Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (680601)	4/25/2005 11:35:21 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Like I said: the mind-numbingly over-complex attempt at a constitution is going down for the count.

To: goldworldnet who wrote (680601)	4/26/2005 8:12:47 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 769670

Al-Zarqawi eluded raid but left clues, source says Photos, phone numbers among intelligence found on laptop By Richard Engel NBC News correspondent Updated: 8:05 a.m. ET April 26, 2005BAGHDAD, Iraq - American special forces were tracking Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaida in Iraq, near the town of Ramadi two months ago, but the Jordanian-born terrorist leader escaped by jumping out of a moving vehicle, a senior U.S. military source tells NBC News. Al-Zarqawi did, however, leave behind several key pieces of intelligence, the source said, the most important of which was his laptop computer. Photos of suspected insurgents released by the military last month were taken from the "My Pictures" folder of that laptop, the source said. It was also full of telephone numbers. Also left behind in the car was a bag with about $100,000 in euro currency. Another bag contained mini, plugin harddrives, the source said, and evidently al-Zarqawi was using these to distribute information to his network in Iraq. Iraqi officials had earlier revealed that al-Zarqawi's driver had been taken into custody near Ramadi in a Feb. 20 operation and voiced optimism that coalition forces were close to capturing him. At the Pentagon, other U.S. military officials said special forces have "come close" to capturing al-Zarqawi on several occasions over the past several months and have gathered intelligence, primarily from al-Zarqawi associates caught in the raids. But even with the setbacks he's suffered, al-Zarqawi is still able to carry out strikes like the recent sophisticated assault on the Abu Ghraib prison, and daily suicide bombings by followers.

To: goldworldnet who wrote (680601)	4/27/2005 11:36:28 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Bowing to Critics, U.S. to Alter Design of Electronic Passports By ERIC LIPTON April 27, 2005 nytimes.com WASHINGTON, April 26 - Responding to fears raised by privacy advocates that new electronic passports might be vulnerable to high-tech snooping, the State Department intends to modify the design so that an embedded radio chip holding a digitized photograph and biographical information is more secure. The move comes after protests by groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. They argued that the proposed new electronic passports, which would broadcast personal information to speed processing of travelers, would have served as a virtual bull's-eye for terrorists or others who wanted to harm Americans. Frank E. Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said in an interview on Tuesday that government tests confirmed privacy advocates' suspicions that the electronic passport might be vulnerable to so-called skimming from a greater distance than officials had previously said, meaning a matter of three or so feet instead of inches. "You do perhaps face a risk of a reading without the knowledge of the passport bearer, and that is obviously something we want to protect against," Mr. Moss said. To prevent that, the special electronic passport readers used by Customs officials in the United States and their counterparts around the world would use data printed on the new passport to effectively unlock the radio chip before it would transmit the personal electronic information it holds, Mr. Moss said. The personal data flowing to the passport reader would also be encrypted, so that someone trying to use an unauthorized electronic reader in the area could not intercept and decipher the identity of the passport holder, he said, confirming a report about the design changes that first appeared Tuesday on the Wired.com Internet site. The United States government has not yet started to buy these high-tech passport readers, but the technology is already being developed for some European nations that are planning to introduce their own passports with radio chips embedded. Finally, as previously announced, the passport cover would also be layered with a protective metallic material. Adding these security features may delay the introduction of the electronic passport, which the State Department had said it planned to start sometime this year, gradually replacing all existing passports, as they expire, over the next decade. The effort was begun because the electronic passport would be extremely difficult to forge and the digital image embedded in the chip could be electronically compared to a photograph taken at the border, ensuring with some certainty that the person possessing the passport is the same person to whom it was legally issued. The questions about the electronic passport format may ultimately increase pressure on the United States to give other nations more time to start issuing their own new passports. Currently, nations that want their citizens to continue to be able to visit this country without a visa have until Oct. 26 this year to introduce passports that have tamper-resistant biometric data, like the radio chip. There are 27 of these so-called visa waiver nations, mostly from Europe. Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Bill Scannell, a publicist from Washington who organized a campaign to block the introduction of the radio-chip-based passport, said Tuesday they were pleased that the State Department was taking steps to address the security flaws identified in the original design. But along with other privacy and computer security experts, they said they remained concerned that the new passports might still be vulnerable to some kind of prying. "The State Department seems to be putting down the purple Kool-Aid and looking at the serious problem this technology presents," said Mr. Scannell, who runs an Internet site called RFIDKills.com; the first part of the name stands for radio frequency identification chips. "But no matter how much stuff you layer on the technology, it is still inappropriate." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company