A man wielding a box cutter has attacked the leader of South Korea's main opposition party, slashing her face during a campaign rally.

Park, chairwoman of the Grand National Party, suffered a 10 centimeter (four-inch) cut to her face, will be hospitalized for at least a week and will not be able to speak well for months, said Choi Kyung-deuk, spokesman for Severance Hospital.

He told police that he was "upset at a society that lacks democracy," said Han Jin-ho, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

"In a democratic society, any acts of terrorism or violence during election campaigns cannot be tolerated under any circumstance for whatever reason," Roh said during a Cabinet meeting, according to his office.

Welcome to the world of Korean politics. This Ji guy has a pretty long rap sheet. There is also coverage in The Korean Times.

CNN.com - South Korea party leader's face slashed

The State Secret Privilege was used dishonestly in its first case!

United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953) is a landmark legal case in 1953 that saw the creation of the State Secrets Privilege, an unofficial but judicially-recognized extension of presidential power.

The widows of 3 crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission.

In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case.

United States v. Reynolds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tommorow is the big day for the EFF's AT&T NSA spying case. There is a public hearing in the morning to determine whether or not the Federal Government will be able to assert the State Secret's Privilege to squash the case. Wired has tons of coverage, including information from the EFF's exhibits, which I'm linking here.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room.

The above-referenced document includes a diagram (PDF 3) showing the splitting of the light signal, a portion of which is diverted to "SG3 Secure Room," i.e., the so-called "Study Group" spy room.

Since the San Francisco "secret room" is numbered 3, the implication is that there are at least several more in other cities (Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego are some of the rumored locations), which likely are spread across the United States.

Now, the description offered here would be valid for a CALEA compliance room. The existance of these things doesn't demonstrate what is being surveilled or why or with what authority. But the technical information is likely of interest to the geeks on this site, including the tool used for collecting data (which is a common CALEA compliance tool). There is also a picture of the room.

The State Secrets Option, BTW, is the nuclear option in law. If this case proceeds it will be a watershed event, particularly given that this option was accepted in the rendition case of Maher Arar. Getting tortured by a foreign government is a bit more serious then getting your phone tapped.

Of course, consideration of this matter leads one rapidly to worry that that if the intelligence or security establishment commits a crime, and you are the victim of that crime, you have no recourse. This tends to incidate that the realm of intelligence and national security is an autonomous zone, where the only real law is "trust us."

Wired News: AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence

Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report - May 16, 2006

Civil Liberties and National Security

By George Friedman

USA Today published a story last week stating that U.S. telephone
companies (Qwest excepted) had been handing over to the National
Security Agency (NSA) logs of phone calls made by American
citizens. This has, as one might expect, generated a fair bit of
controversy -- with opinions ranging from "It's not only legal but
a great idea" to "This proves that Bush arranged 9/11 so he could
create a police state." A fine time is being had by all. Therefore,
it would seem appropriate to pause and consider the matter.

Let's begin with an obvious question: How in God's name did USA
Today find out about a program that had to have been among the most
closely held secrets in the intelligence community -- not only
because it would be embarrassing if discovered, but also because
the entire program could work only if no one knew it was under way?
No criticism of USA Today, but we would assume that the newspaper
wasn't running covert operations against the NSA. Therefore,
someone gave them the story, and whoever gave them the story had to
be cleared to know about it. That means that someone with a high
security clearance leaked an NSA secret.

Americans have become so numbed to leaks at this point that no one
really has discussed the implications of what we are seeing: The
intelligence community is hemorrhaging classified information. It's
possible that this leak came from one of the few congressmen or
senators or staffers on oversight committees who had been briefed
on this material -- but either way, we are seeing an extraordinary
breakdown among those with access to classified material.

The reason for this latest disclosure is obviously the nomination
of Gen. Michael Hayden to be the head of the CIA. Before his
appointment as deputy director of national intelligence, Hayden had
been the head of the NSA, where he oversaw the collection and
data-mining project involving private phone calls. Hayden's
nomination to the CIA has come under heavy criticism from Democrats
and Republicans, who argue that he is an inappropriate choice for
director. The release of the data-mining story to USA Today
obviously was intended as a means of shooting down his nomination
-- which it might. But what is important here is not the fate of
Hayden, but the fact that the Bush administration clearly has lost
all control of the intelligence community -- extended to include
congressional oversight processes. That is not a trivial point.

At the heart of the argument is not the current breakdown in
Washington, but the more significant question of why the NSA was
running such a collection program and whether the program
represented a serious threat to l... [ Read More (2.0k in body) ]

Civil Liberties and National Security

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.

Good reference for debunking the popular 911 conspiracy theories.

Popular Mechanics - Debunking The 9/11 Myths - Mar. 2005 Cover Story

And now, a rare instance of Rattle recommending movies. Here are some recommendations for your next movie night:

Penn & Teller enjoy playing jokes on each other. When Penn says on an interview show that he wishes he has someone threatening his life so that he "wouldn't sweat the small stuff," each of them begins a series of pranks on the other to suggest a real threat. Then they find that a real psychopath is interested in them.

Penn and Teller Get Killed will make you laugh, a lot. This 1989 low-budget flick is notable for being the best movie ever to feature Atlantic City.

The next time you and your friends watch a bunch of conspiracy documentaries you pulled off conspiracy central, follow them up with this gem from Troma, the Legend of the Chupacabra:

The Chupacabra (Spanish for "goat sucker")--Is it mere folklore? A government conspiracy? Some weirdo in a latex suit? When the mutilation of her uncle's goats (and her uncle) by the brutal Chupacabra is caught on tape, Maria Esperanza vows to find out despite the superstitious fears of the locals.

The Crazy Rulers of The World from Jon Ronson would work particularly well:

The Crazy Rulers of the World is the extraordinary, never before told story of what happened when chiefs of US intelligence, the army, and the government began believing in very strange things.

The three-part series begins with The Men Who Stare at Goats, which charts the history of a secret US Army unit founded in 1979 - the First Earth Battalion.

Be all that you can be! [FM].

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

!!!

...within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants.

They aren't looking for Terrorists. They're trying to quash whistle blowers!

Below, Noteworthy ties together a slew of earlier datapoints that hinted at this program, but I must underline this quotation that particularly pisses me off:

White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino denied that the administration was misleading when it described the NSA program as narrowly drawn.

"It is narrow," she said. "The president has been very specific and very accurate in all of his comments. He said that the government is not trolling through personal information and that the privacy of Americans is fiercely guarded."

When they say "the privacy of Americans is fiercely guarded" what they mean is that they have a team of lawyers who have fiercely produced arguements that what they are doing is legal. Covering your ass is not the same thing as guarding my privacy, god damnit! There is a time when press interview management and spin control is no longer funny, and this is that time. This nation is not made up of little children. The administration has serious questions to answer and they ought to be answering those questions in a serious way.

Going back to Orin Kerr's legal analysis, I'm troubled by how easily the 4th amendment is dismissed here. If the 4th amendment doesn't prevent wholesale data mining of phone call information then what the hell does it prevent!? Even if we find it reasonable that phone users might expect the phone company to share dialed numbers with the government, but not share call content, an arguement I find questionable to begin with, I think we might still expect that the phone company would only do this in special circumstances, and wouldn't be doing it with every single call.

Noteworthy's post is everything below this line:

As illustrated by Negroponte's remarks last week, administration officials have been punctilious in discussing the NSA program over the past five months, parsing their words with care and limiting comments to the portion of the program that had been confirmed by the president in December.

In doing so, the administration rarely offered any hint that a much broader operation, involving millions of domestic calls, was underway. Even yesterday -- after days of congressional furor and extensive media reports -- administration officials declined to confirm or deny the existence of the telephone-call program, in part because of court challenges that the government is attempting to derail.

I continue to be surprised that no one else has recommended Black Arts, by Thomas Powers, more than a year after its publication and appearance on MemeStreams. For this reason, I will reiterate his closing statement for you:

About the failure everyone now agrees. But what was the problem? And what should be done to make us safe?

It wasn't respect for ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring

Decius chimes in on dc0de's situation:

Dc0de has joined what we have started referring to as "the club." People we know who have received legal threats for saying true things in a public place. This seems to happen a lot to computer security people.

In the United States, you're supposed to have a right to freedom of speech. This isn't just a matter of what the law technically says or means. As Rattle has pointed out before, freedom of speech is a core value in our society. It is a value that transcends what the law merely requires, providing a model for how a mature society addresses all sorts of conflicts: The appropriate way to respond to critics is within the realm of ideas and not within the realm of coersion.

People who use the legal system to squash critics instead of appropriately addressing their criticism in print are operating in a manner that is out of sync with the core values of this nation. I hold this sort of behavior in very poor esteem.

However, this happens all the time, so a more fundamental fix is required. The legal system should not allow itself to be used by wealthy parties as a weapon to coerce people who do not have the resources to defend themselves. This is fundamentally unjust. The legal system must be reformed.

For a smart analysis of these issues see this paper about two other members of "the club," Billy and Virgil.

dc0de wrote:
Part of the presentation includes a slide that shows the Insider Attack Variables, including, Corporate environment and culture. Since the IDR's previous incident was caused by someone not performing their due diligence on 50 fraudulent companies, thereby allowing these companies to freely PURCHASE data from the IDR and commit fraud, I used their loss as an example...

The company that I work for now is terminating me, and claiming that I have to sign the IDR's document, (that they negotiated as part of their settlement), and of course, another document, forbidding me to speak about this issue.

There is no protection for whistle-blowers in the security industry. This is a major problem. There is a nitch for a lobby here that should be filled.

RE: Telling the Truth hurts...

Contracts are being canceled, deals are drying up, prices are starting to drop. The psychology is shifting even as thousands of new homes and condos join the for-sale listings each day - so the downward pressure will only get worse.

Speculators who bought overpriced condos in hope of a quick killing are going to get hosed.

No one is going to be able to say they didn't see this coming.

Welcome to the dead zone