Cook und Postel, Fortsetzung

[UZS106@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de]

From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com>

Finally after I broke the USPS .us domain take over story to the net
yesterday we see the following admission from Jon Postel:

Postel :

[material relating to the economic impact on Jon's sub domain registrar's
deleted.]

Brian Kahin (of the US Government, OSTP) did introduce management
people in the USPS to me, and we have had some positive meetings, and
now have a general understanding that the USPS is interested in
supporting our work on managing the US domain at ISI for the year
Oct98-Sep99 and possibly additional years).  No contract as yet,though
pre-contract paper work has been exchanged.

I believe that in the long run nearly all the country codes will have
some government influence acting on their management.  Within the US,
the USPS is a very unusualy thing in that it is not officially part of
the government but an independent non-for-profit corporation, yet
closely supervised by the government.  If the US Government told the
IANA to allocate the US domain to some agency or another there could be
a lot of worse choices.

The USPS is trying to think of ways to provide additional services
through the the US domain.  They've asked me to review some of these
and there may be some ideas they haven't told me about yet.

[snip]

No one expresed any desire to keep any of this secret, on the other
hand no one felt things had progressed to the point that a public
announcement or press release was warranted.

There may be internal confidential memos about proposed ideas that are
still being debated within the USPS, and i wouldn't know about that.

===

COOK Report from here to Bruce Koehler quotes.

1.  Here is further evidence of Brian Kahin's ability to unsupervised,
screw up the internet.  brian was shunted aside in January only to go on
and make more mischieve.... quite carefully avoiding public scrutiny.

2.  Jon, it would seem from the very best of intentions, has played along with
Kahin's scheme.

3. As i have written for the past year, the internet has become too
critical and too complex a communications infrastructure for decisions
about IANA functions to rest in the hands of one person any longer.  Bruce
Koehler's description of his concerns of the post office as a channel for
NSA, FBI snooping on email expressed on this list this afternoon is a
perfect case in point and one to which jon seems to have been oblivious.

4.  As Einar Stefferud (one of the internets creator's) wrote about a month
ago on the open - rsc list:  The king is dead long live the king.  It is
time for Jon to retire to a place of honor an give up his authority to to a
more broadly constituted body which can better assess the risks of inane
ideas like Kahin's.

5.  It is time for congress to ask why OSTP will sit back and allow Kahin
to release the postal service draft to robert shaw (the ITU) at the same
time he keeps its existence hidden from US citizens.


=========

the Bruce Koehler Quotes

The USPS is a not-for-profit corporate agency of the US government that
Congress has oversight with.  Both the FBI and NSA have direct working
relationships with this agency.  In other countries, such as Britain and
Germany, the Government Post Office also runs the Telecommunications within
that country.  Within those countries, their intelligence agencies monitor
and target specific users "at will."  This means that if just one individual
at the intelligence agency wants to 'listen in' on your e-traffic
(legitimately or illegitimately), they can and do.  The Intelligence
Oversight Program prevents the storage of communications between US persons
only within the United States or where both parties are KNOWN US citizens,
where one is within the US and the other is outside.  It does NOT prevent
(and I speak from experience) the 'casual monitoring' of US citizens.

With the USPS involved and all the implications on "private communications'
this will have a chilling affect on the individual users = and hence the
customer-base for business and e-commerce.

Can you imagine the NSA & CIA monitoring your stuff and passing it on to the
IRS, INS, FBI, and others? Though I am not personally concerned, it is the
Principle of Freedom that truly concerns me.  I didn't spend 20 years in the
military in defending the Constitution, to have it trampled by bureaucrats
doing what, in any other scenario, would make perfect sense.  This can and
WILL lead to a direct invasion of privacy.  This MUST be stopped!

[snip]

As an 'operative' it was extremely easy to monitor telephones, cell phones,
faxes, pagers, etc., REGARDLESS of encryption!  Though we were targeted
against other countries' communications, US citizens overseas would also be
heard in 'casual search.'  I've come across more credit card and personal
information than you would believe!  I knew who was fighting with their
wife, who was divorcing who, and who was 'screwing' who.  I could tell you
there names, locations, their itinerary, their phone numbers, how many kids
they had, what problems they were encountering at work, problems their
company was having, project details etc.

If this is something you want other folks to have (and not hide), then feel
free.  How did you vote last year?  You could be on the list.  Going for a
job interview?  Well, that company has a government contract, and they've
been 'advised' that your employment would be 'unacceptable.'  Late on your
taxes, how would you like it if the IRS knew that your brother loaned you
$10,000 to start up your business, and now EVERYTHING in that business is
open to scrutiny?  Doing development work and having a problem?  Now the
SBA
could readily announce that fact to the World = "Don't expect this project
to be coming out of [your company] any time soon.  They have hit a wall
regarding ...."  How do you think that would affect your customers'
confidence in you?

Now, we know the internet is not necessarily secure, but if you put our
government in charge, they will be able to have a direct listing of
'enemies' they want to 'hose.'  Personally, I don't want to be in that
situation...