Blackmoor Vituperative

E-Gold, what F-Secure calls a “very prominent” digital currency for criminals, has been indicted for money laundering, conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

According to an indictment, handed down by a Washington federal grand jury and unsealed on April 27, E-Gold is a preferred method of payment by investment scammers, credit card and identity fraudsters, and online sellers of child pornography. E-Gold allegedly conducted funds transfers on behalf of such customers knowing that the funds were the proceeds of unlawful activity, thus violating federal money-laundering statutes.

E-Gold’s digital currency, “E-Gold,” is supposedly backed by physical gold. The company only requires a valid e-mail address to open an account, with no additional verification of contact information. E-Gold accounts can be funded with a number of exchangers to convert national currency into E-Gold. With an open account, users can conduct anonymous transactions worldwide.

[…]

The indictment charges E Gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve, and their owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, of Satellite Beach, Fla., Reid A. Jackson, of Melbourne, Fla., and Barry K. Downey, of Woodbine, Md., each with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law and one count of money transmission without a license under D.C. law.

[…]

The conspiracy charge relating to money transmitting carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Operating an unlicensed money transmitting business also carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The D.C. Code violation for money transmission without a license carries a maximum sentence of five years. The conspiracy charge relating to money laundering carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

(from Security Watch, E-Gold E-ndicted for Fronting Child Pornsters, Fraudsters)

This is a shame, but I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise in this age of universal surveillance. E-gold didn’t do anything immoral, nor did they defraud anyone. They provided a service. But if you aren’t proactively helping the government spy on your customers, you’re a criminal.

If they knew they were going to get nailed for it, E-Gold should have moved their activities offshore, like the gambling sites did. But if they didn’t know… how could they not know? I mean, really, even as clueless as I am, I would think that they’d at least need to keep client records for IRS purposes, because gold would be considered a capital gain (or loss). And the feds had been investigating them for two years. This couldn’t have come as a surprise. Ah, well.

In a truly incredible display of governmental disregard for personal privacy, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin has refused to take down — or provide any access restrictions — on tens of thousands of personal data records that identify borrowers’ SSNs, bank account numbers, home addresses and phone numbers, The Associated Press reports.

His resistance comes just weeks after he criticized Gov. Deval Patrick for failing to protect voter information on his campaign site.

“It’s totally unacceptable that they are contemplating leaving it up,” said Betty Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate. “Once they realize it’s a veritable treasure trove, identity thieves will flock to it. They need to shut the links down.”

Galvin refused to shut down the links, saying: “This is standard practice in the business world,” he said. “It’s necessary for commerce. There are people who are reliant upon this system.”

At issue are Uniform Commercial Code filings that borrowers make when they put up collateral to secure a loan. While intended for lenders’ research, the information is freely available to all. The site has no access restrictions.

A quick check on Wednesday by The Associated Press showed names, addresses and other personal information for various Massachusetts residents. In one case, a copy of a woman’s personal check — complete with her name, phone number, address, bank account number and all the account information for a loan with General Motors’ financing arm — was posted.

And Galvin sees nothing hypocritical about criticizing Patrick while displaying all this data on the open net.

“That’s very different from what we’re talking about here,” Galvin said, who was aware of his office’s policy when he criticized Patrick. “The governor’s site is a political committee. Our site is a governmental function. This is an essential part of commerce.”

Complete nonsense, of course. Commerce is not at restrained by having to enter a password or having the data encrypted so it can only be used by legitimate lenders.

(from ZDNet, MA exposes thousands of private data – and doesn’t plan to stop

AT&T told an appeals court in a written brief Monday that the case against it for allegedly helping the government spy on its customers should be thrown out, because it cannot defend itself — even by showing a signed order from the government — without endangering national security.

A government brief filed simultaneously backed AT&T’s claims and said a lower court judge had exceeded his authority by not dismissing the suit outright.

(from WIRED Blogs, Spying Too Secret For Your Court: AT&T, Gov Tell Ninth)

Ah, there we go: my cynicism is now back in place. I was feeling disoriented for a moment there.

An anonymous reader dropped us a link to this New York Times article about a ‘vast expansion’ of DNA sampling here in the US. A little-noticed rider to the January 2006 renewal of the ‘Violence Against Women Act’ allows government agencies to collect DNA samples from any individual arrested by federal authorities, and from every illegal immigrant held for any length of time by US agents. The goal is to make DNA collection as routine a part of detainment as fingerprinting and photography. Privacy experts and immigrant rights groups are decrying this initiative already. Many are also skeptical of lab throughput, as FBI analysts indicate this may increase intake by as much as a million samples per year. There is already a backlog of 150,000 samples waiting to be entered into the agency’s database.

(from Slashdot, US Set on Expansion of Security DNA Collection)

A California court made it clear to Apple that if the company wanted to find out who leaked details of an in-development product to bloggers, they’d actually have to do it legally. That lesson cost the company almost $700,000 in legal fee reimbursement.

(from WebProNews, Apple Ordered To Pay Legal Fees For Bloggers)

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI’s Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what’s legally permissible.

(from ZDNet, FBI turns to broad new wiretap method)

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

(from CommonDreams.org, W Pushes Envelope on US Spying)

Jesus Fucking Christ. Are you kidding me? Has this man even READ the U.S. Constitution?

A few pieces over the weekend that are worth reading.

NYT op-ed columnist Frank Rich takes a swipe at competitive sourcing:

Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House’s chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called “competitive sourcing.” Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative’s objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver “high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost.”

The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.

George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley in the LAT on the return of TIA:

‘Big Brother’ Bush and connecting the data dots [LAT, 6.24.2006] The Total Information Awareness program was killed in 2003, but its spawn present bigger threats to privacy.

And WP tech columnist Rob Pegoraro on the missing personal data:

We’ve spent years trying to secure our computers against online identity theft, but the clumsiness or incompetence of Big Government and Big Companies is going to leave us unguarded anyway.

(from FCW Insider, The FCW Insider: Some weekend reading)

Future government-issued travel documents may feature embedded computer chips that can be read at a distance of up to 30 feet, a top Homeland Security official said Tuesday, creating what some fear would be a threat to privacy.

Jim Williams, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT program, told a smart card conference here that such tracking chips could be inserted into the new generation of wallet-size identity cards used to ease travel by Americans to Canada and Mexico starting in 2008. Those chips use radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. […]

Williams’ remarks at an industry conference are likely to heighten privacy concerns about RFID technology, which has drawn fire from activists and prompted hearings before the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. One California politician has even introduced anti-RFID legislation.

Many of the privacy worries center on whether RFID tags — typically miniscule chips with an antenna a few inches long that can transmit a unique ID number — can be read from afar. If the range is a few inches, the privacy concerns are reduced. But at ranges of 30 feet, the tags could theoretically be read by hidden sensors alongside the road, in the mall or in the hands of criminals hoping to identify someone on the street by his or her ID number.

(from CNet News, New RFID travel cards could pose privacy threat)

Just one more step toward universal surveillance.

I get irritated when I read someone who ought to know better defend universal surveillance. Larry Seltzer on eWeek makes the claim that there is no privacy interest in public places. He draws a comparison between having a camera on every corner and having a police officer on every corner, as if there is no difference. A camera on every streetcorner is vastly different from a police officer on every streetcorner.

1. Police officers can respond to a citizen in need — cameras can’t. Even if every camera is actively monitored by a human being (which is impossible), dispatching assistance to a camera’s location takes as long as responding to any other 911 call.
2. Police officers are not all networked to the same system which stores what each of them sees. Cameras are. There is a HUGE difference between having a single human being aware of what’s on this corner, today, and having that same human being watching this corner, and every corner, every day. No one can be trusted with that level of omniscience. No one.

Universal surveillance is a huge invasion of privacy: that is its sole purpose. “Privacy” does not simply apply to what is done behind closed doors (although there are cameras to record that, as well.). “Privacy” applies equally as much to not having one’s activities tracked and monitored on a continual basis.

Universal surveillance is not a “slippery slope” to Big Brother: it is a pit trap, and Big Brother is waiting at the bottom.