Anonymous Servers - Times Blocks Article to U.K. Web Readers

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Times Blocks Article to U.K. Web Readers

Anonymous via Panta Rhei

2006-08-30, 7:14 am

for our UK friends, the Times article is included en toto after the foxnews
piece.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Au...nternet,00.html

Times Blocks Article to U.K. Web Readers
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK The New York Times'Web site is blocking British readers from a
news article
detailing the investigation into the recent airline terror plot, turning
its Internet
ad-targeting technology into a means of complying with U.K. laws.

"We had clear legal advice that publication in the U.K. might run afoul of
their
law,"Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said Tuesday."It's a country that
doesn't have the
First Amendment, but it does have the free press. We felt we should respect
their
country's law."

Visitors who click on a link to the article, published Monday, instead got
a notice
explaining that British law"prohibits publication of prejudicial
information about the
defendants prior to trial."The blocked article reveals evidence authorities
have in the
alleged plot to use liquid explosives to down U.S. airliners over the
Atlantic.

The Times site already targets ads based on a visitor's location, but
McNulty said this
was the first time the technology was used in an editorial capacity. The
Times also
blocked U.K. access to an audio summary of the top Times stories, which
included the
article in question.

Other news organizations have blocked content before, mostly for financial
reasons, said
Michael Geist, a law professor at the university of Ottawa.

For example, the British Broadcasting Corp. has been testing online access
to landmark
television reports of major world events from the past half-century. But it
said it
cannot make the video available for free outside of Britain because it is
funded through
an annual levy on British TV owners.

The BBC and other organizations also have blocked audio and video of
Olympics
competition because they bought licenses only for specific geographic
regions. Likewise,
to protect broadcast contracts, Major League Baseball has used similar
technology to
prevent live online access to games involving hometown teams.

The underlying blocking technology, known as geotargeting or geolocation,
checks the
numeric Internet address of a visitor's computer against databases showing
the company
or service provider to which that address was assigned.

The technique is not foolproof.

A British computer modem could, for instance, make an international call to
make the
visitor appear to be coming from, say, the United States.

And British readers could find excerpts posted on Web journals and other
unblocked
sites. In fact, the Daily Mail of London published an article on the case,
attributing
details to the Times.

"No doubt an intrepid computer user will probably be able to access the
article,"Geist
said. But"I suspect the majority simply won't bother."

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Harvard and Oxford
universities, said
he doubts whether U.K. officials would crack down.

"They all basically want to say they made some effort,"he said. The
Times"can say the
laws are respected. The British can say the laws are respected. And
everyone can read
the story."

McNulty said the technology may not be 100 percent reliable, but"we've done
everything
that we could."

The Times also is keeping the article out of printed editions published in
the U.K. or
mailed to U.K. subscribers. And it is stripping the item from a news
service for ships
and hotels printed by a company in Liverpool.

McNulty said the last time the newspaper blocked a specific article was
about 15 years
ago. The newspaper feared that Canadian authorities would confiscate an
edition that
reported on a sex abuse trial, she said, so the item was kept out of the
early editions
that got sent to Canada.

It's not clear whether the Times'decision would make it more likely for news
organizations to engage in country-specific self-censorship in the future,
particularly
in areas involving libel, where protections aren't as strong outside the
United States.

After all, courts already have applied country-specific laws to the
borderless Internet.

An Australia court in 2002 allowed a defamation case against Dow Jones&Co.
to be heard
in that country because people there could have read the article in
question online. The
case was ultimately settled.

Earlier, a French judge had ordered Yahoo Inc. to prevent French users from
encountering
Nazi paraphernalia banned in France on the Yahoo auction site meant for
U.S. visitors.

"Courts will start to take note of the availability of those
technologies,"Geist
said."Now that it's increasingly proven technology with a base level of
effectiveness, I
expect we'll see that consideration."

Blocked Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/w...ope/28plot.html

August 28, 2006
Details Emerge in British Terror Case
By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEPHEN GREY

LONDON, Aug. 27 On Aug. 9, in a small second-floor apartment in East
London, two young
Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their
suicide plot to
blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and its
accomplices,
Britain and the Jews.

As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed, said
one of the men
on a martyrdom videotape, whose contents were described by a senior
British official
and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God
would be
pleased with us and accepts our deed.

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden
video and audio
equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard
decided to shut
down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain
of events
that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States,
barred passengers
from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around
the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new
details that
emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American
officials last
week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward
planning a
terrorist attack. Those details include fresh evidence from Britains most
wide-ranging
terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a
handwritten diary that
appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several
suspects
statements of their motives.

But at the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were
not prepared
to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United
States in the
wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information
about a
specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might
strike.

The suspects had been working for months out of an apartment that
investigators called
the bomb factory, where the police watched as the suspects experimented
with
chemicals, according to British officials and others briefed on the
evidence, all of
whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on
confidentiality regarding
criminal prosecutions.

In searches during raids, the police discovered what they said were the
necessary
components to make a highly volatile liquid explosive known as HMTD,
jihadist materials,
receipts of Western Union money transfers, seven martyrdom videos made by
six suspects
and the last will and testament of a would-be bomber, senior British
officials said. One
of the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the war against Muslims
in Iraq and
Afghanistan had motivated him to act.

Investigators say they believe that one of the leaders of the group, an
unemployed man
in his 20s who was living in a modest apartment on government benefits,
kept the key to
the alleged bomb factory and helped others record martyrdom videos, the
officials
said.

Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government
officials in both
countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist
attack since Sept.
11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in
London, said
the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was mass murder on
an
unimaginable scale. On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated
that as many as
10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael
Chertoff, the
secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected
plot as
getting really quite close to the execution stage.

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two
of the
suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval.
One official
said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and
radicalizing
would-be bombers.

While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating
that one of the
men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in
the United
States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane
tickets, a
British official said. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was
found five days
after the arrests in a suitcase buried under leaves in the woods near High
Wycombe, a
town 30 miles northwest of London.

Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often made
well in advance
of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became
public, British
investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for
the attacks
or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes
was
speculative and exaggerated.

In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of
counterterrorism
for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police were still
investigating the
basics: the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be
attacked.

A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the suspected
plot. Twelve of
them have been charged. Eight people were charged with conspiracy to commit
murder and
preparing acts of terrorism. Three people were charged with failing to
disclose
information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old male
suspect was
charged with possession of articles that could be used to prepare a
terrorist act. Eight
people still in custody have not been charged. Five have been released. All
the suspects
arrested are British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35.

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical
question:
whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and
detonating liquid
explosives while airborne.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity
because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared
by combining
hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, in theory is dangerous, but
whether the
suspects had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.

While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation
points to a
serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the
immediacy
and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of
some of the
public statements made at the time.

In retrospect, said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of
counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, there may have been
too much
hyperventilating going on.

Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a
year ago,
shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subway trains and a
double-decker bus
in London on July 7, 2005, a coordinated attack that killed 56 people and
wounded more
than 700. The investigation was dubbed Operation Overt.

The Police Are Tipped Off

The police were apparently tipped off by informers. One former British
counterterrorism
official, who was working for the government at the time, said several
people living in
Walthamstow, a working-class neighborhood in East London, alerted the
police in July
2005 about the intentions of a small group of angry young Muslim men.

Walthamstow is best known for its faded greyhound track and the borough of
Waltham
Forest, where more than 17,000 Pakistani immigrants live in the largest
Pakistani
enclave in London.

Armed with the tips, MI5, Britains domestic security services, began an
around-the-
clock surveillance operation of a dozen young men living in Walthamstow
bugging their
apartments, tapping their phones, monitoring their bank transactions,
eavesdropping on
their Internet traffic and e-mail messages, even watching where they
traveled, shopped
and took their laundry, according to senior British officials.

The initial focus of the investigation was not about possible terrorism
aboard planes,
but an effort to see whether there were any links between the dozen men and
the July 7
subway bombers, or terrorist cells in Pakistan, the officials said.

The authorities quickly learned the identity of the man believed to have
been the leader
of the cell, the unemployed man in his mid-20s, who traveled at least
twice within the
past year to Pakistan, where his activities are still being investigated.

Last June, a 22-year-old Walthamstow resident, who is among the suspects
arrested Aug.
10, paid $260,000 cash for a second-floor apartment in a house on Forest
Road, according
to official property records. The authorities noticed that six men were
regularly
visiting the second-floor apartment that came to be known as the bomb
factory,
according to a British official and the person briefed about the case.

Two of the men, who were likely the bomb-makers, were conducting a series
of experiments
with chemicals, said the person briefed on the case.

MI5 agents secretly installed video and audio recording equipment inside
the apartment,
two senior British officials said. In a secret search conducted before the
Aug. 10
raids, agents had discovered that the inside of batteries had been scooped
out, and that
it appeared several suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports
drink named
Lucozade and syringes, the person with knowledge of the case said.
Investigators have
said they believe that the suspects intended to bring explosive chemicals
aboard planes
inside sports drink bottles.

In that apartment, according to a British official, one of the leaders and
a man in his
late 20s met at least twice to discuss the suspected plot, as MI5 agents
secretly
watched and listened. On Aug. 9, just hours before the police raids
occurred in 50
locations from East London to Birmingham, the two men met again to discuss
the suspected
plot and record a martyrdom video.

As one of the men read from a script before a videocamera, he recited a
quotation from
the Koran and ticked off his reasons for the action that I am going to
undertake,
according to the person briefed on the case. The man said he was seeking
revenge for the
foreign policy of the United States, and their accomplices, the U.K. and
the Jews. The
man said he wanted to show that the enemies of Islam would never win this
war.

Beseeching other Muslims to join jihad, he justified the killing of
innocent civilians
in America and other Western countries because they supported the war
against Muslims
through their tax dollars. They were too busy enjoying their Western
lifestyles to
protest the policies, he added. Though British officials usually release
little
information about continuing investigations, Scotland Yard took the unusual
step of
disclosing some detailed information about the investigation last Monday,
when the
suspects were charged.

A Trove of Evidence

There have been 69 searches, Mr. Clarke, the chief antiterrorist police
official from
Scotland Yard, said Monday. These have been in houses, flats and business
premises,
vehicles and open spaces.

Investigators also seized more than 400 computers, 200 mobile phones and
8,000 items
like memory sticks, CDs and DVDs. The scale is immense, Mr. Clarke
said. Inquiries
will span the globe.

He said those searches revealed a trove of evidence, and officials and
others last week
provided additional details.

Four of the law firms that are defending suspects declined to comment.

When police officers knocked down the door to the second-floor apartment on
Forest Road,
they found a plastic bin filled with liquid, batteries, nearly a dozen
empty drink
bottles, rubber gloves, digital scales and a disposable camera that was
leaking liquid,
the person with knowledge of the case said. The camera might have been a
prototype for a
device to smuggle chemicals on the plane.

In the pocket of one of the suspects, the police found the computer memory
stick that
showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the
United States,
a British official said. The man is said to have had a diary that included
a list that
the police interpreted as a step-by-step plan for an attack. The items
included
batteries and Lucozade bottles. It also included a reminder to select a
date.

In the homes of a number of the suspects, the police found jihadist
literature and DVDs
about genocide in Iraq and Palestine, according to British officials. In
one house
searched by the police in Walthamstow, the authorities found a copy of a
book called
Defense of the Muslim Lands.

A last will and testament for one of the accused was said to have been
found at his
brothers home. Dated Sept. 24, 2005, the will concludes, What should I
worry when I
die a Muslim, in the manner in which I am to die, I go to my death for the
sake of my
maker. God, he added, can if he wants bless limbs torn away!!!

Looking for Global Ties

In addition, the British authorities are scouring the evidence for clues to
whether
there is a global dimension to the suspected plot, particularly the extent
to which it
was planned, financed or supported in Pakistan, and whether there is a
connection to
remnants of Al Qaeda. They are still trying to determine who provided the
cash for the
apartment and the computer equipment and telephones, officials said.

Several of the suspects had traveled to Pakistan within weeks of the
arrests, according
to an American counterterrorism official.

At a minimum, investigators say at least one of the suspects inspiration
was drawn from
Al Qaeda. One of the suspects kill-as-they-kill martyrdom video was
taken from a
November 2002 fatwa by Osama bin Laden.

British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot
remained
unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland
Yard was ready.

The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old
British citizen
with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have
described as a key
figure in the plot.

In 2000, Mr. Raufs father founded Crescent Relief London, a charity that
sent money to
victims of last Octobers earthquake in Pakistan. Several suspects met
through their
involvement in the charity, a friend of one of them said. Last week,
Britain froze the
charitys bank accounts and opened an investigation into possible
terrorist abuse of
charitable funds. Leaders of the charity have denied the allegations.

Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf
without
informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators
here who had
wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence
and to
determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the
suspected plot.

But within hours of Mr. Raufs arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British
officials heard
from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to
contact some of the
suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a
possible
signal to move forward with the plot, officials said.

The plotters received a very short message to Go now, said Franco
Frattini, the
European Unions security commissioner, who was briefed by the British home
secretary,
John Reid, in London. I was convinced by British authorities that this
message exists.

A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that
explicit. But,
nonetheless, investigators here had to change their strategy quickly.

The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer, said a senior
British
security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules.
It ended
much sooner than we had hoped.

From then on, the British government was driven by worst-case scenarios
based on a
minimum-risk strategy.

British investigators worried that word of Mr. Raufs arrest could push the
London
suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they
would not be
able to arrest them all. But investigators also could not rule out that
there could be
an unknown second cell that would try to carry out a similar plan,
officials said.

Mr. Clarke, as the countrys top antiterrorism police official in London
with authority
over police decisions, ordered the arrests.

But it was left to Mr. Reid, who has been home secretary since May and is a
former
defense secretary, to decide at emergency meetings of police, national
security and
transport leaders, what else needed to be done. Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke
declined
repeated requests for interviews.

Prime Minister Tony Blair was on vacation in Barbados, where he was said to
have
monitored events in London; Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not
attend the
meeting.

While the arrests were unfolding, the Home Office raised Britains terror
alert level
to critical, as the police continued their raids of suspects homes and
cars. All
liquids were banned from carry-on bags, and some public officials in
Britain and the
United States said an attack appeared to be imminent. In addition to Mr.
Stephensons
remark that the attack would have been mass murder on an unimaginable
scale, Mr. Reid
said that attacks were highly likely and predicted that the loss of life
would have
been on an unprecedented scale.

Two weeks later, senior officials here characterized the remarks as
unfortunate. As more
information was analyzed and the British government decided that the attack
was not
imminent, Mr. Reid sought to calm the country by backing off from his dire
predictions,
while defending the decision to raise the alert level to its highest level
as a
precaution.

In lowering the threat level from critical to severe on Aug. 14, Mr. Reid
acknowledged:
Threat level assessments are intelligence-led. It is not a process where
scientific
precision is possible. They involve judgments.

--
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great
nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our
homeland."

- Adolf Hitler, proposing the creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
- George Bush, Talking about the Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act.

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become
the instruments of tyranny at home."

James Madison, fourth president of
the United States

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the
death, your right to say it. - Voltaire

"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury,
ammo. Use in
that order." -Ed Howdershelt

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Borked Pseudo Mailed

2006-08-30, 7:14 am

Anonymous via Panta Rhei <anonymous@panta-rhei.eu.org> wrote:

> The underlying blocking technology, known as geotargeting or geolocation,
> checks the
> numeric Internet address of a visitor's computer against databases showing
> the company
> or service provider to which that address was assigned.
>
> The technique is not foolproof.
>
> A British computer modem could, for instance, make an international call to
> make the
> visitor appear to be coming from, say, the United States.

works through tor!

> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/w...ope/28plot.html

nemo_outis

2006-08-30, 1:14 pm

Borked Pseudo Mailed <nobody@pseudo.borked.net> wrote in
news:118a921e632b0328738049c839c2a536@ps
eudo.borked.net:
[vbcol=seagreen]
> Anonymous via Panta Rhei <anonymous@panta-rhei.eu.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> works through tor!
>

Yes, this is not very strong.

However, during the recent soccer World Cup the BBC was streaming the games
to those located in the UK.

I (and many others - it was a hot topic at the time) tried to get around
this by using Tor, proxy servers located in the UK, etc, etc. Everything
failed!

As near as I can tell the BBC was working off a "whitelist" of valid UK
ISPs. No UK ISP, no access.

Regards,

PS Fortunately the games were streamed by others as well (but the live
commentary was much inferior to that from the BBC).

2006-08-30, 7:13 pm

In <Xns982F510E0668Eabcxyzcom@127.0.0.1> "nemo_outis" <abc@xyz.com> wrote:
>Borked Pseudo Mailed <nobody@pseudo.borked.net> wrote in
> news:118a921e632b0328738049c839c2a536@ps
eudo.borked.net:
>
>
>
>Yes, this is not very strong.
>
>However, during the recent soccer World Cup the BBC was streaming the games
>to those located in the UK.
>
>I (and many others - it was a hot topic at the time) tried to get around
>this by using Tor, proxy servers located in the UK, etc, etc. Everything
>failed!
>
>As near as I can tell the BBC was working off a "whitelist" of valid UK
>ISPs. No UK ISP, no access.
>
>Regards,
>
>PS Fortunately the games were streamed by others as well (but the live
>commentary was much inferior to that from the BBC).

HRm.. how about tweaking the torrc file to make it use exit nodes in the UK?

nemo_outis

2006-08-30, 7:13 pm

<nobody@mixminion.paranoici.org> wrote in
news:20060830195559.E6CB56DD33@remailer.paranoici.org:

>
> HRm.. how about tweaking the torrc file to make it use exit nodes in
> the UK?

That was tried (using "exitnodes" etc.) - it didn't work.

Regards,