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Sun, 25 Nov 2007 12:05:22 -0800

Why I'm more than a little hesitant about PayPass

A couple of years ago, my bank, Key Bank, sent me a new debit/atm card, completely unsolicited. My previous card wasn't going to expire for some time, but they were anxious enough to ignore that and send me new cards anyways. Well, after reading through everything that Key sent with the card, it was clear that this new PayPass system comes embedded with an RFID chip, but it never came right out and used those four magic letters, R-F-I-D.

I decided I wasn't going to accept their new cards, and decided to destroy them. I cut up the first card, and noticed what appeared to be a very thin copper wire running through the card in several concentric loops around the outside edge of the card. Yep, RFID, I was sure now. I microwaved the other card and found the actual chip itself somewhere approximately near the middle. Stupid RFID cards, I thought. And that was the last I heard of it. ... for quite a while.

Well, now my card really has expired again, and Key sent the replacement cards with the embedded PayPass systems. I don't have an easy option for declining these ones short of calling my bank and trying to argue with their customer service reps about why I don't want an RFID-enabled bank card.

As I sat thinking about how much trouble I was willing to go through, and just how paranoid I was for even thinking about trying to avoid this, I noticed some small print on the back of a card with a company name, "Axalto", and the trademark symbol.

A little research on Axalto left me more paranoid than when I started. Damn.

Axalto was previously a department of Schlumberger.� Schlumberger bought Sema and the department became part of SchlumbergerSema. When the department was sold to Atos Origin it was then named Axalto.� Axalto has since gone public, merged with it's main competitor, Gemplus, and is now called Gemalto.� It is when I look at Gemalto's leadership that my concerns are driven home:

Alex J. Mandl, is my primary concern.� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_J._Mandl

From 1999 to 2002, he served on the Board of Directors at In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is, of course, the "venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. ... In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve United States national security interests." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

Mandl resigned his In-Q-Tel job to become the CEO of Gemplus International, the company that merged with Axalto to form Gemalto. He now serves as Executive Chairman of Gemalto.

I found another Gemalto executive, Olivier Piou, who lacks Mandl's colorful background, but makes up for with some very colorful remarks given at the United Nations World Summit on Information Society in Geneva on December 12, 2003:

"But biometrics can also turn into the most dangerous for the civil society if such identification technologies are deployed without a smart card. I.e. if they are used without asking citizens to keep with them their identity card, and without asking them for a voluntary action to be authenticated: software and global digital networks would then be able to permanently track citizens activities, without them knowing."

"Wireless technologies also present a similar threat to privacy: while it is relatively easy to turn off a cellular phone (because all of them have an ON/OFF button!), radio-frequency identification systems - also known as RFID or contactless systems - are activated from a distance. It becomes so very easy to install a reading antenna, in the subway or in any place like in this conference room, to detect who is there without awareness and consent."

Olivier Piou was the CEO of Axalto and is the current CEO of Gemalto. His entire speech is worth a read (Word .doc format) http://www.itu.int/wsis/geneva/coverage/statements/axalto/b16.doc

planet chomsky

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 20:02:57 -0800

Planet Chomsky: An all-Chomsky shoutcast.

Endless education!

Diebold's TSx Failure in California by John Gideon

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:14:35 -0800

"No less than 5 people (Cooper, Lee, Graye, Elder, and Dean) involved with the management and development of Diebold's systems are convicted felons, including Senior Vice President Jeff Dean, and topping the list are his twenty-three counts of felony Theft in the First Degree. According to the findings of fact in case no. 89-1-04034-1 (Washington State, King County District Court): "Defendant's thefts occurred over a 2 1/2 year period of time, there were multiple incidents, more than the standard range can account for, the actual monetary loss was substantially greater than typical for the offense, the crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized accounting system that defendant maintained for the victim, and the defendant used his position of trust and fiduciary responsibility as a computer systems and accounting consultant for the victim to facilitate the commission of the offenses."

To sum up, Dean was convicted of 23 felony counts of theft by -- note this -- planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection. The reason for the embezzlement? He needed the money because "he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died."

http://www.karmalised.com/archives/001779.html

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:53:19 -0800

"A few days ago, Time Magazine announced the winner of its annual "Person of the Year" award. Many supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution will be disappointed to hear that Hugo Chavez did not make it despite the fact that he won Time's online poll by a wide margin and got 35% of the votes. This is significant, as Chavez had been the number 1 in the poll for several weeks and was clearly set to win the award. [...] not a word is said about why the winner of Time's own readers poll is simply ignored and not even mentioned [...] Time decided to ignore its own "digital democracy" and hide the fact that 35% voted for Hugo Chavez and 21% for the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

The Big Picture

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 23:34:00 -0800

Previously I had noted that the M3 was no longer going to be published... Now we see why this is bad news for us:

"This broadest of money supply measures [M3] had shown a discomforting increase in liquidity, far greater than what M2 was revealing. M3 is growing quite rapidly, with the annual rate of change now over 10%. Prior to the announcement of M3's demise, its growth was in the range of 3 - 7%. Anytime a government agency stops reporting about their goings on, it should raise a few eyebrows. Now we see what happened once the reporting of M3 was killed -- that measure of money supply spiked much higher -- a rate of change that's even greater than 10%+. What makes this particularly egregious is that the broadest measure of Money Supply that is still "officially" reported, M2, and its been flat for 2006. While the Federal Reserve has been reporting rather flat money supply growth in M2, in reality they have been dramatically increasing the cash available for speculation. They have been providing the fuel for the rally, the huge M&A activity, and the explosion in derivatives."

kucinich.us - Home

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:42:14 -0700

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's letter to Rumsfeld asking for "records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use US Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams." [May, 2006]

Not sure how this one snuck under my radar for so long. Dennis hits a home run, here:

"Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, you publicly stated that the idea of a Salvador option was "nonsense." Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. has in fact funded and trained Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams and these teams are now operating with horrific success across Iraq. We know that the Pentagon received funding for training Iraqi paramilitaries. [...] News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis. [...] Mr. Secretary, in light of this evidence of U.S. support for and the existence of death squads in Iraq, what is the basis for your January 11, 2005 statement, that the idea of a Salvador option in Iraq is "nonsense"? "

BBC NEWS | Europe | Probe into Bin Laden death leak

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:37:07 -0700

French Newspaper, L'Est Republicain is quoting a DGSE foreign intelligence service report dated the 21st of September claiming that a Bin Laden died on August 23rd, 2006 of typhoid. "According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead."

Mr Chirac said: "I am surprised that a confidential memo from the secret services has been published, therefore I've ordered the defence minister to start an inquiry. As far as the information itself is concerned, it's not confirmed in any way. Therefore I have no comment at all."

IRAN MILITARY | AlterNet

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:16:00 -0700

Retired Air Force General Sam Gardiner says (on CNN) military operations in Iran have been in progress for the last 18 months.

Center for Information Technology Policy & Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:53:20 -0700

Oh, dear. With barely a month before the November 2006 election, "three Princeton computer scientists created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected." Not only that, but they also have a proof-of-concept self-propigating virus (via memory card) that can infect all voting machines (that come in contact with an infected card) with their vote-rigging software.

This illustrates a point I've long suspected, that electronic voting has been created to make ballot tampering *EASIER*. Once the vote count is moved into the digital realm, a LOT more work needs to be done to insure the integrity of the recorded vote. Look for these touch-screen voting machines in this November's election because 2006 is the implementation deadline for the "Help America Vote" act. I don't know about you, but I REALLY didn't want George helping me vote.

Bev Harris over at Black Box Voting has probably done the best job out of anyone on covering electronic voting machine vulnerabilities and failures of election officials to follow their own rules. Her former publisher also does a pretty good job too, at his own Black Box Voting site.

Fortunately, my state seems to have end-run the eletronic voting issue by switching the entire state to absentee balloting, which is actually quite nice getting a couple of weeks to study your choices and make informed decisions.

While we're on the subject of ballot tampering, Greg Palast has published a bit on the theft of the Ohio 2004 election.

The Issue is not National Security but Image Security | BaltimoreChronicle.com

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:41:01 -0700

Greg Palast manages to land himself in trouble with Homeland Security, phoned in by Exxon, while reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans.

I had originally found this, which provides some helpful background perspective.

Democracy Now has the first two parts of Palast's Katrina investigations involving Innovative Emergency Management, who was paid half a million dollars to come up with an emergency response plan that either didn't exist or would not be publicly disclosed. In a biting twist of irony, the very same private company happened to be hired to investigate the shortcomings of the of the government response to Katrina. Hmm. According to IEM's own webpage, they gave $100,000 to Bill Clinton for the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Hmm. You can also find Pictures of Laura Bush shmoozing with IEM executives. Hmm.