-border program in the 2010 omnibus spending bill.
The 2009 bill included the language that stopped the program.
The Trucker staff may be contacted to comment at editor@thetrucker.com.
http://www.pocomoketattler.com/?p=353