From: Donald Weightman <dweightman@radix.net>
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 06:33:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Internet 'terrorism' newsclips  [CYPHER, but news]
Message-ID: <199609292003.QAA08843@news1.radix.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From today's PARADE magazine, that valuable source for insight into the
popular heart and mind, "explaining" why "we" haven't been able to catch
Iranian terrorists:

>Thanks to the highly sophisticated surveillance capabilities, American 
>intelligence agencies have intercepted enough telephone messages from Iran, 
>ordering acts of terrorism, that Iran's terrorist network stopped using the 
>phone. Reportedly this has caused them to start using codes on the Internet 
>that are "practically" impossible to track and isolate.

>"Just when we thought we had outsmarted them, they caught on and started
>using codes on the Internet", an expert in international terrorrism tells
>us. "There's so much crazy srewball stuff on the Internet that it's
>practically impossible to track down and isolate the terrorists. No
>government can analyze those millions and millions of messages."

And from another piece of hard-hitting quote-the-official-source journalism
in PARADE, "A New Worry: Terrorism in Cyberspace"

>The danger of computer-based "cyper" attacks is second only to that posed by  
>nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction, says CIA's Director, John 
>Deutch. He expects the threat to grow as we rush to connect the world on the 
>Internet.

<SNIP>

>There were more than 250,000 attacks on Department of Defense computers last 
>year, and 65% were successful. Little is known about who launched them,
why, or 
>what they found. In a recent test, Defense Department "red teams" admit to 
>intentionally hacking into 18,200 systems, with only 5% of the attacks 
>detected; only 27% of those attacks were reported.

Wonder if the timing of these stories has anything to do with the end of
term legislative push on wiretapping.

Don Weightman
dweightman@radix.net