From: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 04:03:02 +0800
To: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: enemy of the state movie
In-Reply-To: <199811261745.JAA08594@netcom13.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.981126120904.18448A-100000@denver>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Thu, 26 Nov 1998, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:

> fun wired article on new movie "enemy of the state"
> with privacy /cpunk implications. bamford quoted,
> info on NSA, rotenberg, spy satellites, etc.
> 
> http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16507.html
> 

In this article Judy DeMocker writes....

    The scenario of an innocent man being digitally
    hounded through tunnel and building, traced to
    pay phones and 7-Eleven surveillance systems,
    and exposed by a digital trail of personal
    information, is overblown. Most store cameras are
    not hooked up to outside systems, and databases
    are not so rapidly accessible that a government
    agent could pull up a suspect's past addresses,
    personal history, bank, and telephone records in
    the blink of an eye. 

I don't know about pay phone tracing, though I imagine voice print
identification could be done.  Don't know what 7-eleven does with their
videocams other than record it onto video tape, but I can speak about the
databases... 

Pulling up a suspects past addresses, personal history, bank and telephone
records can be done very quickly. Past addresses and personal
history could be pulled very rapidly through credit agencies.  Mean income
level, kids, their ages, past employment etc.  I've seen this done in
about 20 or 30 seconds.  Bank records could probably be snatched from
FINCEN.  Telephone records might take a court order if done legally, but I
wouldn't put it past FBI or CIA to infiltrate telephone companies. CIA was
already found to be infiltrating the press when investigated by the Church
commission. What have they done since?

For those that have done background investigations on these agencies this
is a little like expecting to be shocked when told "sister smokes!"  For 
those that have been to busy to check or care it might come as a 
surprise.  For Wired it's inexcusable.  If they would be remove
just 5% of the hype and replace it with a little reality it might
be a lot for valuable.

Wired's editors need to pay a little bit more attention to detail.

That being said I haved enjoyed some of the articles, such as
those by Declan and Charles Platt.

A little less flourescent ink, a little more content.

jim