Mobile Phone Companies Provide Real Time Tracking Information to Feds; Probable Cause Optional
November 23rd, 2007“It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet.”
Via: Washington Post:
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.
Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government’s request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.
The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its “loopt” service even sends an alert when a friend is near, “putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town.”
With Verizon’s Chaperone service, parents can set up a “geofence” around, say, a few city blocks and receive an automatic text message if their child, holding the cellphone, travels outside that area.
“Most people don’t realize it, but they’re carrying a tracking device in their pocket,” said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air.”
Is Your Bank at Risk of Failure?
November 23rd, 2007Via: Forbes/ABC News:
If your bank is failing, you probably won’t know about it. Regulators deliberately keep a pending closure secret to avoid a mad rush to remove deposits–a run on the bank, if you will. For one thing, a sale of the institution is often possible at the last minute, eliminating the need for federal intervention. But a buyer isn’t going to take on the deal if all the deposits rush out the door. For many customers, the first time they know their bank has been shut down is when their credit card gets declined or they walk to their branch and notice it’s closed.
Research Credit: PD
Global Derivatives Market Expands to $516 Trillion
November 23rd, 2007I thought, “This must be an Onion story.”
Nope.
Via: Bloomberg:
The market for derivatives grew at the fastest pace in at least nine years to $516 trillion in the first half of 2007, the Bank for International Settlements said.
Credit-default swaps, contracts designed to protect investors against default and used to speculate on credit quality, led the increase, expanding 49 percent to cover a notional $43 trillion of debt in the six months ended June 30, the BIS said in a report published late yesterday.
Derivatives of debt, currencies, commodities, stocks and interest rates rose 25 percent from the previous six months, the biggest jump since the Basel, Switzerland-based bank began compiling the data. Investors have been turning to credit derivatives as a way to speculate on a growing risk of defaults amid record U.S. mortgage foreclosures.
“The pace of increase in the credit segment outstripped the rises in other risk categories,” Christian Upper, a BIS analyst in Basel, wrote in the report. Credit-default swaps are “the dominant instrument,” accounting for 88 percent of credit derivatives, the BIS said.
The money at risk through credit-default swaps increased 145 percent from last year to $721 billion, the report said. The amount at stake in the entire derivatives market is $11.1 trillion, according to the BIS, which was formed in 1930 to monitor financial markets and regulate banks.
Research Credit: PD
Dollar Breakdown Continues, New Lows
November 23rd, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
The dollar dropped below 108 yen for the first time since 2005 and fell to a record low against the euro on speculation deepening U.S. credit-market losses will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
The currency headed for its biggest weekly decline against the euro in a year as traders raised bets that the Fed will lower borrowing costs on Dec. 11. The yen headed for a weekly gain against the dollar as concern turmoil in credit markets will slow global growth spurred investors to sell higher- yielding assets bought with money borrowed in Japan.
“Dollar weakness is going to continue,” said Stephen Halmarick, co-head of economic and market analysis in Sydney at Citigroup Australia, a unit of the largest U.S. bank by assets. “The U.S. economy is going to underperform and the Fed is going to be easing.”
Iraq’s Foreign Militants ‘Come from U.S. Allies’
November 23rd, 2007Via: Guardian:
Around 60% of all foreign militants who entered Iraq to fight over the past year came from Saudi Arabia and Libya, according to files seized by American forces at a desert camp.
The files listed the nationalities and biographical details of more than 700 fighters who crossed into Iraq from August last year, around half of whom came to the country to be suicide bombers, the New York Times reported today.
In all, 305, or 41%, of the fighters listed were from Saudi Arabia. Another 137, or 18%, came from Libya. Both countries are officially US allies in anti-terrorism efforts.
In contrast, 56 Syrians were listed and no Lebanese. Previously, US officials estimated that around a fifth of all foreign fighters in Iraq came from these two countries.
US officials have also long complained about Iranian interference in the affairs of its neighbour, accusing Tehran of shipping weapons for militants over the border. However, any assistance does not appear to extend to people, the paper said, reporting that, of around 25,000 suspected militants in US custody in Iraq, 11 were Iranian. No Iranians were listed among the fighters whose details were found.
The information came from files and computers seized in September when US forces raided a camp in the desert near Sinjar, a small town in north-west Iraq, close to the Syrian border. It was believed the camp was the base for an insurgent cell responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The files also gave details of 68 Yemeni nationals, the third-biggest source. There were 64 fighters from Algeria, 50 from Morocco, 38 from Tunisia, 14 from Jordan, six from Turkey and two each from Egypt and France.
Implantable Microchip Cancer Report
November 22nd, 2007Via: Anti Chips:
CASPIAN’s new report, “Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990-2006,” is a definitive review of research showing a causal link between implanted radio-frequency (RFID) microchip transponders and cancer in laboratory rodents and dogs. It was written in part to correct industry misstatements and misinformation circulating about the studies.
The report evaluates eleven articles previously published in toxicology and pathology journals. In six of the articles, between 0.8% and 10.2% of laboratory mice and rats developed malignant tumors around or adjacent to the microchips. Two additional articles reported microchip-related cancer in dogs.
In almost all cases, the malignant tumors, typically sarcomas, arose at the site of the implants and grew to surround and fully encase the devices. These fast-growing, malignant tumors often led to the death of the afflicted animals. In many cases, the tumors metastasized or spread to other parts of the animals. The implants were unequivocally identified as the cause of the cancers.
The Firm with a Shadow that Extends Far Past Wall Street
November 22nd, 2007Via: The Ledger:
As John A. Thain prepares to take the reins of Merrill Lynch, he is only the latest example of a tradition borne out across Wall Street, in Washington and around the world. He is a Goldman Sachs alumnus who has reached the top elsewhere.
For decades, one investment bank in Lower Manhattan has churned out a golden list of corporate executives and statesmen, wealthy financiers and nonprofit managers.
In many ways, Goldman Sachs is seen as the financial world’s equivalent of General Electric, the corporate powerhouse, or McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm. It is a training ground — and finishing school —from which other companies, along with quite a few governments, have frequently plucked their own top leaders.
And it has seeded some of the most successful private investment funds, many of them extending Goldman’s shadow from Greenwich, Conn., to London and beyond.
Goldman claims among its alumni Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary; Robert E. Rubin, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and now Citigroup’s chairman; and Mario Draghi, the Bank of Italy’s governor. Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey’s governor, led Goldman for several years. Joshua B. Bolten, the current White House chief of staff, is a Goldman alum.
Mr. Thain, who left Goldman as president and chief operating officer to take over the troubled New York Stock Exchange and now Merrill, falls squarely in that tradition.
To insiders, all this is a result of Goldman’s elite culture, a sense of close-knit partnership that has endured despite the firm’s decision in 1999 to turn itself into a publicly owned corporation. To detractors, the firm is alternately a cult or a secretive fraternity like Skull and Bones at Yale, one focused on profits and power.
The bottom line on Goldman is that it is stocked with bright people who practically mint money. Even as the implosion of the subprime mortgage market forced many of its rivals to take multibillion-dollar write-downs this summer, to cite just the most recent example, Goldman reported a 79 percent increase in profit.
Freddie Mac Seeks Emergency Funding
November 22nd, 2007Via: Independent:
Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored company tasked with propping up the US mortgage market, said it would be forced to seek emergency funding to shore up its balance sheet after plunging $2bn (£968m) into the red.
The company yesterday said that it had hired Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to tout for new funds that seemed likely to dilute existing shareholders, adding that it was also considering halving the dividend. Its shares lost more than a quarter of their value.
Along with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac is an important prop to the US housing market, set up to help ensure that mortgage firms are willing to lend. It insures their mortgage payments or buys the mortgages from them and resells them in the financial markets, and it operates under a government guarantee that is supposed to ensure that it cannot go out of business.
The quid pro quo is that it operates under strict financial rules, many of which were tightened after an accounting scandal at the start of the decade. Regulators have demanded that it hoards 30 per cent more capital than the normal legal minimum, but the firm said yesterday it was close to falling below that level.
An appeal to have that 30 per cent rule waived was turned down, chief executive Richard Syron said yesterday, and a fundraising was vital if it was to be able to continue taking on new business.
Facing Jail and Fines, Parents Summoned to Court to Have Children Vaccinated
November 22nd, 2007The part I like is that the parents of 900 students ignored this absurd fascist decree.
Via: Baltimore Sun:
Scores of grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse today to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle.
The get-tough policy in Prince George’s County was one of the strongest efforts made by any U.S. school system to ensure its youngsters receive their required immunizations.
Two months into the school year, school officials realized that more than 2,000 students in the county still didn’t have the vaccinations they were supposed to have before attending class.
So Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols ordered parents in a letter to appear at the courthouse today and either get their children vaccinated on the spot or risk up to 10 days in jail. They could also provide proof of vaccination or an explanation why their kids didn’t have them.
By about 8:30 a.m., the line of parents stretched outside the courthouse in the county on the east side of Washington.
Research Credit: ON
Tor Exit Nodes Harvest Huge Amounts of Sensitive Information
November 21st, 2007Relying on Tor for security/anonymity is as dumb as relying on proxy servers. If you read the ugly truth, you already know that.
But, as usual, it’s not that bad, it’s worse.
Dan Egerstad, a Swedish security researcher, set up several Tor servers and used basic traffic analysis techniques to glean lots of foreign government email traffic that was just passing through. Twits were sending clear text email via Tor. HAHA. I know: Tell me another one!
Tor makes it VERY easy to become the man in the middle. Point, click and the next thing you know, total bozos will be compromising themselves in unimaginable ways because they think nobody is watching if they’re using Tor.
Egerstad tried to warn the governments involved. Iran was the only country to express any interest in the issue. Predictably, within days of this information spewing across the Internet, Egerstad was arrested, interrogated and had his computers confiscated.
There are lots of stories about this situation out there, but look at this from heise-security:
Members of the Teamfurry community got curious and took a look at the advertised configurations of a few randomly selected TOR exit-nodes. They stumbled on some extremely interesting results. There are, for example, exit-nodes which only forward unencrypted versions of certain protocols. One such node only accepts unencrypted IMAP and POP connections (TCP ports 143 and 110) and only forwards messenger connections from AIM, Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger if they are received on ports on which traffic is handled as plain text. The same procedure is applied to Telnet and VNC connections, used for remote access to systems. Further, there are systems which are only interested in specific destinations and, for example, exclusively forward HTTP packets bound for MySpace and Google. HTTPS traffic to these destinations is, however, blocked.
These peculiar configurations invite speculation as to why they are set up in this way. The Teamfurry blog declines to go so far as to impute nefarious motives to these nodes. Nevertheless, the report does raise the question of whether users should route personal data via such nodes. It is certainly generally believed that Chinese, Russian and American government agencies operate TOR exit-nodes. Large companies and illegal hacker groups are also thought to operate exit-nodes. Looking through the list of TOR exit-nodes, it is striking that the number of exit-nodes in China and the US has increased disproportionately over the last year.
Tor exit nodes that only forward unencrypted traffic…
* chuckle *
You’ve almost got to feel sorry for anyone who sends clear text data through that thing (thinking it’s secure). The fact that several governments do it, apparently on purpose, is even more hilarious/frightening/absurd.
Don’t work for the NSA?
Set up some Tor servers and you can run your own little ECHELON system. For kids 8 and up only.
Research Credit: JD
