Confused about the CIA leak case?

By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For almost two years, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has led an investigation to determine whether anyone acted illegally when the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame was made public. After hearing testimony from some of Washington's most powerful figures, a grand jury is expected to issue indictments as soon as Friday. The Monitor's White House correspondent, Linda Feldmann, answers key questions about the case.

Q. How did this affair begin?

At its heart lie questions about the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq. On Jan. 28, 2003, in his State of the Union address, President Bush included these 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The implication was that Iraq was developing a nuclear-weapons program. But US intelligence officials had by then - and have since - expressed doubts about that claim. In July 2003, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador to two African countries and Iraq, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times disputing Mr. Bush's statement.

The CIA, he wrote, sent him to Niger in 2002 to determine if Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa. He concluded no. One week after Mr. Wilson's op-ed, syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

At issue is whether Mr. Novak's government sources blew her cover as a CIA agent, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

That law aims to protect the identities of "certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources." Mr. Wilson has claimed that White House officials leaked his wife's CIA role to the press as revenge for his criticism of the president's case against Iraq. Other observers say the sources were merely steering journalists away from Wilson's allegations.

Q. Why have two senior White House officials - Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - faced such intense scrutiny?

In grand jury testimony, several journalists revealed that one or both men had spoken to them about Wilson's wife and her employment.

Toward the end of the investigation, it has become clear that Mr. Fitzgerald has focused more on possible charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements, rather than on laws prohibiting public revelation of a CIA official's undercover status. Mr. Rove testified four times and Mr. Libby twice.

Q. How wide was the investigation?

As special prosecutor, Fitzgerald was tasked with investigating the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity. The Department of Justice later clarified that he had authority to investigate any crimes committed in the course of the inquiry, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses.

In all, some three dozen people either appeared before the grand jury or were interviewed by the FBI or Fitzgerald. The special prosecutor interviewed both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney last year, but not under oath.

Key individuals who testified late in the process include two aides to Mr. Cheney: John Hannah, an expert on weapons of mass destruction, and David Wurmser, a Middle East adviser.

Among the press, Matt Cooper of Time magazine, Judith Miller of The New York Times, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and Tim Russert of NBC News all testified. Novak is widely assumed to have cooperated with prosecutors, though he has not commented publicly on the case.

Q. What was Cheney's role?

Libby learned about Wilson's wife from his boss, the vice president, before her identity had been made public, according to notes Libby took during the conversation and which were described to The New York Times by lawyers involved in the case.

It is not illegal for Libby and Cheney to discuss classified information; they both have security clearance. But the Libby-Cheney conversation contradicts reports of Libby's testimony, in which he is said to have stated that he first learned of Wilson's wife, and her employment, from reporters.


Timeline of the CIA leak case

2002

February The CIA sends Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium. He concludes it did not.

September The British government asserts that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from an African country.

2003

January President Bush mentions the British claim in his State of the Union address.

March Mr. Bush orders the invasion of Iraq.

July Mr. Wilson disputes Bush's claim about the Iraq-Africa uranium connection.

CIA Director George Tenet and other White House officials say Bush's reference to African uranium should not have been included in his State of the Union address.

Columnist Robert Novak names Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

September The Washington Post reports that at least six journalists had been told of the Plame story before Novak's column appeared.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says that "[i]f anyone in this administration is involved in [the leak], they would no longer be in this administration."

The Justice Department launches a probe of the leak.

December Patrick Fitzgerald is named special prosecutor in the case.

2004

January A grand jury begins hearing testimony. Dozens of powerful government and media figures testify over the next 22 months. White House aide Karl Rove appears before the grand jury four times.

July The British and US governments publish separate reviews of prewar intelligence estimates. The reports express skepticism about the credibility of some aspects of prewar intelligence assessments, and they note that some of the evidence used to allege an Iraq-Africa uranium connection relied on Italian documents that later proved to be forgeries. However, the British and US reports generally support the reasonableness of Bush's claim at the time that he made it.

2005

June US Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals from Ms. Miller and Time magazine's Matt Cooper to avoid testifying before the grand jury.

July Mr. Cooper testifies before the grand jury, after his source releases him from a confidentiality pledge.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller goes to jail to protect the identity of source(s) who leaked Plame's name to her.

September 29 Miller is released from jail and testifies before the grand jury.

October 28 The grand jury was scheduled to expire Friday.

UN team names firms in oil-for-food scandal

Nearly half of the 4,500 companies that participated paid Hussein bribes, report says.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – In scale, the skimming operation probably ranks as one of the greatest financial crimes of all time. Iraqi insiders knew it as the "Saddam Bribery System" - kickbacks and surcharges on the United Nations' oil-for-food program that netted Saddam Hussein $1.8 billion in the final years of his regime.

Now, as Mr. Hussein's trial gets under way in Iraq, continuing revelations about alleged corruption in the oil-for-food humanitarian effort have fueled widespread financial scandal. The controversy involves both the culpability of those accused of paying the bribes, and the zeal - or lack thereof - of UN oversight of the oil-for-food program.

Critics such as Paul Volcker, who released his final report on the whole mess Thursdayw, think it shows that concrete reform is necessary to salvage the UN's credibility. Others say that it's important to remember the context in which the oil-for-food program was cobbled together - and that its vulnerabilities were apparent from the start.

"It was well known by everyone, including the US government, that the system as constructed invited kickbacks," says James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corp.

On Thursday, the Volcker probe revealed that almost half of the 4,500 companies that participated in the program paid Hussein under-the-table cash, according to the report. The money involved amounted to a $1.8 billion tax on the $64 billion program, which ran from 1996 to 2003.

The accused represent virtually every nation that took part. Companies and individuals from 66 countries sent illegal kickbacks to Hussein's government, according to the Volcker inquiry. Those who simply paid an illegally high price for their oil to begin with came from 40 countries.

Among the firms named by the report are Volvo Construction Equipment, which allegedly paid $317,000 in extra fees to the Iraqi government on a $6.4 million contract. DaimlerChrysler tacked an extra $7,000 onto a $70,000 contract, according to the Volcker inquiry.

Mr. Volcker, a forceful presence in Washington during his tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve, strongly criticized the UN and the Security Council for laxity in watching over the oil-for-food bureaucracy. Volcker's report urges the establishment of a UN chief operating officer nominated by the UN Security Council, among other reforms.

"Whether there's a meaningful reaction remains to be seen," Volcker said this week.

The oil-for-food program was one of the largest humanitarian efforts of all time, in terms of its scope and finances. Launched as a means of softening the blow of UN sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, it allowed Iraq to sell quantities of oil, provided most of the money was used to buy goods for Iraq's hard-pressed citizens.

Whatever the program's faults, its successes should also be remembered, says Dirk Salomons, director of the program for humanitarian affairs at Columbia University. "The UN kept large chunks of the Iraqi population alive for over a decade," he says.

Given the way oil-for-food developed, problems were inevitable, according to Professor Salomons. Hussein was allowed to pick his own suppliers, for instance. "If the selection of providers had been done by UN procurement, this wouldn't have happened," he says.

Furthermore, it was not UN money that was stolen, or US money for that matter. In essence, Hussein stole his own money - or, perhaps more accurately, stole money from his own people.

Given the nature of the Hussein regime, probably nothing could have stopped all illegality in the system, says Mr. Dobbins of RAND. That said, bribes are bribes, and the Volcker inquiry has represented just one strand of an interlocking web of efforts to bring any wrongdoers to account.

In June, for instance, Joseph Stephanides, a mid-level UN official, was fired by Secretary-General Kofi Annan for allegedly colluding to steer an oil-for-food contract to a London-based shipping inspection company, Lloyd's Register.

Benon Sevon, former chief of the oil-for-food program, resigned under pressure in August, following allegations that even the head of the effort had taken kickbacks.

Last Friday, Midway Trading, a Virginia-based oil trading company, pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to paying kickbacks to participate in oil-for-food. An investigation by Manhattan US Attorney Michael Garcia has produced five other guilty pleas or criminal charges.

In France, Serge Boidevaix, a former secretary-general for the Foreign Ministry, is under investigation for suspect corruption in connection with the oil-for-food effort. Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former UN ambassador, also allegedly received more than $150,000 in commission from oil allocations awarded him by Hussein, according to the Volcker report. He is also under investigation by French authorities.

PVR Killers

ExtremeTech's Jason Cross examines PVR software that runs on Windows -- applications from SnapStream, Cyberlink, and SageTV. With TiVo's mounting price hikes, service contracts, and 'features' like self-deleting shows, the DIY option is getting more appealing all the time." From the article: "All the major TV features you're used to with TiVo or Windows Media Center Edition are there--quick 30 second skip, padding show recordings (start early and stop late), a nice integrated guide with easy-to-read program info. The interface design isn't quite as good as either of those two other options, but it's one of the best we've seen in a Windows-based PVR application outside of MCE. If we had to pick an annoyance, it's that you can't seem to bring up the program guide or navigate the menu without stopping the live TV or recording that you're watching. TiVo plays the current TV program in the background, and MCE plays it in a small window in the lower left. We didn't miss it until it was gone.

Slashdot Headlines (Early October 2005)

Google & Sun Planning Web Office

According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software.

Bush Supreme Court Nominee Former Microsoft Lawyer

Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments.

Linux Gains Lossless File System

An R&D affiliate of the world's largest telephone company has achieved a stable release of a new Linux file system said to improve reliability over conventional Linux file systems, and offer performance advantages over Solaris's UFS file system. NILFS 1.0 (new implementation of a log-structured file system) is available now from NTT Labs (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's Cyber Space Laboratories).

Taiwan Irked at Google's Version of Earth

As reported in The Register, Taiwan wants Google Earth to stop calling it a province of China. Although Google has yet to comment on this issue, it will be interesting to see the brightest minds that money can buy trying to solve what decades of diplomats have unsuccessfully wrestled with - how to balance the nationalistic pride of the inhabitants of Taiwan against the nationalistic pride of the inhabitants of mainland China." From the article: "Foreign ministry spokesman, Michel Lu, explained: 'It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not. We have contacted Google to express our position and asked them to correct the description.' Google has maintained a stony silence on the matter, presumably while it tries to work out a solution which will please both the Taiwanese and the hosts of the (lucrative, burgeoning, inviting) Chinese internet search business opportunity market

Condensing Your Life on to a USB Flash Drive?

"My wife and I figure that if we plan for the worst, it'll never happen, so we've been putting together 'If public transportation bites it and we have two minutes to grab our stuff and start walking, never to return to NYC' getaway knapsacks. With luck they'll live in the closet forever. Coincidently, this morning the New York Times has an article about what to take when you have to leave home in a big hurry [DNA verification required], and they suggest making a list of all of things like Social Security and credit card numbers, scanning birth certificates, marriage license and tax returns, and saving it all on a USB flash drive. Since this would be a complete identity kit, encryption is of utmost importance. What's the best solution? A flash drive that claims to encrypt or a platform-independent, self-extracting, encrypted file on a regular drive? Any suggestions for sturdy drives?" Of course, the choice of USB flash drive covers only a part of the problem. What other data would you put on this piece of "contingency hardware", and how would you protect the drive itself in case you did have to "swim for it?

Yahoo Competes with Google in Book Scanning

UltimaGuy writes "A consortium backed by Yahoo has launched an ambitious effort to digitize classic books and technical papers and make them freely available on the Web. The company is partnering with the newly formed Open Content Alliance, which aims to offer PDF documents of books to the public at no charge. Consumers will be able to search the contents of the Open Content Alliance's database and download the entire content of any work, such as a scanned copy of a book.

Clustering vs. Fault-Tolerant Servers

According to SearchDataCenter.com fault-tolerant server vendors say the majority of hardware and software makers have pushed clustering as a high-availability option because it sells more hardware and software licenses. Fault-tolerant servers pack redundant components such as power supply and storage into a single box, while clustering involves the networking of multiple, standard servers used as failover machines.

AMD Geode Internet Appliance

Justin Davidow writes "For a new twist on internet appliances, AMD is finally attempting to go mainstream with their mobile Geode processor, with the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a stand-alone device that allows users a striped down laptop/inflated PDA (without a screen included!) for internet surfing. Expected retail price: $299USD.

Another Victim Countersues RIAA Under RICO Act

Another single mother is taking the fight to the RIAA. More than just standing up to them however, Tanya Anderson has decided to go on the offensive and countersue. In a move that aims to put the RIAA on the same level as your average organized crime syndicate the suit identifies violations of the Oregon RICO Act in addition to 'fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices.' Ms. Anderson has also demanded a trial by jury.

PC World's 100 Best Products of 2005

PC World published its top 100 best products of 2005. These include Firefox(1), GMail(2), OSX 10.4(3), Alienware Aurora 5500(6), Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive(7), Skype(8), PalmOne Treo 650(10), Google(16), PSP(19), GeForce6600GT(20), Ubuntu(26), iTunes(34), Half-Life 2(38), Wikipedia(60), ThinkPad X41(67), Mac Mini(75), Acronis True Image(83), Opera(88). Surprisingly, iPod only has IPod Photo at 78.

20 Million Year Old Spider Found

BBC News is reporting that Paleontologist Dr. David Penny has found a spider, and two droplets of blood, perfectly perserved in amber. He was able to extract the blood and determine its age: 20 million years old. Since it is thought to be the first time that spider blood has been found perserved in amber, it is hoped that DNA could be extracted.

Sorry, Wrong Wiretap

CNN is covering a little-mentioned Inspector General's report which mentions that the FBI 'sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations' due to various reasons, and that 'The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.

Google Plans to Offer Free WiFi in San Francisco

What's been rumored for some time has now been confirmed -- Google has made a bid in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom's request for information. The details of the bid include citywide access, for free, at 300kbps. The plans dovetail into their location-based advertising and services strategy, and come on the heels of their recent VPN service rollout.

Neiman Marcus Offers First Moller Skycar For Sale

Neiman Marcus has just unveiled its 2005 Christmas Catalog of Fantasy Gifts last Tuesday, and one of the items up for purchase is the prototype M400 Skycar from Moller International (for only $3.5 million US). If you've ever dreamed of owning a Skycar, this may be your only chance." From the Skycar site: "Can any automobile give you this scenario? From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility. No matter how you look at it the automobile is only an interim step on our evolutionary path to independence from gravity. That's all it will ever be.

Intelligent Coasters Keep Beer Mugs Full

CNN.com is reporting that two German students have invented a beer mat, or coaster, that uses sensor chips to determine when the beer glass it supports is empty and then radios the bartender for a refill. One of the students interviewed for the story suggested that lifting mugs from sensing mats could double as a voting system during karaoke competitions." From the article: "Unlike the usual cardboard beer mats, the invention is made out of plastic, which means it does not absorb water. Butz said that to get around the problem, ordinary cardboard mats could be placed on top of the plastic version to absorb liquid and display advertising. 'Cardboard beer mats could still sit on top of the plastic mat and there could still be advertising, and you would just exchange the cardboard mat when you wanted to change the advertising.

Slashdot

Google WiFi+VPN Confirmed
An anonymous reader writes "Google is actually (confirmed!) rolling out their wifi network, first in the San Francisco bay area (see the FAQ for details.) They are also including a Secure Access program for use in conjunction with this. So far, as per usual, it's in beta, and only for the San Fran bay area. Soon the entire US, perhaps??

Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance
lonesome phreak writes "Techzonez has a short piece about the recent FAA waiver received by the LiftPort Group allowing them to conduct preliminary tests or their high altitude robotic lifters. The lifters are early prototypes of the technology that the company is developing for use in its commercial space elevator to ferry cargo back and forth into space."

Ultimate USB Drive

USB thumb drives have shown themselves to be a superior alternative to other portable media such as diskettes and writable optical discs. They're smaller and can hold tons of data, and most current operating systems recognize them without needing any special drivers. We've seen 1GB drives for under $100, and drives with smaller capacities start at under $20.

Most people don't realize that these drives can also carry enough applications to serve as a personal office on the road, and can even contain a complete bootable operating system to provide total security when you are computing away from home. There are plenty of reasons to carry applications or an operating system on your USB drive: You'll have your e-mail and instant messaging accounts, Internet bookmarks, log-on passwords, and even document templates instantly available on any computer you find in a hotel's computer center, a home, or an office that you might visit. You can also be certain that your settings will stay on your USB drive and won't be stored in the browser cache or anywhere else on a remote machine. Here's what we put on our ultimate USB drive; the programs are free for personal use, unless noted. Most of the apps we describe can run entirely from the USB drive without installation.

Your Internet Office on the Road

Enthralled by Firefox but frustrated that many PCs you use still don't have it installed? Or perhaps you just prefer to steer clear of the spyware potentially lurking inside Microsoft Internet Explorer, the more popular browser? Firefox leaves no clues to your browsing activities on the remote computer, something you can never be sure of when using IE. Developer John Haller has created portable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, the Sunbird calendar application, and the NVU Web-page editor (all can be downloaded from http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla ). Portable Fire-fox has minor limitations when run from a USB drive, but the others work perfectly.

Portable Firefox 1.0.4 () renders most sites exactly as it does when installed on your hard drive, but Java applets will run only if Java (which will work only if it finds settings already specified in the registry) is installed on the host machine. You also won't be able to view PDF files if no PDF software is installed on the host, so download the fast and tiny (less than 1MB) Foxit PDF Reader 1.3 for standalone viewing of PDF files. You'll need to download PDFs instead of viewing them in the browser. ( www.foxitsoftware.com )

If you install the Firefox Bookmarks Synchronizer extension, you can upload new bookmarks to an FTP server and import them to your home machine when you return, or download your bookmarks on the road if you forgot to update them before you left. If you use Portable Firefox on a host computer that doesn't have Firefox already installed, it creates two directories on the host, but your settings, cookies, and other private files remain on the thumb drive. ( http://addons.mozilla.org )

Portable Thunderbird 1.0.2 (beta; ), based on the excellent Mozilla.org mail client, works without problems on a USB drive. You'll get the best results if you have an IMAP account that lets you leave messages on the server instead of transferring them to your drive, as you normally do with conventional POP mailboxes. Although not as high-powered as Microsoft Outlook for calendars and scheduling, Portable Sunbird 0.2 () gets the job done and may be enough for anyone whose work doesn't require carrying an Outlook-equipped laptop everywhere. Portable NVU 1.0 Preview Release ), a basic HTML editor still in early development, is also trouble-free on a USB key but doesn't compare to Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

For FTP and Secure FTP, FileZilla 2.2.14b lets you choose between a secure mode that never stores passwords and a less-secure mode that stores passwords in an XML file on your thumb drive. FileZilla doesn't have the prettiest interface you've seen on an FTP client, but it's fast and secure, and worth considering for your desktop machine as well as for your thumb drive. ( http://filezilla.sourceforge.net )

The free Trillian Basic 3.1 instant messaging client works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger, but it isn't designed to be run from a portable drive. The third-party Trillian Anywhere Web site provides simple instructions for setting up Trillian on your hard drive, creating all its settings, and then transferring it to a USB drive. The result is a trouble-free universal IM client that leaves no traces on the host computer. ( www.trilliananywhere.com )

John Haller has also created USB-friendly versions of the http://OpenOffice.org office suite; you can choose between a stable 1.1.4 version and a faster and slicker 2.0 Alpha version. The 2.0 version fills 127MB, so you'll need a generous-size USB drive, but it guarantees you a full-featured productivity suite compatible with Microsoft Office wherever you plug in the drive. You may need to click through the license agreement on each new host machine, but that's a minimal inconvenience. ( http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_openoffice )

All work and no play makes for a dull USB key. Fortunately you can store your favorite tunes on your thumb drive and listen to them with XMPlay, a miniature but high-powered media player. It has the tiny, overelaborate interface typical of freeware media players, but with downloadable skins that can slightly improve it. Alternatively, consider CoolPlayer, a compact open-source MP3 player that can be extended via plug-ins to handle almost any current media format. (XMPlay, www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html , ; CoolPlayer, http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net , )

Security

Every time you plug a USB key into someone else's computer, you risk catching a virus or other malware. For a scanner that checks the full range of viruses found in the wild, download AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic, which can be installed to your USB drive and run from any host computer. (It puts a few Registry entries on your hard drive, which you can remove or ignore.) One minor problem with AntiVir on a USB drive: If you haven't used the drive for a day or two, you should run the AntiVir updater as soon as you plug your drive into a new machine. But after you run the built-in updater, the updater component remains in memory, so the Safely Remove Hardware icon will tell you that you can't remove your USB drive safely. You can use the Windows Task Manager to close down the AntiVir process before removing the drive, or simply pull the drive out without further ado if you're certain that no other program on it is still running. ( www.free-av.com )

If space is at a premium, make sure your USB drive has at least a reduced antivirus program that focuses on a few high-risk attacks; McAfee's Avert Stinger is probably the best. ( http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger )

Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 isn't the most powerful spyware remover—and ideally needs to be used in combination with other programs—but you can carry it with you on a USB drive, and it's infinitely better than nothing. Install it in the normal way to your hard disk, then simply copy its folder to your USB drive. ( www.lavasoft.de )

You'll also want to save your passwords securely. The most efficient way to save Web passwords and forms is with Pass2Go ($39.95), also known as RoboForm Portable, a version of our Editor's Choice RoboForm form filler. If you browse the Web by running IE from the host computer while using a USB drive, then you can simply run Pass2Go from the USB key; the host's copy of IE will display the RoboForm toolbar and use your stored log-on information. If you use Portable Firefox, you'll also need to download the RoboForm Mozilla Adapter and follow the specific instructions on www.roboform.com/removeable.html for Portable Firefox. While running, Pass2Go writes files (but not your private settings) to a Temp folder on the host's hard drive. It cleans up after itself when you exit, leaving only a copy of the executable Pass2Go program on the host drive, and no other settings. ( www.roboform.com )

Among traditional standalone password storage programs, a good first choice is KeePass Password Safe, a high-powered open-source utility that uses AES and TwoFish encryption and is designed so that passwords won't be visible to keystroke loggers or any other snooping software. It has special storage for the use-once TAN (transaction number) passwords used for online banking. The keyboard interface is somewhat unreliable; accelerator keys such as Alt-F for the File menu or Ctrl-O for Open database sometimes don't have any effect. ( http://keepass.sourceforge.net )

To secure programs and data against prying eyes, you can use USB drives that come with encryption already on the drive or software-only solutions that can be installed on any thumb drive. Kingston Technology ( www.kingston.com ) uses a combination of hardware and software encryption on its DataTraveler Elite USB drives. Other vendors, such as Lexar ( www.lexar.com ) and Trek 2000 ( www.thumbdrive.com ), use software-only encryption that can be installed only on the same vendor's USB drives.

In either case, the drive comes with software that divides it into a normally visible region and an encrypted region. When you unlock the encrypted region with a password, the visible region disappears, and the same drive letter that the system assigned to the visible portion of the drive is assigned to the encrypted region. When you log out of the encrypted region, the visible portion regains its original drive letter, and the encrypted portion becomes invisible. Some new drives, such as Lexar's JumpDrive TouchGuard and SanDisk's upcoming Cruzer Profile line ( www.sandisk.com ), include fingerprint authentication.

The software in these combined solutions works only with specific drives sold by the same vendor. Software-only solutions that work with any USB drive include Folder Lock ($35), which offers multiple levels of encryption and a clear but graphics-heavy interface. The program creates a password-protected folder that isn't visible in Windows Explorer or any other directory listing until you run the program to unlock it. When you lock the folder and exit the program, it completely cleans up after itself. The encrypted folder is visible if you plug the drive into a Macintosh or Linux system, although the contents and filenames are still encrypted. ( www.newsoftwares.net )

Other drive-encryption programs tend to be less convenient. StorageCrypt 2.0.1 ($29.95) works only with drives that are formatted with multiple partitions, each with its own drive letter. You install the software on a partition that remains visible, and you run the software to encrypt or decrypt a second partition. It's easy to use despite the badly translated dialogs. StorageSafe ($29.95) doesn't require a partitioned drive to start with but works by completely reformatting your existing drive, wiping out any data that may be on it and creating a public area and a protected, encrypted area that you unlock by running the program and entering a password. Unfortunately, you need to install StorageSafe on any host computer from which you want to access the protected area, and the host computer may be set up so that you can't install anything. (StorageCrypt 2.0.1, www.magic2003.net , ; StorageSafe, www.modsol.com/StorageSafe , .)

Environments to Go

To protect your privacy on the Web, you may not need to have special security software. Instead, launch an emulated Windows CE or Linux system on your USB drive.

You don't need to carry a PDA to use the Windows CE operating system and its small-screen versions of IE and Windows Messenger. Just follow the instructions on Steve Makofsky's weblog to learn how to download Microsoft's free Windows CE emulator to your USB drive and use a batch file to launch the emulator and save its settings on the same drive. Make sure to read all the comments posted on the weblog to find essential modifications to the method described in the initial post.

After you run the emulator for the first time, it restarts instantly with the browser or IM client already open and ready for action if you left them open earlier. You don't get an e-mail client or Firefox's powerful browsing, but nothing else on a USB drive gives you the same instant-on convenience, and you'll need only 32MB for the whole package. No one seems to have figured out how to add other applications to the default setup. ( www.furrygoat.com/2004/12/portable_ce.html )

For even more security, you can run a miniature Linux system from your USB drive without rebooting. Metropipe's Portable Virtual Privacy Machine is a 125MB Linux environment that uses the open-source QEMU emulator software to allow the Linux system to run either in a window or full-screen on a Windows system. The Linux system is Damn Small Linux, based on the popular "live CD" Knoppix distribution, and includes Firefox, Thunderbird, and other open-source applications (see the sidebar below). All settings are stored inside the files used by the Linux system. On our 3-GHz test machines, the system was painfully slow to start, the Technology Preview release available during testing was buggy, and configuration programs that required the keyboard did not respond to the keystrokes needed for navigating them. ( www.metropipe.net/ProductsPVPM.shtml )

An Easier Future

Starting in fall 2005, you'll be able to buy many commercial software products—including the ZoneAlarm firewall—in portable versions based on the new U3 standard ( www.u3.com ), using a single launcher for all U3 programs on the drive and drivers that automatically clean up all traces of your programs when you detach your drive from the host machine. Though this will make things easier, the software will require U3-compatible USB drives and probably won't be compatible with your existing drives. But since there are already so many good apps that can run on current USB keys, there's no reason to wait until the new drives are out. Go ahead and load your thumb drive with apps for your next road trip.

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You can set up your USB drive so that it automatically runs a program when you plug it into a Microsoft Windows XP SP2 computer, and so it will display a custom icon next to its name in Windows Explorer. You can also give the drive any name you like—not just the standard 11-character drive label normally permitted by Windows. To do all this, create a text file named Autorun.inf in the drive's root directory, with contents something like this:

[autorun]

open=PortableFirefox.exe action=Start PortableFirefox

icon=PortableFirefox.exe label=Portable Internet

The open= line and action= lines are used only by the AutoPlay feature of Windows XP SP2. They specify, respectively, the action that the AutoPlay dialog will offer to perform and the text that the dialog will display to describe that action. The files you specify can be anywhere on your drive, but if they're not in the root, you need to give the full path. Be sure to omit the drive letter, because you can't predict what letter your drive will receive on a host computer. The icon= and label= lines indicate the icon or name of the drive as displayed in Windows Explorer. The icon can be a program file's built-in icon or any other icon resource such as a DLL or ICO file. The first icon in the file is used by default, but you can use other icons by following the filename with a comma and a number specifying the icon; numbering starts with 0, so use Filename.exe,2 to specify the third icon in the file.

Make Your Thumb Drive Bootable
ARTICLE DATE: 08.17.05

Your USB drive can be your emergency toolkit at home and away, and if the host machine supports booting from a USB drive, you can boot to a USB key that you've prepared in advance. USB drives can boot to MS-DOS (including the DOS that comes with Windows 95/98/Me), specially prepared versions of Linux, and the Windows preboot environment (which permits minimal file management and other troubleshooting but doesn't load the full Microsoft Windows GUI).

The job of making your USB drive bootable may be simple or frustrating, depending on the hardware in the host computer and the size of the USB drive. (Some BIOSs treat all USB drives smaller than 512MB as floppy disk drives, unless you tell the BIOS to treat the USB drive as a hard drive or CD-ROM.) Creating a bootable MS-DOS USB drive is easiest on a Windows 98 system, where you can often use third-party software like Symantec's PartitionMagic or Acronis Disk Director Suite to format a USB drive and mark its partition as active, and then use Windows 98's FORMAT /S command to make it bootable. Alternatively, you can find detailed manual instructions through Web searches, but be warned that methods that worked for some users won't work for others.

The most reliable and flexible software for making USB keys bootable is FlashBoot 1.2 (19.95 euros—about $24, www.prime-expert.com ), which can create anything from a minimal bootable DOS floppy to bootable Windows XP repair disks and even a fully customizable USB version of the popular BartPE boot CD-ROM, based on the Windows XP preboot environment ( www.nu2.nu ). If you build your BartPE disk carefully, you can load it with maintenance and repair tools. You may have to experiment with floppy and hard drive–style formatting of your drive before FlashBoot can make your drive bootable, but we had more success with this program than with most manual techniques. We were able to make all our test drives bootable, though some of our test computers could boot only some combinations of drives and software and not others. In general, the newer the motherboard, the more different combinations of software and USB hardware could be used for booting. An IBM ThinkPad T42 was able to boot from everything we plugged in.

Installing Linux on a USB key isn't a trivial task, but you can find plenty of helpful hints on the Web. For best results, download Damn Small Linux ( www.damnsmalllinux.org ), and proceed in one of two ways: Burn it to a CD, boot it from the CD, and use the right-click Tools menu to install it to a USB drive; or—working entirely within Windows—follow the instructions found at http://fuzzymunchkin.dyndns.org:8080/tdot/usbkeyfob/index.php . Using both methods, we created USB drives that booted on most, but not all, of our test systems.

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience

'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited

By Spencer S. Hsu

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."

Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.

They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February, and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.

But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of Brown's.

Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media.

David I. Maurstad, who stepped down as Nebraska lieutenant governor in 2001 to join FEMA, has served as acting director for risk reduction and federal insurance administrator since June 2004. Daniel A. Craig, a onetime political fundraiser and campaign adviser, came to FEMA in 2001 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he directed the eastern regional office, after working as a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown has managed more than 160 natural disasters as FEMA general counsel and deputy director since 2001, "hands-on experience [that] cannot be understated. Other leadership at FEMA brings particular skill sets -- policy management leadership, for example."

The agency has a deep bench of career professionals, said FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews, including two dozen senior field coordinators and Gil Jamieson, director of the National Incident Management System. "Simply because folks who have left the agency have a disagreement with how it's being run doesn't necessarily indicate that there is a lack of experience leading it," she said.

Andrews said the "acting" designation for regional officials is a designation that signifies that they are FEMA civil servants -- not political appointees.

Touring the wrecked Gulf Coast with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff yesterday, Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA leaders, saying, "We're always trying to strike the right balance" between political appointees and "career professionals that fill the jobs underneath them."

But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities.

FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed."

Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking.

"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is, and who understand how emergency management works."

The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of 28 agencies studied in 2003.

In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or good.

An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.

More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the Department of Homeland Security.

Marvel Gets Cash To Do 10 Films

Marvel has raised $525 million to independently finance 10 movies based on its comics over seven years. The titles named are Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi. The company's also changing its name from Marvel Enterprises to Marvel Entertainment.

Cheat Sheets for Developers

Whether you're an experienced web developer, or are just starting out, chances are you'll find something useful in Pete Freitag's Cheat Sheet Roundup. Pete's put together links to over 30 cheat sheets for developers, including guides to CSS, PHP, perl and Unix commands. One that I've been using regularly is the HTML entities sheet; I've got a mental block about some of them (I keep typing emdash when I mean mdash), so it's nice to have all of this in one place.

EFF Releases Music DRM Guide

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently created a plain English guide to several fair use restrictions that major online music services, such as Apple's iTunes, force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs). An excerpt from the guide follows: 'Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.' The EFF also lists four alternative music services which sell unrestricted files.

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

August 31, 2005 | Issue 41•35

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to "organize the world's information," announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index.

CEO Eric Schmidt speaks at Google's California headquarters (below).

"Our users want the world to be as simple, clean, and accessible as the Google home page itself," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a press conference held in their corporate offices. "Soon, it will be."

The new project, dubbed Google Purge, will join such popular services as Google Images, Google News, and Google Maps, which catalogs the entire surface of the Earth using high-resolution satellites.

As a part of Purge's first phase, executives will destroy all copyrighted materials that cannot be searched by Google.

"A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest," John Battelle wrote in his widely read "Searchblog." "Thanks to Google Purge, you'll never have to worry that your search has missed some obscure book, because that book will no longer exist. And the same goes for movies, art, and music."

"Book burning is just the beginning," said Google co-founder Larry Page. "This fall, we'll unveil Google Sound, which will record and index all the noise on Earth. Is your baby sleeping soundly? Does your high-school sweetheart still talk about you? Google will have the answers."

Enlarge Image

Page added: "And thanks to Google Purge, anything our global microphone network can't pick up will be silenced by noise-cancellation machines in low-Earth orbit."

As a part of Phase One operations, Google executives will permanently erase the hard drive of any computer that is not already indexed by the Google Desktop Search.

"We believe that Google Desktop Search is the best way to unlock the information hidden on your hard drive," Schmidt said. "If you haven't given it a try, now's the time. In one week, the deleting begins."

Although Google executives are keeping many details about Google Purge under wraps, some analysts speculate that the categories of information Google will eventually index or destroy include handwritten correspondence, buried fossils, and private thoughts and feelings.

The company's new directive may explain its recent acquisition of Celera Genomics, the company that mapped the human genome, and its buildup of a vast army of laser-equipped robots.

"Google finally has what it needs to catalog the DNA of every organism on Earth," said analyst Imran Kahn of J.P. Morgan Chase. "Of course, some people might not want their DNA indexed. Hence, the robot army. It's crazy, it's brilliant—typical Google."

Google executives oversee the first stage of Google Purge.

Google's robot army is rumored to include some 4 million cybernetic search-and-destroy units, each capable of capturing and scanning up to 100 humans per day. Said co-founder Sergey Brin: "The scanning will be relatively painless. Hey, it's Google. It'll be fun to be scanned by a Googlebot. But in the event people resist, the robots are programmed to liquify the brain."

Markets responded favorably to the announcement of Google Purge, with traders bidding up Google's share price by $1.24, to $285.92, in late trading after the announcement. But some critics of the company have found cause for complaint.

"This announcement is a red flag," said Daniel Brandt, founder of Google-Watch.org. "I certainly don't want to accuse of them having bad intentions. But this campaign of destruction and genocide raises some potential privacy concerns."

Brandt also expressed reservations about the company's new motto. Until yesterday's news conference, the company's unofficial slogan had been "Don't be evil." The slogan has now been expanded to "Don't be evil, unless it's necessary for the greater good."

Co-founders Page and Brin dismiss their critics.

"A lot of companies are so worried about short-term reactions that they ignore the long view," Page said. "Not us. Our team is focused on something more than just making money. At Google, we're using technology to make dreams come true."

"Soon," Brin added, "we'll make dreams clickable, or destroy them forever."

SSH HTTP Proxy Setup

SSHirking work - part 1		tech
A little while ago I mentioned that I've been tunnelling my web traffic out of work and through my home connection. That post inspired a firestorm of public interest (one person emailed me about it). Here's the beginning of how to implement such a setup yourself. When it's working your boss won't be able to snoop on which websites you're visiting, or block them, or really tell anything about your internet traffic apart from how much of it there is (and that it's strangely hidden). First, the big picture. I've explained the idea behind ports at least a couple of times. We're going to take our browser's web traffic — the stuff going out through port 80 — and send it through an encrypted tunnel to a PC at home that's running a proxy server. The proxy server will make an unencrypted request for the webpage we're trying to access (using our home connection) and send the data back through the encrypted tunnel. We're going to need a few things. We'll need a PC that's at home and turned on at whatever times the link should be available. And we're going to need to make some assumptions. So this is going to be a Windows tutorial. All the software required is free and open source, though, and you could certainly accomplish this setup under OS X or Linux. In fact, in some regards it'd probably be quite a bit easier. But Linux users don't need my help setting up a proxy server, and Mac users are used to being ignored. If anybody with a Mac really wants this functionality, just let me know. I'll be happy to dig up the relevant links. Finally, I'm going to assume you know how to open up ports on Windows firewall (or at least turn it off) if you're running a version of XP that has it installed. Same thing with ZoneAlarm, or whatever other software firewall you might be running. I can't account for everything, people! So let's get started. In this post we'll take care of the software that supports the encrypted tunnel. This is the hard, but not that hard, part. We're going to use SSH for this, a technology that on its face is a secure replacement for telnet, but also provides the ability to redirect ports on a client machine to arbitrary ports on any machine accessible to the server. This'll make sense later -- for now, just trust me as I tell you how to install OpenSSH for Windows. Start by downloading the binary installer from that site, then unzipping and running it. Here's the first important decision. What port should we run this thing on? SSH usually runs on port 22 — but we're going to have to make it publicly accessible. Script kiddies scan IP blocks for SSH servers (among other things). SSH servers make for ripe targets because they generally indicate a system more interesting than a typical grandmother's email box, and because if it can be accessed a large new class of exploits can be run against the machine. Don't be scared — none of this is very likely to happen. But it's worth thinking about. A bigger consideration is your firewall at work. Your workplace might block unknown ports for security reasons, or productivity reasons, or just to be mean. Unless you have a job-related reason for using port 22 it might not be available. To get around this, you could run your server on port 80 — that's pretty well guaranteed to work, so long as you can access the web. But it might also attract attention, in this case from your ISP. Broadband providers generally don't like folks hosting websites on their home computers. Cablemodem ISPs tend to be the biggest jerks about this. So while port 80 might be more foolproof for work, it also might bring up bureacratic hassles with your internet provider. Decide accordingly. UPDATE: Thanks to a reader in comments who points out that port 443 is almost always open (for SSL-enabled websites), is commonly used for encrypted traffic, and less likely to attract script-kiddy attention. So, run the OpenSSH installer. Accept all the defaults. If you need to use a port beside 22, edit c:\program files\openssh\etc\sshd_config in a text editor like Notepad, remove the hash (#) mark from in front of the line that reads "# port 22", change the port number appropriately, and save the file. Now we've got to set up a user for this SSH server. We'll do this by adding one to your windows machine. Make sure you're logged in as an administrator, right click on "My Computer" and choose "Manage". Expand "Local Users And Groups", right-click on "Users" and choose "New User". Enter a username — I'll assume "sshuser", but you can use whatever you'd like — and enter a good password (I'm fond of this generator for producing them). You'll probably want to uncheck "User must change password at next logon", and if I were you I'd go ahead and check the boxes next to "User cannot change password" and "Password never expires". One last thing. Click on "Start", go to "Run" and type "cmd". Now type this in: cd \Program Files\OpenSSH\bin mkgroup -l >> ..\etc\group mkpasswd -l -u sshuser >> ..\etc\passwd That sets up OpenSSH to use the user account we just created Finally, go to the Control Panel, then select "Administrative Tools", then "Services". Find "OpenSSH Server" and go to its properties (you can doubleclick on its name to get to them). Make sure "Startup Type" is "Automatic", then click the "Start" button. Congratulations. Your computer is now an SSH server. Why don't you try connecting to it? Download PuTTY and run it. Click the SSH radio button, enter "localhost" into the "Host Name" box (assuming you're running this on the same machine onto which you just installed OpenSSH). The port box should read "22" — if you installed the server on a different port, enter that number instead. Then click the "Open" button. You should get a one-time warning about the server's key, then be able to log in using the sshuser name and password. And bang! You'll get a command line prompt. Very exciting. Alright, maybe not. But trust me, this is good. If for some reason you can't get to this point, leave a message in comments and I'll try to help you fiogure it out. There's only one more step to getting this SSH server up and running: open it up to the world. So if you're behind a router, go to portforward.com and look up instructions on how to forward whatever port you're using (22, 80, or whatever) to the server machine. You'll need to look up the server's IP as well — portforward.com should have instructions, but the short version is start|run, "cmd.exe" then "ipconfig". If everything's gone right, you've got a working SSH server that's accessible from the internet. When you're at the office you'll have to use your internet IP to access the machine. You can find that out here; alternately, it might be a good idea to register for a dynamic DNS service (be sure to install the updater software) so that you don't have to worry about the IP expiring. This is a useful thing to have in its own right, but it's going to be really useful once we install Privoxy, configure the SSH tunnel and modify your browser's proxy settings to use it. But we'll get to all that in the next post. For now, take heart in the knowledge that the worst is over.

===========================

When last we left our hero — that'd be you — he had a functioning SSH server running on his Windows machine. You've poked a hole in your firewall and/or router, and maybe you've signed up for a dynamic DNS service. That, or you at least have an IP address. The bare minimum is the same: to proceed from here, you ought to be able to connect to your OpenSSH server with PuTTY when you're away from home.

The remaining tasks are pretty easy:

1. Install Privoxy on the server
2. Set up the SSH tunnel using PuTTY
3. Configure your web browser to use the SSH tunnel

So: Privoxy. You can download it here — you'll want the most recent Win32 release. Run it and use the default configuration. It should start up the Privoxy console. Everything is pretty well ready to go with the default settings. You can hit the "X" on the console, but retain the shiny new blue P in your system tray. You've now got an HTTP proxy server running on your machine — one that, it's worth noting, will only accept requests from the local machine. But that's okay, because (counterintuitively) that's exactly where they'll be coming from.

Alright. Let's get this SSH tunnel going. From your non-home location (let's just call it work), start up PuTTY and enter the information necessary to connect to your SSH server. But don't connect yet. In the menu tree on the left, navigate to Connection | SSH | Tunnels. You should see this dialog:

Enter the information as you see it here (if you can't see the image, see here), then click "Add". Let me explain what this all means.

SSH allows you to forward ports between the client machine (on which you're running PuTTY) and the server machine (on which you installed OpenSSH and Privoxy). In this case it's a Local port — that's what the radio button is set to, and it means that traffic that comes into the relevant port (specific in the "Source Port" textbox) on the client machine will be encrypted, sent to the OpenSSH server, and then sent from there to the address specified in the "Destination" textbox. If the "Remote" radio button was specified it would work in exactly the opposite direction, with traffic getting collected at the server and sent out through the client.

One more thing. You might already know this, but that "127.0.0.1:8118" has two parts: the IP address and the port number. 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address, called "loopback" or "localhost" that always refers to the current machine. The colon followed by "8118" specifies the port number. So: this tunnel will collect traffic coming into the client on port 8118; it'll then be sent through the SSH tunnel; and the server will decrypt it and send it to 127.0.0.1:8118 — port 8118 on itself. Which happens to be the default port on which Privoxy listens.

You might want to go back to the startup PuTTY screen, enter some text in the box under "Saved Sessions" and click "Save" — this'll let you reload the settings quickly in the future. Every time you want to use this tunnel, you'll have to open PuTTY, reload (or reenter) these settings, then connect and log into your SSH server as normal. It's important to note that the tunnel won't be set up until the login is complete — otherwise this would be a pretty huge security hole. And, as a result, you'll have to keep that PuTTY window open for as long as you're using the proxy setup each day. It's not that irritating, I promise.

Alright, last step. With the tunnel established, set up your browser to use an HTTP proxy. In Firefox this is under Tools | Options | General | Connection Settings. In Internet Explorer it's under Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings | Advanced. Either way, set your HTTP proxy to point to 127.0.0.1, port 8118.

That's it! Start browsing. If you'd like to and feel up to it, download Ethereal to see what's going across the wire — all of your web traffic should be encrypted.

I should mention a few details. First, you'll probably notice that this system is a little slower than proxy-free web browsing. That's to be expected — your connection at home is assymetric, meaning that you have more available download capacity than upload capacity. Normally this works out fine, because receiving a webpage or a file or streamed audio takes more bandwidth than does asking for it. But our setup turns this on its head, because all traffic will have to be shoved back up through your home internet connection. It shouldn't be too irritatingly slow, but it will be a noticeable difference.

Second, you might occasionally see Privoxy assert itself. The most obvious way is in big, bold error pages that come up when Privoxy can't access a website. Usually refreshing the page will solve this problem. By default Privoxy also filters some ads. If you'd like to turn this capability off, consult its documentation. I've found it to be a pretty unobtrusive feature.

Finally, if you're using Firefox, I'd recommend installing SwitchProxy, an extension that lets you easily change which proxy you're using to browse (configuration is pretty intuitive; use the same settings as those outlined above). SwitchProxy comes in handy when you're about to start a high-bandwidth transaction -- a file download, for example, or streaming audio from an internet radio station. Just switch the proxy off, then start the transfer. It won't go through the tunnel, and consequently won't eat up the tunnel's limited bandwidth. As soon as the connection is initiated you can turn the proxy back on. The just-started transfer will remain outside the secure tunnel (and, of course, be visible to the public).

That pretty well wraps things up. Folks on your network at work won't be able to see what you're accessing. From a network perspective, it'll look like you're browsing from home. The SSH tunnel will be visible, but its contents will be encrypted. Odds are that no one will bother you about it. If they do, I'd suggest making up a line about your personal webmail not supporting SSL — that's plausible enough. Do keep in mind, though, that a record of your browsing activities will still exist on your hard drive. If you're really worried about it, be sure to clear out your browser's cache and history before heading home each night.

There are a few more useful things you can do now that you've got this SSH tunnel set up, the most notable being remote control of your computer at home with an application called VNC. I'll try to write something up on that later — it's very straightforward. In general, whatever other network services are available from home but not work, can be made available — with a couple of noteworthy exceptions. First, SSH only tunnels TCP, the slower-and-steadier of the internet's two packet types (UDP is its speedier, unreliable sibling). The tunnel's slow, so you wouldn't want to use it for playing Quake anyway. But the lack of UDP support rules out some streaming applications, like iTunes on the PC (Mac users can use iTunes without needing UDP by forwarding TCP port 3689). More notably, despite Windows filesharing working over TCP, it can't be redirected over SSH (at least not easily). If you need to get to windows shares on your home network, you'll want a real VPN solution, like OpenVPN. Unfortunately the OpenVPN tutorial I did a while ago is now outdated (it should still work for a single user, but it'll probably be a bit slow). If there's any interest, I'll write up a new one.

As before, let me know in comments if you have any trouble with the above instructions. Besides newfound guilt over dereliction of your official duties, I mean.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that many apps besides web browsers can use HTTP proxies. Most obvious is your IM client — if you'd like secure IM traffic, check out its connection settings and configure it to use an HTTP proxy using the same settings as you did for your web browser.

Korea is Pissed at Goolge

South Korea is the latest country to raise its concerns over Google's satellite photo service, Google Earth. The country is worried about sensitive sites being visible from space by the service's users, including the presidential Blue House and military bases, as it remains officially at war with its neighbour, North Korea.

The presidential office in the country is reportedly planning to raise its fears with US officials. The roofs of some sensitive sites in the US - including the White House - have already been blacked out by Google, but that hasn't happened with its satellite imagery of South Korea. Images of the secretive North Korea are also available.

American Scientist Stamps

History of LSD

The latest issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry includes a trip into the roots of psychedelic culture, titled "Flashback: Psychiatric Experimentation With LSD in Historical Perspective." The paper was written by Erika Dyck, a doctoral student in the Department of History at McMaster Univsersity in Ontario. From the abstract:

In the popular mind, d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) research in psychiatry has long been associated with the CIA-funded experiments conducted by Ewen Cameron at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, Quebec. Despite this reputation, a host of medical researchers in the post–World War II era explored LSD for its potential therapeutic value. Some of the most widespread trials in the Western world occurred in Saskatchewan, under the direction of psychiatrists Humphry Osmond (in Weyburn) and Abram Hoffer (in Saskatoon). These medical researchers were first drawn to LSD because of its ability to produce a “model psychosis.” Their experiments with the drug that Osmond was to famously describe as a “psychedelic” led them to hypothesize and promote the biochemical nature of schizophrenia. This brief paper examines the early trials in Saskatchewan, drawing on hospital records, interviews with former research subjects, and the private papers of Hoffer and Osmond. It demonstrates that, far from being fringe medical research, these LSD trials represented a fruitful, and indeed encouraging, branch of psychiatric research occurring alongside more famous and successful trials of the first generation of psychopharmacological agents, such as chlropromazine and imipramine. Ultimately, these LSD experiments failed for 2 reasons, one scientific and the other cultural. First, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the scientific parameters of clinical trials shifted to necessitate randomized controlled trials, which the Saskatchewan researchers had failed to construct. Second, as LSD became increasingly associated with student riots, antiwar demonstrations, and the counterculture, governments intervened to criminalize the drug, restricting and then terminating formal medical research into its potential therapeutic effects.

Link

New Material Harder Than Diamond

Diamond is no longer the hardest substance known to man. Scientists have created a new material, called "aggregated diamond nanorods" by compressing carbon-60 under high heat. From the article: 'The hardness of a material is measured by its isothermal bulk modulus. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared with 442 GPa for conventional diamond.

Nanotech Coating Prevents Fogging

MIT scientists have applied for a patent on a coating process that reduces or eliminates fogging on glass surfaces (car windshields, eyeglasses, etc). The new coating was described today at the 230th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Linux is So Tuff

I love Linux. I use it on my servers, I use it on my desktops, and I use it on my entertainment center, where it powers my HDTV TiVo and my D-Link DSM-320 media player, which turns my network into a media library with terabytes of storage. Heck, I even run Linux on my Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi access points, which hook the whole shebang together.

But, Linux isn't for everyone. Seriously. Here are my top five reasons why you shouldn't move to Linux . . .

Reason number one: Linux is too complicated

Even with the KDE and GNOME graphical windowing interfaces, it's possible -- not likely, but possible -- that you'll need to use a command line now and again, or edit a configuration file.

Compare that with Windows where, it's possible -- not likely, but possible -- that you'll need to use a command line now and again, or edit the Windows registry, where, as they like to tell you, one wrong move could destroy your system forever.

Reason number two: Linux is a pain to set up

It's true. After all, with modern Linuxes like Xandros Desktop or SimplyMEPIS, you need to put in a CD or DVD, press the enter button, give your computer a name, and enter a password for the administrator account.

Gosh, that's hard.

On the other hand, with Windows, all you have to do is put in a CD or DVD, do all the above, and then immediately download all the available patches. After all, Symantec has found that an unpatched Windows PC connected to the Internet will last only a few hours before being compromised.

Unpatched Linux systems? Oh, they last months, but what's the fun of that?

Reason number three: Linux doesn't have enough applications

Really now. I mean, most Linux systems only come with secure Web browsers, like Firefox; e-mail clients, like Evolution; IM clients, like GAIM; office suites, like OpenOffice.org 2.0; Web page editors, like Nvu; and on, and on, and...

Microsoft, on the other hand, gives you Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, the most popular Web browser and e-mail client around -- even though they do have a few little, teeny-weeny problems. Of course, Windows also has an IM-client, Windows Messenger, which, come to think of it, has also had some problems.

And, Microsoft also has Microsoft Office, which -- oh wait, you don't get that with the operating system, do you? You also don't get a Web page editor either, do you?

Well, still, with Windows you get so many more choices of software, don't you? Like Lotus 1-2... oh really? I didn't know that. Or, WordPerfect... oh, pretty much dead too.

Still, so long as you want to run Microsoft programs at Microsoft prices, Windows is the operating system for you!

Reason number 4: Linux isn't secure

If Microsoft says so, it has to be true! So what, if you can scarcely go a week without reading about yet another major Windows security problem in our sister publication, eWEEK.com's security section! Who would you rather believe -- Microsoft, or your own eyes?

Reason number 5: Linux is more expensive

Are you calling Microsoft a liar? Those nasty Linux companies, like Red Hat or Novell/SUSE charge you a fee for support. Others, like Linspire sell you the product. How dare they, when you can download free, fully-functional versions of almost all the Linux distributions.

Your computer, on the other hand, almost certainly came with Windows pre-installed! For free!

Oh wait, it's not free? Windows' actually makes up a large percentage of your PC's price?

Hmmm. Well, still, it's already on there, and it has everything you need.

Right? Of course, right!

Except, of course, you might still want to buy an anti-viral program (Norton Anti-Virus: $40), anti-spyware software (McAfee Anti-Spyware: $25); and a full-featured firewall (Zone Alarm Pro: $35). But, hey, who needs those when you have a secure operating system like Windows!

And so...

When you really think about it, you can see why there are lots of reasons not to use Linux.

There just aren't any good ones.

A9's Blockview Mapping

A9 (the search engine owned by Amazon) has a fully enabled Beta Website preview of their new Blockview mapping program. This website allows you to view high detailed pictures of street-level view of selected addresses. They drive around certain cities (see below) with a gps device and 2 digital cameras then plot the corresponding images with the street address...Thereby allowing you to see your destination before arriving. Great tool for researching locations, coffee shops, resturaunts, clubs, etc

Here is the LINK

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is "Block View," which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings.

Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 26 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

Current List of Cities Having Block View Images

The current list of cities and their surrounding areas include:

• Washington DC
• Phoenix
• Miami
• Houston
• Fargo
• Atlanta
• Boston
• Dallas
• Chicago
• New York City (Manhattan)
• Denver
• Los Angeles
• Seattle
• Portland, Oregon
• San Francisco and the Bay Area

Coverage of Manhattan – partial map (driving over the bridges was not exactly intentional). Here's one of our trucks covering Manhattan.