From: Dave Emery Date: Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:30pm Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 03:11:54AM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > instead of the PS/2 ones. The USB protocol is much more difficult to > eavesdrop on, and I am not aware about any USB keylogger being available > on the market. Though I guess it's still possible to build - but the > microcontroller required for that is much more powerful, as instead of > simple bitshifting and EEPROM writing it has to decode the entire USB > protocol. Which is everything but trivial, and resorting to a software > keylogger or bugging the keyboard multiplexing matrix is easier anyway. There is USB interface silicon around in various places, including user programmable FPGAs with USB interfaces - while not as easy as 1980s keyboard interfaces, I would think anyone designing a product with any volume would be able to afford the tools and resources to use these for monitoring USB keyboard traffic. (What the gotchas are I don't know as I have not explored USB keyboard protocol issues in detail). The evilness of a hardware sniffer is that while potentially detectable by TSCM techniques (as discussed), it is in general not detectable by software on the monitored machine and cannot be neutralized by reinstalling the OS and applications or detected by using software debugging tools and techniques. > -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die@d... DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493 8387 From: Thomas Shaddack Date: Thu Mar 25, 2004 10:18am Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Dave Emery wrote: > There is USB interface silicon around in various places, > including user programmable FPGAs with USB interfaces - while not as > easy as 1980s keyboard interfaces, I would think anyone designing a > product with any volume would be able to afford the tools and resources > to use these for monitoring USB keyboard traffic. (What the gotchas are > I don't know as I have not explored USB keyboard protocol issues in > detail). USB protocol is pretty complex. Hundreds of pages of specs. Don't know how much of it is for the HID class (Human-Interface Devices, from keyboards to mice to joysticks), though. In hardware, USB is a differential synchronous bidirectional bus vaguely resembling something between RS422 and RS485. Intercepting data from it is definitely possible; maybe even relatively easy (I thought about it overnight, if I'd be designing it I'd go for the route of catching all the USB packets by an FPGA tapping the differential line, discarding everything that doesn't match a bitmask matching the keypress event packets, then either putting the scancode into a register and sending an interrupt to the microcontroller to take care of it (if FPGA-micro pair is used), or putting it into a serial EEPROM by the FPGA itself (more tricky and with less freedom for the developer, but one chip less). There are pre-made libraries of USB interfaces for FPGAs, eg. at [1], but nothing of them is for tapping the line, they are either the host or the device side. [1] Another interesting thing to find there is a very fast implementation of 128-bit AES. > The evilness of a hardware sniffer is that while potentially > detectable by TSCM techniques (as discussed), it is in general not > detectable by software on the monitored machine and cannot be neutralized > by reinstalling the OS and applications or detected by using software > debugging tools and techniques. In turn, the evilness of a software sniffer is that it can't be found by "hardware" TSCM methods nor by physical search, and that it can be installed remotely, without having to even come physically close to the machine. A sexy thing to do could be installing a keylogger (or at least its loader) right into the BIOS of the computer[2]. Modern machines have it in Flash ROM, so it can be updated (as a poor compensation for the overaccelerated development process and lack of proper testing). It's unusual enough it could stay a chance to be overlooked during an audit. If combined with an electromagnetic technique, eg. using the computer's native EM emissions and intentionally modulate them (eg. by patterned access to the PCI or memory bus)[3], could be pretty interesting. But I am just wildly speculating now. [2] You can't just hook the keyboard interrupt, as modern operating systems take over the BIOS calls and use their device drivers for talking directly with the hardware, but during the initial phase of the boot sequence the BIOS plays its role. The event chain of the boot sequence would have to be compromised, so the keylogger would be inserted into the keyboard driver during the moment it's being loaded into the memory; patching the binary during the load is not trivial, but - as some "game loaders" used to play pirate games without cracking off the copy protection on the files themselves show - it's very much possible. Similar techniques used to be common with boot viruses as well. Maybe they will return, in some updated form reflecting the OS changes, bringing a refreshing breeze into the stale atmosphere of boring Outlook-Transmitted Diseases. [3] Prior art from 1999 exists. http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@c2.net/msg01769.html 8388 From: Date: Fri Mar 26, 2004 11:17am Subject: Interviewed - Would-be whistleblower indicted for keyboard tap NEWS Would-be whistleblower indicted for keyboard tap By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Mar 24 2004 8:14PM A former claims adjuster for a U.S. insurance company is the first to be charged under federal wiretap law for the covert use of a hardware keystroke logger, after he was caught using the device while secretly helping consumer attorneys gather information to use against his own company. Larry Ropp, 46, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on a single count of endeavoring to intercept electronic communications. Ropp is accused of installing a "KEYKatcher" keystroke logger on the PC of a secretary to a vice president at the Bristol West Insurance Group where he worked. The KEYKatcher attaches inline with a keyboard connector, and stores every keystroke in an internal memory for later retrieval. In an interview with SecurityFocus, Ropp admitted to using the device, which he says he ordered off the Internet. But he defended his office skullduggery as a necessary evil to expose improper anti-consumer practices at the company. "The FBI themselves use key loggers quite a bit," he said. "Here, I'm a whistleblower, and I'm getting the shaft." Ropp was working at Bristol West's Anaheim, California office last year when a state appeals court ruled that the company had been illegally canceling the policies of customers who were a single day late with their payments. Under California law, an insurance company must give 10 days notice before canceling a delinquent customer's automobile liability policy. Bristol West had been circumventing that requirement by issuing "cancellation notices" with every bill, before payment was due, so that by the due date the 10 days had already passed. "If it was due Tuesday, and you had an accident on Wednesday, you didn't have any insurance," says Ropp. "It was out-and-out a wrongful, illegal denial." A California appellate court ruled against Bristol West in January, in a lawsuit filed by a customer, Curtis Mackey, who'd been involved in an auto accident two weeks after missing a payment, and was consequently denied a claim. Without admitting wrongdoing, the company subsequently agreed to pay six million dollars to settle a separate class action lawsuit filed on behalf of customners whose policy was canceled without proper notice. Office Intrigue As he tells it, the affair left Ropp with a bad taste in his mouth, and ultimately turned him against his employer. "I just felt there were a lot of people getting screwed," he says. By his account, which meshes with an affidavit filed by an FBI agent in his case, Ropp began secretly copying internal company documents about the canceled policies, then passing them on to two lawyers representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Then, late last year, Ropp, the attorneys, another Bristol employee and a private investigator all met with investigators with California's Department of Insurance, which is charged with enforcing insurance laws in the state. There, Ropp offered what the FBI describes as "information concerning Bristol's handling of certain claims." What happened next depends on who you ask. Ropp says the Department was interested, and wanted Ropp get more documentation. "They told us to gather all the information we can," he recalls. The Department remembers it differently. "It's a very strange situation," says spokesperson Carrie Beckstein. The meeting took place at Ropp's request, Beckstein said, and the investigators were not persuaded to probe Bristol's practices. "The only information that we wanted was, what, exactly [Ropp] was up to... We have not requested his services. We did not ask him to go out and elicit information." Regardless, Ropp says he set his sights on a company database of every custome r who might qualify as a member of the class in the lawsuit. "What I was trying to do is get the current list of those claims, and what they did or didn't do with them, and I wanted to get that for the Department of Insurance," says Ropp. That's where the FBI and federal prosecutors say Ropp crossed the line. The database was password protected, and Ropp decided to crack the system. After some Googling, he settled on the KEYKatcher as the best tool for the job. "Basically all it does its capture every stroke that you type into the computer, like passwords and stuff." He ordered it online, and secretly installed it on the secretary's machine. The plan began to unravel on September 3rd, when the company fired Ropp for, as the FBI puts it, "not adhering to its time-keeping policies." (Ropp says he failed to report the time he spent in the office secretely gathering documents.) Suddenly barred from the building, Ropp phoned former co-worker Karen Kaiser the next day, and asked her to discreetly retrieve the KEYKatcher from the bugged computer -- he suggested she pretend to tie her shoe next to the secretary's desk, then unplug the keyboard cable from the PC and remove the device. Instead, Kaiser snitched on Ropp, and the company brought in forensic investigators who recovered the device and found files of intercepted keystrokes on Ropp's old office computer, demonstrating that he'd already harvested the KEYKatcher at least once. "If I had never called, they would have never known," he says. The company called in the FBI, and Ropp quickly admitted the caper. But he told agents that he'd been working for the Department of Insurance. The Department distanced itself from Ropp's adventuring, assuring the FBI that it "had never directed Ropp to collect any evidence that he would not be able to obtain in the normal course of business," according to the affidavit. For his part, Ropp admits the Department never told him to crack passwords or tap keystrokes, but he claims he was under the impression that he had their blessing to investigate his employer. Today, he says he feels burned. "All of a sudden when everything blew up, I'm out there hanging by myself," he says. The U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles says Ropp is the first defendant in the U.S. to be charged for illegally using a hardware keystroke logger. The indictment charges a violation of the federal wiretap statute, which criminalizes the covert interception of electronic communication -- in this case several e-mail messages that had been typed in by the tapped secretary, and were therefore stored in the device. Citing the ongoing nature of the case, Craig Eisenacher, spokesman for Bristol West, declined to comment on Ropp's indictment, or on Ropp's claim that he was working to expose company wrongdoing. Ropp is free on a $15,000 signature bond, and is scheduled to be arraigned April 5th. < http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8329 > Copyright © 1999-2004 SecurityFocus [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 8389 From: Date: Sun Mar 28, 2004 2:01pm Subject: File - mission.txt TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List Dedicated to TSCM specialists engaging in expert technical and analytical research for the detection, nullification, and isolation of eavesdropping devices, wiretaps, bugging devices, technical surveillance penetrations, technical surveillance hazards, and physical security weaknesses. This also includes bug detection, bug sweep, and wiretap detection services. Special emphasis is given to detecting and countering espionage and other threats and activities directed by foreign intelligence services against the United States Government, United States corporations, establishments, and citizens. The list includes technical discussion regarding the design and construction of SCIF facilities, Black Chambers, and Screen Rooms. This list is also for discussing DIAM 50-3, NSA-65, and DCID 1/21, 1/22 compliance. The primary goal and mission of this list is to "raise the bar" and increase the level of professionalism present within the TSCM business. The secondary goal of this list is to increase the quality and effectiveness of our efforts so that we give spies and eavesdroppers no quarter, and to neutralize all of their espionage efforts. This mailing list is moderated by James M. Atkinson and sponsored by Granite Island Group as a public service to the TSCM, Counter Intelligence, and technical security community. 8390 From: Steve Uhrig Date: Mon Mar 29, 2004 6:47pm Subject: U.S. Trojan software caused big bang in USSR According to Reed, a former secretary of the Air Force and special assistant to President Reagan, the Reagan administration faced a choice in 1981 when it gained access to an agent in the KGB technical intelligence directorate and discovered that Soviet theft of American technology had been massive. "In essence, the Pentagon had been in an arms race with itself," Reed said in a phone interview with Wired News. Rather than arrest everyone they could to try to close the operation down and halt further espionage, DCI William Casey and National Security Council staffer Gus Weiss cooked up a better plan: They turned into hackers. "(Soviet operatives) stole stuff, and we knew what they were going to steal," Reed said. "Every microchip they stole would run fine for 10 million cycles, and then it would go into some other mode. It wouldn't break down, it would start delivering false signals and go to a different logic." The most spectacular result of this hacking, according to Reed, was a massive explosion during the summer of 1982 in the controversial pipeline delivering Siberian natural gas to Western Europe. Soviet spies stole software needed to operate the pipeline, not knowing that "it had a few lines of software added that constituted a Trojan horse," said Reed. "They checked it out, it looked fine, and ran just fine for a few months. But the Trojan horse was programmed to let it run for four or five months and then the pumps and compressors are told, 'Today is the day we are going to run a pressure test at some significantly increased pressure.'" "We expected that the pipeline would spring leaks all the way from Siberia to Germany, but that wasn't what happened," Reed said. "Instead the welds all blew apart. It was a huge explosion. The Air Force thought it was a 3-kiloton blast." --------------- Above is an excerpt from an article. Full text can be found at: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,62806,00.html Steve ******************************************************************* Steve Uhrig, SWS Security, Maryland (USA) Mfrs of electronic surveillance equip mailto:Steve@s... website http://www.swssec.com tel +1+410-879-4035, fax +1+410-836-1190 "In God we trust, all others we monitor" ******************************************************************* 8391 From: Ocean Group Date: Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:20am Subject: RE: U.S. Trojan software caused big bang in USSR They left out the fact that it was French Intelligence that put them onto their man in the KGB that told them about the purchases, which was relayed by the French PM to Reagan, so you see the Franch aren't always "plotting" against the US! :) ******************************** Message: 1 Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 19:47:45 -0500 From: "Steve Uhrig" Subject: U.S. Trojan software caused big bang in USSR According to Reed, a former secretary of the Air Force and special assistant to President Reagan, the Reagan administration faced a choice in 1981 when it gained access to an agent in the KGB technical intelligence directorate and discovered that Soviet theft of American technology had been massive. "In essence, the Pentagon had been in an arms race with itself," Reed said in a phone interview with Wired News. Rather than arrest everyone they could to try to close the operation down and halt further espionage, DCI William Casey and National Security Council staffer Gus Weiss cooked up a better plan: They turned into hackers. "(Soviet operatives) stole stuff, and we knew what they were going to steal," Reed said. "Every microchip they stole would run fine for 10 million cycles, and then it would go into some other mode. It wouldn't break down, it would start delivering false signals and go to a different logic." The most spectacular result of this hacking, according to Reed, was a massive explosion during the summer of 1982 in the controversial pipeline delivering Siberian natural gas to Western Europe. Soviet spies stole software needed to operate the pipeline, not knowing that "it had a few lines of software added that constituted a Trojan horse," said Reed. "They checked it out, it looked fine, and ran just fine for a few months. But the Trojan horse was programmed to let it run for four or five months and then the pumps and compressors are told, 'Today is the day we are going to run a pressure test at some significantly increased pressure.'" "We expected that the pipeline would spring leaks all the way from Siberia to Germany, but that wasn't what happened," Reed said. "Instead the welds all blew apart. It was a huge explosion. The Air Force thought it was a 3-kiloton blast." --------------- Above is an excerpt from an article. Full text can be found at: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,62806,00.html Steve 8392 From: Ocean Group Date: Wed Mar 31, 2004 6:09am Subject: How a telephone intercept led to MI5's biggest hunt for Islamic terror suspects By Jason Bennetto and Kim Sengupta The Independent 31 March 2004 It was in February that eight young British citizens living in and around London first became the focus of what would turn into MI5's biggest ever operation against suspected al-Qa'ida terrorists. During the next six weeks, the full force of Britain's intelligence capabilities were used against the suspects, all of whom are of Pakistani descent, to track them, eavesdrop their conversations, bug their phones, and follow their every move. The security services were first alerted to the suspected cells of Islamic extremists after intercepting one of the group's telephone conversations. As the operation snowballed, more and more officers from MI5, Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, and the listening centre at GCHQ in Cheltenham, joined the investigation. The inquiry, codenamed Crevis, came to a head yesterday in a series of co-ordinated early morning raids involving around 700 police officers. The target of the operation were eight men, aged 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 21, 22 and 32, and a warehouse in west London. Inside the lock-up storage centre in Boston Road, Hanwell, the police seized more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, a bomb-making ingredient, in a 6ft by 2ft plastic bag. It was the biggest seizure of potential bomb-making material since the IRA suspended its terror campaign in 1997. During the numerous phone taps and interceptions in the security services' operation, the group of young men are alleged to have discussed a number of possible targets in Britain, including a shopping complex on or close to the M25 motorway. There were suggestions the Jordanian embassy could have been targeted because of Jordan's assistance to the Americans before the Iraq war and because Iraqi soldiers are now training in that country. Other targets were also allegedly mentioned, but according to anti-terrorist sources, no single location was selected. There is speculation that the men considered an attack on Gatwick or Heathrow because several of the men arrested lived near the airports and at least one works at Gatwick but sources believe that is unlikely because of the tight security surrounding the airports. Little information has been released about the eight men who were arrested, although the security service has built up a detailed picture of their lives during the intensive surveillance operation. Two of the men were arrested in Uxbridge, north-west London, one in Ilford, Essex, one in Horley, Surrey, one in Slough and three in Crawley in Sussex. All the men have family connections in Pakistan and are understood to have visited the country several times. One suspect is said to have taken part in a training camp near Peshawar in the west of the country before the war in Afghanistan, after travelling to the Punjab to visit relatives. But it is in Britain that the group are alleged to have become radicalised and joined the growing band of Islamic extremists who support Osama bin Laden. One of the suspects was said to have worshipped at the Brixton mosque where Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 11 September attacks, have also worshipped. It is not known, however, if the men ever met. The age of the remaining suspects is thought to reflect the growing radicalisation of a tiny number of young British-born Muslims. There appeared to be no overt links between the eight suspects arrested yesterday and the group accused over the Madrid bombing. The extreme youth of the majority of the eight also highlights the difficulties for the security services in trying to identify likely al-Qa'ida followers. In normal circumstances, anti-terrorist operations would be aimed at suspects with a history of extremism or violence. The decision to arrest the suspects yesterday was taken by MI5 and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch and national co-ordinator for terrorism, amid concerns that a bomb was being prepared. At 6am, officers from five different police forces carried out the raids i in the Home Counties. In all, 24 properties were raided and searches were continuing in many of them last night. Police were on guard at the Access Storage Solutions warehouses yesterday while forensic officers continued their examination of the site where they discovered the fertiliser. The warehouse contains individually alarmed lock-ups, 24-hour automated access to the site and office space. So-called "drive-ups" allow vans and cars to back on to the storage units, making loading easier. In Crawley, about 100 officers took part in the operation and arrested three men aged 19, 22 and 32 in the Langley Green area of the town, which has one of the largest ethnic populations in West Sussex. No names have been released but it is believed one of those arrested worked for Sky Chef, a catering company at Gatwick while the other worked for Checker Cab Company, also based at the airport. Officers remained at the addresses, which continued to be cordoned off with police tape last night. In Langley Drive, Crawley, yesterday, two uniformed police officers were standing guard outside a house after one of the raids. Police were also on guard outside an internet café in nearby Langley Parade. A house was raided in Juniper Road, Crawley and six houses were raided in Luton. Forensic officers in white boiler suits searched the premises. Yasin Rehman, information officer for the Luton Council of Mosques, said extremist groups had been targeting young men in Luton for several years. He said they had been banned from mosques after attempting to recruit followers but continued to hold meetings and distribute leaflets in the town. He said Muslim leaders had formed the council of mosques in an attempt to counteract the extremist messages. "I would say there are up to 30-40 people in Luton who are members of these groups," said Mr Rehman. "They used to produce leaflets. Sometimes disgusting leaflets about killing people. We tried to stop that, telling them that they could not use our mosques to distribute these leaflets. Their message seems to be that the West is to blame for everything. The majority of the people in the Muslim community don't support extremism. But we are concerned because they are targeting young people - young people who come from deprived areas who often have nothing and little hope." One neighbour of a family raided in Luton said: "I'd be amazed if they were involved in any kind of terrorism. They can't have done anything wrong. They're a nice family. From what I heard, the police came here at about 5 o'clock kicking doors down like The Sweeney." Crawley Police warned that searches were likely to continue for several days. Police are also investigating the Gatwick Holiday Inn in Horley where an arrest was made in connection with anti-terrorism operations. They sealed off two rooms on the fourth floor. Room numbers 440 and 442 have been placed off limits by officers who have posted a police guard outside the doors. Items are being removed for examination. The Home Secretary David Blunkett said the finds were a "timely reminder" that British interests at home and abroad remained a target. "We have always been clear with the people in the UK that we face a real and serious threat," he said. 8393 From: Ocean Group Date: Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:32am Subject: Tempest...No SpyShop BS, Just Science Don't ever ask another Tempest question until you've read this thesis: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-577.pdf (167 pages, 8.4MB) These guys, let under Ross Anderson, are by far the best security engineers on the planet, in my eyes. I don't respect anyone more. When they talk everyone should listen! :) Regards Oisin 8394 From: Fernando Martins Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 2:12am Subject: Re: Tempest...No SpyShop BS, Just Science I agree. If by any chance one is wondering "who the hell is this guy?", here's some focus of light ... http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/ - Ross Anderson home page http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/Security/ - Computer Security Group, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html - a book by Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (lots of what is here is in his home page, as studies) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tamper.html - one of those studies, one of my favorites FM ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ocean Group" To: Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 5:32 PM Subject: [TSCM-L] Tempest...No SpyShop BS, Just Science > Don't ever ask another Tempest question until you've read this thesis: > > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-577.pdf (167 pages, 8.4MB) > > These guys, let under Ross Anderson, are by far the best security engineers on the planet, in my eyes. I don't respect anyone more. > > When they talk everyone should listen! :) > > Regards > > Oisin > > > > > > ======================================================== > TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List > "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" > > To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: > http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, > the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > =================================================== TSKS > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > 8395 From: A.Lizard Date: Fri Mar 26, 2004 4:58pm Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case Wouldn't the weak spot of a hardware keyboard sniffer be that the data from that sniffer has to be transferred to the eavesdropper in some manner? If that data is being shipped outbound via the Internet, wouldn't it be possible to detect it as 'packets not originating from any known process/application running on this machine'? Of course, if it's transmitting RF, I don't see any way a software app could detect it, that's a matter for TSCM techniques. One of my favorite ZoneAlarm features is that it's supposed to detect any application that connects to the Internet and ask permission on behalf of that application to complete the connection. A.Lizard >________________________________________________________________________ >________________________________________________________________________ > >Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 00:30:03 -0500 > From: Dave Emery >Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case > >On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 03:11:54AM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > > > instead of the PS/2 ones. The USB protocol is much more difficult to > > eavesdrop on, and I am not aware about any USB keylogger being available > > on the market. Though I guess it's still possible to build - but the > > microcontroller required for that is much more powerful, as instead of > > simple bitshifting and EEPROM writing it has to decode the entire USB > > protocol. Which is everything but trivial, and resorting to a software > > keylogger or bugging the keyboard multiplexing matrix is easier anyway. > > There is USB interface silicon around in various places, >including user programmable FPGAs with USB interfaces - while not as >easy as 1980s keyboard interfaces, I would think anyone designing a >product with any volume would be able to afford the tools and resources >to use these for monitoring USB keyboard traffic. (What the gotchas are >I don't know as I have not explored USB keyboard protocol issues in >detail). > > The evilness of a hardware sniffer is that while potentially >detectable by TSCM techniques (as discussed), it is in general not >detectable by software on the monitored machine and cannot be neutralized >by reinstalling the OS and applications or detected by using software >debugging tools and techniques. > > > > >-- > Dave Emery N1PRE, die@d... DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass > 02493 > > > > >________________________________________________________________________ >________________________________________________________________________ > > >======================================================== > TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List > "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" > > To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: > http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, > the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. >=================================================== TSKS >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- member The Internet Society (ISOC), The HTML Writers Guild. "They need to wake up and smell the fire, it is their pants that are burning." hombresecreto, re: the famous SCO threat letter Personal Website http://www.ecis.com/~alizard business Website http://reptilelabs.com backup address (if ALL else fails) alizardx@y... PGP 8.0 key available by request or keyserver. Download PGP from: http://www.pgpi.org for e-mail privacy. Disaster prep info: http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html ***Looking for INTELLIGENT new technology public policy alternatives?*** http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/technology.html 8396 From: A.Lizard Date: Fri Mar 26, 2004 5:01pm Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case At 07:08 AM 3/25/04, you wrote: Could you explain the USB strobe method? thanks A.Lizard >Message: 5 > Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:25:12 -0500 > From: "James M. Atkinson" >Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case > >It doesn't help that Key Katcher has multiple backdoors, can easily be >detected, easily disabled, and has a history of being sold by felons, >crooks, mental patients, and so on. > >It is illegal to use, to possess, to attempt to possess, to sell, to buy, >to advertise or any variation thereof. A parent cannot use this on either >their own, or their kids computer, nor can a business use these to spy on >their own employees. It is illegal, a felony, a tort, and a generally >naughty and forbidden thing. > >However, these are a piece of cake to find technically during a sweep. >Simply use a low inductance tuned shielded magnetic coil, a fire-wall >bandpass filter, and a 40-45 dB LNA. Go for the oscillator, and the >harmonics of the oscillator for 100% detection of the device. TSCM >detection protocol is identical for that of finding modern sub-miniature >digital audio recorders. > >Also extremely easy to detect via the naked eye (if you have a clue), and >can also be easily detected by simply using the USB strobe method. > >I have records that the U.S. Government has bought a number of these, and >that the purchase was illegal, and the equipment was used in direct >violation of U.S. Law, and used to perform illegal buggings that were not >court authorized or approved. > >-jma -- member The Internet Society (ISOC), The HTML Writers Guild. "They need to wake up and smell the fire, it is their pants that are burning." hombresecreto, re: the famous SCO threat letter Personal Website http://www.ecis.com/~alizard business Website http://reptilelabs.com backup address (if ALL else fails) alizardx@y... PGP 8.0 key available by request or keyserver. Download PGP from: http://www.pgpi.org for e-mail privacy. Disaster prep info: http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html ***Looking for INTELLIGENT new technology public policy alternatives?*** http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/technology.html 8397 From: ve3awf Date: Sat Mar 27, 2004 11:07am Subject: Micro-Tel MSR-904A Hello I would like to buy orginal manual or copy for Micro-Tel MSR-904A Rrgards 73! Andrzej Wolczanski VE3AWF mailto:awfqisto@i... 8398 From: James M. Atkinson Date: Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:08pm Subject: Re: Tempest...No SpyShop BS, Just Science Too bad the article is loaded with both technical and historic errors, and was written by someone who was obviously inexperienced, biased, and attempting to sensationalize on an urban legend and on something of which they had no formal education or training... the same material was funny 25 years ago when someone else "discovered it". Shame on the University for allowing such drivel to appear under their letterhead. -jma At 11:32 AM 3/31/2004, Ocean Group wrote: >Don't ever ask another Tempest question until you've read this thesis: > >http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-577.pdf (167 pages, 8.4MB) > >These guys, let under Ross Anderson, are by far the best security >engineers on the planet, in my eyes. I don't respect anyone more. > >When they talk everyone should listen! :) > >Regards > >Oisin ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Expertly Hunt Real Spies, Real Eavesdroppers, and Real Wiretappers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 381-9111 Granite Island Group Fax: 127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web: http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 Email: mailto:jmatk@tscm.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8399 From: Date: Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:39am Subject: Rif: U.S. Trojan software caused big bang in USSR "We expected that the pipeline would spring leaks all the way from Siberia to Germany, but that wasn't what happened," Reed said. "Instead the welds all blew apart. It was a huge explosion. The Air Force thought it was a 3-kiloton blast." The Merriam-webster definition of kiloton is: "an explosive force equivalent to that of 1000 tons of TNT " How many cubic feet of (somewhat compressed) natural gas would you need, - mixed with the appropriate amount of atmosferic oxygen - to give an explosive force equivalent to ONE TON of TNT? This story sounds like a metropolitan legend to me. Ciao! Remo 8400 From: James M. Atkinson Date: Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:56pm Subject: Osama bin Laden went to heaven After his death, Osama bin Laden went to heaven. There he was greeted by George Washington, who proceeded to slap him across the face and yell at him, "How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!" Patrick Henry approached and punched Osama in the nose and shouted, "You wanted to end our liberties but you failed." James Madison entered, kicked Osama in the groin and said, "This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defense!" Thomas Jefferson came in and proceeded to beat Osama many times with a long cane and said, "It was evil men like you that provided me the inspiration to pen the Declaration of Independence! ". These beatings and thrashings continued as John Rudolph, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans came in and unleashed their anger on the Muslim terrorist leader. As Osama lay bleeding and writhing in unbearable pain an Angel appeared. Bin Laden wept in pain and said to the Angel, "This is not what you promised me." The Angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in heaven. What did you think I said? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Expertly Hunt Real Spies, Real Eavesdroppers, and Real Wiretappers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 381-9111 Granite Island Group Fax: 127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web: http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 Email: mailto:jmatk@tscm.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8401 From: Shawn Hughes Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 11:31am Subject: Re: Fuel-Air Explosives Not as much as you might suspect, Remo. It is based on what we call the RE (Relative Effectiveness) of one explosive compound to another. I agree that the gas in those lines are somewhat compressed, but you might consider the size of the conduit, and the CFM ( cubic feet per minute) that the conduit is capable of flowing. Also, How long did the failure release product into the atmosphere until an ignition source met the product in the correct proportions? -Shawn Shawn Hughes Lead Instructor Explosive and WMD Operations Tactical Response, Inc. www.warriormindset.com At 10:23 AM 4/1/04 , you wrote: >How many cubic feet of (somewhat compressed) natural gas would you need, > - mixed with the appropriate amount of atmosferic oxygen - >to give an explosive force equivalent to ONE TON of TNT? >This story sounds like a metropolitan legend to me. > >Ciao! > Remo > > > > > > > > > > > 8402 From: kondrak Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 3:48pm Subject: Re: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case What would make you think the unsuspecting user would pay attention to something traversing port 80 (http), port 25 (SMTP) or even port 443 (SSL) which are in use in the normal daily tasks? This is where a firewall that notifies you that something OTHER than your normal stuff is attempting to phone home is a great help. Ive caught spyware that way, though its almost always masked by saying something innocuous (winNTkernal for example) is attempting to connect to 12.123.xxx.xxx via FTP. Bottom line is, YOU GOTTA BE VIGILANT! Find out exactly what is calling whom. Whois the IP address, and its its a non-descript addy somewhere in a huge system chances are its evil. If the addy doesn't resolve to an name, beware. If it does, check the site to see exactly what they do. Some are brighter than others...Ive found a site that relayed from SBC (Southwest Bell), to China, to Europe to send spyware data. At 17:58 3/26/2004, you wrote: >Wouldn't the weak spot of a hardware keyboard sniffer be that the data from >that sniffer has to be transferred to the eavesdropper in some manner? If >that data is being shipped outbound via the Internet, wouldn't it be >possible to detect it as 'packets not originating from any known >process/application running on this machine'? > >Of course, if it's transmitting RF, I don't see any way a software app >could detect it, that's a matter for TSCM techniques. > >One of my favorite ZoneAlarm features is that it's supposed to detect any >application that connects to the Internet and ask permission on behalf of >that application to complete the connection. > >A.Lizard > > >________________________________________________________________________ > >________________________________________________________________________ > > > >Message: 1 > > Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 00:30:03 -0500 > > From: Dave Emery > >Subject: Re: Man Indicted in Wiretap Case > > > >On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 03:11:54AM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > > > > > instead of the PS/2 ones. The USB protocol is much more difficult to > > > eavesdrop on, and I am not aware about any USB keylogger being available > > > on the market. Though I guess it's still possible to build - but the > > > microcontroller required for that is much more powerful, as instead of > > > simple bitshifting and EEPROM writing it has to decode the entire USB > > > protocol. Which is everything but trivial, and resorting to a software > > > keylogger or bugging the keyboard multiplexing matrix is easier anyway. > > > > There is USB interface silicon around in various places, > >including user programmable FPGAs with USB interfaces - while not as > >easy as 1980s keyboard interfaces, I would think anyone designing a > >product with any volume would be able to afford the tools and resources > >to use these for monitoring USB keyboard traffic. (What the gotchas are > >I don't know as I have not explored USB keyboard protocol issues in > >detail). > > > > The evilness of a hardware sniffer is that while potentially > >detectable by TSCM techniques (as discussed), it is in general not > >detectable by software on the monitored machine and cannot be neutralized > >by reinstalling the OS and applications or detected by using software > >debugging tools and techniques. > > > > > > > > >-- > > Dave Emery N1PRE, die@d... DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass > > 02493 > > > > > > > > > >________________________________________________________________________ > >________________________________________________________________________ > > > > > >======================================================== > > TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List > > "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" > > > > To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: > > http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L > > > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > > It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, > > the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > >=================================================== TSKS > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >-- >member The Internet Society (ISOC), The HTML Writers Guild. >"They need to wake up and smell the fire, it is their pants that are burning." > hombresecreto, re: the famous SCO threat letter >Personal Website http://www.ecis.com/~alizard >business Website http://reptilelabs.com >backup address (if ALL else fails) alizardx@y... >PGP 8.0 key available by request or keyserver. Download PGP from: >http://www.pgpi.org for e-mail privacy. >Disaster prep info: http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html >***Looking for INTELLIGENT new technology public policy alternatives?*** > http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/technology.html > > > > >======================================================== > TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List > "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" > > To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: > http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, > the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. >=================================================== TSKS >Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > 8403 From: kondrak Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 3:54pm Subject: Re: Re: Fuel-Air Explosives Really, spew enough natural gas (which right out of the ground isn't real smelly) and something's eventually going to spark and ignite it somewhere. At 12:31 4/1/2004, you wrote: >Not as much as you might suspect, Remo. > >It is based on what we call the RE (Relative Effectiveness) of one >explosive compound to another. I agree that the gas in those lines are >somewhat compressed, but you might consider the size of the conduit, and >the CFM ( cubic feet per minute) that the conduit is capable of flowing. >Also, How long did the failure release product into the atmosphere until an >ignition source met the product in the correct proportions? > > > >-Shawn > >Shawn Hughes >Lead Instructor >Explosive and WMD Operations >Tactical Response, Inc. >www.warriormindset.com > > > > >At 10:23 AM 4/1/04 , you wrote: > >How many cubic feet of (somewhat compressed) natural gas would you need, > > - mixed with the appropriate amount of atmosferic oxygen - > >to give an explosive force equivalent to ONE TON of TNT? > >This story sounds like a metropolitan legend to me. > > > >Ciao! > > Remo > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >======================================================== > TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List > "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" > > To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: > http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L > > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. > It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, > the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. > It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. >=================================================== TSKS >Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > 8404 From: Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 1:37pm Subject: Historic hoaxes and how not to be fooled yourself Historic hoaxes and how not to be fooled yourself By Sara Steindorf You'd think that, after 300 years, people would catch on. A "kick me" sign pinned to someone's back dates to the 1700s. Pennies glued to the pavement are just as old. Faked photos have been around nearly as long as photography itself (a 19th-century invention). Concocted creatures - ever hear of a "jackalope"? - are old, old news as well. But that doesn't mean people don't fall for such things today. And while pranks such as "kick me" signs and superglued coins are exposed in a moment, faked photos and other hoaxes can last longer. A host of hoaxes - deceptions publicly parading as truths - circulate on the Internet every day. Some hoaxes last for weeks, months, even decades. So, to arm you for April Fool's Day, here are a few well-known hoaxes from the past and present. Do you believe in fairies? In 1917, 15-year-old Elsie Wright and her cousin, 10-year-old Frances Griffiths, gushed to their parents that they'd been out playing with fairies. Naturally, the grownups didn't believe them - until they saw pictures. The photos appeared to show the girls in a garden in Cottingley, Yorkshire, with tiny winged creatures prancing about. After a local photographic expert pronounced the images real, word spread. Many people began to believe in fairies. The photos even duped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries! Sixty years later, the cousins confessed: They had cut out the fairy figures from a children's book and attached them to garden plants with hatpins. It began as a prank and got out of hand. Earlier, in the late 1800s, faked photos had been used to try to convince people that a phantom city existed in Alaska and that "brain waves" could produce the image of a cat on film. By the early 1900s, "freak postcards" showed corn as big as trees, barn-size cabbages, and whopper grass-hoppers. The photos were cut out and pasted together to create the effect. Then along came "Snowball, the Monster Cat." In early 2000, a startling image began circulating on the Internet. It showed a bearded man holding a cat as big as a large dog. It seemed outlandish, but it looked so real. A story began circulating with the photo: Snowball's mother (a normal-size cat) had been abandoned near a nuclear lab. Somehow, nuclear radiation had resulted in the enormous Snowball. Many believed it - or scoffed that it was a normal-size cat with a very small man. When the photo appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," the cat was let out of the bag. In May 2001, Washington resident Cordell Hauglie announced that "Snowball" was his daughter's cat, Jumper, who weighed a mere 21 pounds. He had created the fake image in 20 minutes using photo manipulation software. He'd e-mailed the image to friends as a joke. Somehow, the joke ... snowballed. Today, Mr. Hauglie is still mystified and amused. Even after the image was exposed as a fake, people wanted to come by to see "the giant cat." He created the photo "never thinking for a moment that adults would assume such a cat really existed!" he says via e-mail. The most convincing hoaxes, however, are often the ones created by the experts themselves. On April 1, 1957, the BBC's prestigious "Panorama" TV show reported on the "spaghetti harvest" in Switzerland. Viewers saw Richard Dimbleby, the show's anchor, walking among trees dripping with noodles as a rural family plucked pasta and put it in baskets. "The spaghetti harvest here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry," Dimbleday told viewers. "For the Swiss ... it tends to be more of a family affair." Viewers eager to grow spaghetti were reportedly told by the BBC to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." (To be fair, spaghetti was an exotic dish in Britain in the 1950s.) To see the broadcast, go to www.bbc.co.uk and search for "Swiss spaghetti harvest." Alex Boese, who has tracked hoaxes for several years on MuseumOfHoaxes.com, says this is his favorite. It meets his top criteria for a "good" hoax: "That it's not mean, and that it makes people laugh." A new name for the Liberty Bell Today, many companies send out phony press releases or publish fake ads on April Fool's Day. They want to show customers that they can be lighthearted and, of course, they want the publicity. On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell took out full-page ads in five major newspapers announcing that they were buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it. It would now be known as the "Taco Liberty Bell." "A lot of people were angry," says Mr. Boese. "You just think of all the sports stadiums being named after companies these days - but now the Liberty Bell ?" Taco Bell kept a straight corporate face until noon and then revealed that it was a joke. Taco Bell got an estimated $25 million in free publicity for the stunt. And sales for that April 1-2 were $1.1 million higher compared with sales on March 25-26. Finally, a favorite ploy of hoaxers has been to make their stories hard to verify. In 1702, the self-proclaimed "Native of Formosa" arrived in Holland. His eccentric behavior seemed to prove his claim: He worshiped the sun and moon and ate heavily spiced raw meat. Because the people had never met anyone from Formosa (now Taiwan), he was treated as a celebrity. He managed to confound his critics for years. No one could check his story. In 1706, he finally confessed. He was an imposter looking for easy money. Today, the Internet and e-mails make great use of this trick. Among the classic examples is the "Internet Cleaning" e-mail of 1997. It warned that the Internet would be shut down on April 1. Everyone was encouraged to turn off their computers and servers and disconnect their Internet connections so that "Internet-crawling robots" could remove "electronic flotsam and jetsam" to create a "better-working and faster" Internet. "It was just plausible enough for new computer users to believe it," says David Emory of UrbanLegends.About.com. But one giveaway that it was fraudulent, he says, was that the source on the e-mail was phony, so there was no one to contact to verify the story. Good hoaxes always seem outlandish, but possible, Boese says. But often, so does the truth. How did people greet the news that the Earth was round? Or that it revolved around the sun? Common sense sometimes exposes a hoax, but look deeper. Boese says to ask yourself: • Where did this come from, and is that source trustworthy? (If no source is given, that's a danger flag.) • What do other sources say about it? Check with some websites you trust. • Who produced this and why? What were their motives for producing it? Finally, check the date: Was it published on April 1? (A dead giveaway: Is it dated "March 32"?) Anti-hoax resources If you Hear of something on April 1 that seems too weird, extreme, or amazing to be true, check it out on one of these rumor-bashing websites: MuseumOfHoaxes.com is Alex Boese's site, which began as research for his PhD on the history of science. TruthOrFiction.com is operated by broadcaster Rich Buhler, a longtime researcher of rumors and urban legends. UrbanLegends.About.com is run by David Emery, a writer and an avid chronicler of urban folklore and hoaxes. (Be skeptical of insistent language with lots of exclamation marks, dire warnings, and capitalized words, Mr. Emery says.) If you're wondering if an e-mail virus warning is bogus, try Vmyths.com, run by security expert Rob Rosenberger. Researcher and editor John Ratliff's BreakTheChain.org offers a lowdown on current e-mail chain letters. How New Year's became April Fool's Day The origins of April Fool's Day are unknown, though one popular theory goes like this: In 16th-century France, the start of the new year was April 1. It was celebrated with parties and dancing into the night. Then in 1582, Pope Gregory VIII introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, and the new year began on Jan. 1. But some people didn't hear about the date change, or didn't believe it, so they continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Others made fun of these traditionalists and played tricks on them. In 1752, Britain finally adopted the Gregorian calendar, and April Fool's Day began to be celebrated in England and in the American colonies. The tradition of practical joking and mischiefmaking, however, dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times. On some holidays, for example, "slaves were allowed to play tricks on their masters and children could play tricks on their parents," says Alex Boese, author of "The Museum of Hoaxes" (Dutton, 2002). The purpose of the unruly holidays was to "let people release a bit of steam on one day of the year, helping to preserve the social order for the remaining days," Mr. Boese says. Meanwhile, hoax trends have evolved through the years. In the 14th century, fake religious artifacts were the most popular hoaxes, says Boese. In the 18th century, hoaxes that poked fun at society's flaws were all the rage. For example, big-time hoaxer Benjamin Franklin published phony stories under a false name to mock the drunkenness of locals, the fashion of hoop petticoats, and the public's obsession with prophecy. Today, Internet and media hoaxes dominate. "On April Fool's Day, some of the biggest hoaxers are companies who place fake ads in newspapers, hoping to gain publicity," says Boese. And thanks to the Internet and e-mail, now anyone can spread a hoax both cheaply and easily. from the March 30, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0330/p18s01-hfks.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 8405 From: James Coote Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 10:21pm Subject: For Sale Items Optoelectronics DC-440 DTMF/PL/Signalling decoder Used with radio receiver/scanner or audio playback device Requires 9VDC 2.1mm adaptor. No manual. Good cosmetic and working condition. $200 + UPS Ground Uniden BC-760XLT Scanner With built-in CTCSS decoder and 120 v power adaptor Fixed and variable-level audio outputs Useful monitoring local radio activity or demonstrating wireless vulnerabilities. Very clean condition $200 + UPS ground Contact me regarding terms of sale. Thanks, Jay Los Angeles 8406 From: James Coote Date: Sat Apr 3, 2004 4:48pm Subject: AOR-1000XLT Handheld receiver For Sale AOR-1000 handheld receiver, full coverage. Good for client demonstrations of wireless vulnerabilities or examining low-level RF threats while portable. Very good cosmetic and working condition, however, has a small blemish in the left side of the LCD display. Runs on NICADs or AA alkaline batteries (not furnished). BNC antenna, attenuator switch and 3.5 mm audio output for phones or peripherals. Protector holster and NICAD charger. $300 plus packing/shipping, USA-only Terms: prepayment via US Postal Service money order only. Thanks, Jay Los Angeles 8407 From: James M. Atkinson Date: Sat Apr 3, 2004 10:35am Subject: Other Other Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-one of these have been killed. The Boeing 767 aircraft is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world: fuselage parts from Japan, center wing section from Southern California, flaps from Italy. A man irate about his income tax paid Uncle Sam with a plaster of Paris check that weighed several pounds. He wasn't all that bright, because once the government cashed the check, it was returned to him and he had to keep it for five years for his records. On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10. Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money in one year. Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes originally had pads on his hands and feet but Bill Waterson (the creator) found them too distracting and removed them. It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace". Charlie Brown's father was a barber. Lucy and Linus (who where brother and sister) had another little brother named Rerun. (He sometimes played left-field on Charlie Brown's baseball team, [when he could find it!]). In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer. He made $1750 on the deal, but his hospital bill was $84,000. In Britain’s House of Commons, the government and opposition sides of the House are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is two swords’ lengths, a reminder of just how seriously the Brits used to take their politics. The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared. In the kingdom of Bhutan, all citizens officially become a year older on New Year's Day. The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter - or about 0.04 inch. People generally say there are 365 days in a year. By a year, I mean this is the time period it takes the earth to travel around the sun: 365 days. Actually, however, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to make this trip. In other words, for every year we gain one-fourth of a day and every for years we gain an extra day. If nothing was done about this, our calendar would move backwards one full day every four years in relation to our seasons. November 29 is National Sinky Day; a day to eat over one's sink and worship it. Public typists work at typewriters charging about 14 cents per page. On a good day, a public typist earns about $3.50. On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll. Halloween isn't an established holiday by law. It is traditional that Halloween is Oct. 31 no matter what day of the week it falls on. Halloween dates from 837 when Pope Gregory IV instituted All Saints or All Hallows Day on Nov. 1 to take the place of an earlier festival known as the Peace of the Martyrs. The day was set aside to honor all saints, known and unknown. Halloween then is a shortened form of All Hallows Eve - the evening before All Hallows Day. Certainly, you have a choice of celebrating it on Oct. 30, Saturday, if you wish. Many of the area parties will be held then rather than on Sunday. It's probably appropriate to say some people equate Halloween with the occult or Satanism and don't approve of it at all. The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7. In 1979, Namco released Pac-Man, the most popular arcade game of all time. Over 300,000 units were sold worldwide. More than 100,000 units are sold in the United States alone. Originally named Puck Man, the game was retitled after executives saw the potential for vandals to scratch out part of the letter P on the game's marquee, which might discourage parents from letting their children play. Pac-Man became the first video game to be popular with both males and females. Elizabeth Goose, who lived in Massachusetts in the late 1600's, is credited by some with the nursery rhymes read to us as children. However, most of those rhymes existed before her time in the form of satirical poems and drinking songs. Some were based on actual events or characters. Charles Perrault, a Frenchman, published a collection of these rhymes in 1697 and an illustration accompanying the text showed an old woman telling stories, with the words "Mother Goose" appearing behind her. The book was eventually published in England and the United States and more rhymes were added with each new publication. It wasn't until the 1800's that a relative of Mrs. Goose claimed the stories originated with Elizabeth. If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albuquerque. The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died. The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years. The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes on stage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines. The Chinese national anthem is called "the march of volunteers." "The Tale of Genji", a Japanese work from the early eleventh century, is considered by many scholars to be the world's first full novel. The novel was written by a woman: Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki. The reason wheels seem to spin backwards on a camera is because when you film something, you are really taking a series of still images and then replaying them so fast that the eye is fooled into thinking it is a continuous stream of images. The eye can see about 12-14 frames per second. Because of a physical law called the Nyquist Sampling Theorem you need to display frames twice as fast as the eye can see to fool it into seeing it as a continuous movie (Nyquist showed mathematically why that is true). So, imagine you have a wheel that is spinning exactly once every second. If you took a picture at the same rate, it would look like it is standing still. That's because it rotates exactly once every time you take a picture. Now take a picture just a little bit faster than 1 per second. Now every time you take a picture, the wheel has not quite made it all the way around; maybe it will have gone 350 degrees around, so it's 10 degrees behind the first frame. The next frame it will have gone another 350 degrees, making it now 20 degrees behind the first frame, and so on. When you play the film back, it will look like the wheel is moving backwards, even though you know it was going forwards. The opposite effect happens when you take pictures a bit slower than the rotation rate. It gets more complicated when the wheel does not rotate at a constant rate, like when a car accelerates. The next time you watch TV or go to the movies, watch the wheels as a car speeds up. You might see the wheel appear to go backwards, them stop, then go forwards, all while the car is moving forwards. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar. In the UPC, the lines­the Universal Product Code­hold 11 numbers, each of which is a code that describes the product. The size, weight, and manufacturer or distributor, for example, are each represented by a number. The numbers are in the form that computers can read, 0's (black lines) and 1's (white lines). The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments. Eskimos never gamble. 20252 is Smokey the Bear's own zip code. 203 million dollars is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S. The external tank on the space shuttle is not painted. If you had enough water to fill one million goldfish bowls, you could fill an entire stadium. Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, NY. Success magazine recently declared bankruptcy. The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons. The first crossword puzzle appeared in 1913 in an American paper called "World." It was devised by its editor Arthur Wynne. It was of 32 words and diamond shaped. There were no black boxes in the puzzle. Some 30,000,000 Americans slave over crosswords in newspaper, journals, and paperback books. The hardest crossword puzzles according to experts appear in two British papers: "The London Times" and "Observer." Only few readers can complete these and it takes them 2 to 3 hours. The record time for completing a "Times" puzzle was an incredible 3 minutes and 45 seconds by a British diplomat named Roy Dean in 1970. The largest crossword puzzle ever published had 2631 clues across and 2922 clues down. It took up 16 sq. feet of space. The strangest crossword ever made was by a British writer Max Beerbohm in 1940. He called it the "Impossible Crossword" and issued warning to puzzlers so they do not go crazy trying to solve it, as the clues were nonsensical and the answers didn't exist. George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the U.S as of a few years ago. acetwothreefourfivesixseveneightninetenjackqueenking Excluding the joker, if you add up the letters in all the names of the cards in the deck (Ace, two, three, four,...,king). the total number of letters is 52, the same as the number of cards in the deck. Did you play with LEGO blocks when you were a kid? Since 1949, the LEGO company, based in Denmark, has produced more than 200,000,000,000 of the plastic elements that make up the Lego System. There are 102,981,500 ways to combine six of the 8-studed bricks of one color. The name LEGO did not come from the cry of an angry mother who couldn't get her kid to put down his toys and come to dinner: "LEGO of those bricks or I'll kill you!" It's from the Danish, "LEg GOdt," which means "play well." The Statue of Liberty's mouth is 3 feet wide. The father of the Pink Flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) is Don Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Mass., company that manufactures flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in 1957 as a follow up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000 plastic pink flamingos a year."I did it to keep from starving." - Don Featherstone (flamingo creator) If China imported just 10% of it's rice needs- the price on the world market would increase by 80%. Cleveland spelled backwards is "DNA level C". When wearing a Kimono, Japanese women wear socks called "Tabi". The big toe of the sock is separated from the rest of the toes, like a thumb from a mitten. The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. How valuable is the penny you found laying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up, a person could make $36.00 per hour just picking up pennies. Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major. The instructor James McIntosh, who is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and who began bag piping at the age 11. The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God. The Douglas DC-3 passenger airplane was the first to make a profit carrying people. There are 52 cards in a standard deck and there are 52 weeks in a year. There are 4 suits in a deck of cards and 4 seasons in a year. If you add the values of all the cards in a deck (jack=11 queen=12, etc.) you get a total of 365 the same as the number of days in a year. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect. In 1982, the last member of a group of people who believed the Earth was hollow died. A man named John Bellavia has entered over 5000 contests, and has never won a thing. The famous painting of "Whistler's Mother" was once bought from a pawn shop. Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel. In 1961, Henry Matisse's painting Le Bateau hung upside down in New York's Museum of Modern Art. It remained upside down for forty-one days until someone noticed. It's estimated nearly 116,000 people passed in front of the painting before the error was noted. The number 4 is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning. A standard 747 Jumbo Jet has 420 seats. According to Dennis Changon, spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Canada - if all of the commercial planes in the world were grounded at the same time there wouldn't be space to park them all at gates. If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe. In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there. The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long. The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind. It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour. The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour. The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961. The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground. Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian. The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral. Guam has no sand. The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral. When concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing regular sand from thousands of miles away. The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds. The official soft drink of the state of Nebraska - Kool-Aid. Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington. 7.5 million toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood. A McDonald's straw will hold 7.7ml, or just over one-and-a-half teaspoons of whatever you are drinking. This means that it would take 17,000 strawfuls of water to fill up a 34 gallon bathtub. The original IBM punch-card is the same size as a Civil War era dollar bill. BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940. Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System. Month after month, the little Bell Company lived from hand to mouth. No salaries were paid in full. Often, for weeks, they were not paid at all. In Watson's notebook there are such entries during this period as "Lent Bell fifty cents," "Lent Hubbard twenty cents," "Bought one bottle beer­too bad can't have beer every day." When Bell's patent was sixteen months old, there were 778 telephones in use. The first "Hello" badge used to identify guests and hosts at conventions, parties, etc. was traced back to September 1880. It was on that date that the first Telephone Operators Convention was held at Niagara Falls and the "Hello" badge was created for that event. During the depths of the Depression, telephones in use fell from 16 to 13 per 100 population and by the late 1970's the number had surpassed 75 per 100 population. Western Electric mass-produced color telephones for the first time in 1954. In Japan, Western Electric first sold equipment in 1890, then in 1899 helped form the Nippon Electric Company (NEC). This was Japan's first joint venture with an American firm. Northern Telecom, Alcatel N.V. and NEC all had roots in Western Electric. The use of telephone answering machines became popular in 1974. In the first month of the Bell Telephone Company's existence in 1877, only six telephones were sold. In 1953, Sony Corporation obtained a transistor license from Western Electric Co. that led to its development of the world's first commercially successful transistor radio. In the early days of the telephone, operators would pick up a call and use the phrase, "Well, are you there?". It wasn't until 1895 that someone suggested answering the phone with the phrase "number please?" Sometimes, early telephone operators would get to know their customers so well, the customers would ask for a reminder call when it was time to remove a cake from the oven, leave the phone off the hook near their sleeping child when they left the house, hoping the operator would hear any cries of distress, request a wake up call before taking a long nap. Just like today's computers, early telephones were very confusing to new users. Some became so frustrated with the new technology, they attacked the phone with an ax or ripped it out of the wall. In the early 1880's some well-to-do telephone owners started the unusual trend of paying to have a theatre employee hold a telephone receiver backstage, transmitting live plays and operas into their living rooms. The first transatlantic wedding took place on December 2, 1933.The groom was in Michigan. The bride, in Sweden. The ceremony took seven minutes and cost $47.50. In the Catholic church, St. Gabriel, an archangel, is the patron saint of telecommunications. The famous emergency hotline, whereby the President could have immediate contact with the Kremlin wasn't established until 1984. Prior to 1984, the only direct contact to the Kremlin was a cumbersome teleprinter link, supplying text messages that then had to be translated, responses drafted and sent back. During President Lyndon Johnson's term, many people mis-dialed the White House number and instead reached the home of a New York housewife. Rose Brown had a near identical phone number. He wrote and thanked her for her diplomacy in receiving his highly sensitive calls and promised to return the favor when her friends and family accidentally dialed the White House. A gator in the road is a huge piece of tire from a blow out on a truck, called a gator because the fly up when a truck runs one over and take out your air lines causing you to lose air and forcing your spring brakes to come on which causes a rather abrupt stop. In 1997 a Menorah was built in Latrun, near the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It was more than 60-feet tall, weighed 17 metric tons, and took up an area of 600-square meters. A rabbi was lifted in a crane each night of the holiday to light the candles on the menorah, which was made of metal pipes. Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol", three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were: Little Larry, Puny Pete and Small Sam. Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols, which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture. - Mazao: Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables - Mkeka: Place Mat - Vibunzi: Ear of Corn - Mishumaa Saba: The Seven Candles - Kinara: The Candleholder - Kikombe Cha Umoja: The Unity Cup - Zawadi: Gifts Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was conceived by author Robert May in 1939. Two other names he thought of before deciding on Rudolph were Reginald and Rollo. Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles. The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo. According to Scientific American magazine: if you live in the northern hemisphere, odds are that every time you fill your lungs with air at least one molecule of that air once passed thru Socrates lungs. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear. The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century will not end until December 31, 2000. The Times Square "time ball" is named the "Star of Hope". It was specially made for this year and contains 504 glass crystals cut into triangles, 600 light bulbs, 96 big lights, and 92 mirrors. The official time ball for the U.S. is on top of the U.S. naval Observatory in Washington, DC As early as 1845, the U.S. Navy dropped a time ball every noon from atop a building on a hill overlooking Washington, DC. People from many miles could set their watches at noon. Ships anchored in the Potomac River could check their chronometers. Left-handed people are statistically more likely to be geniuses, and to be insane. Left-handedness is more common among writers and some kinds of artists. But lefties tend to be more accident-prone and on average don't live as long. Did you know that Beetle from the comic strip 'Beetle Bailey' and Lois from the comic strip 'Hi and Lois' are brother and sister? The newspaper serving Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home of Rocky and Bullwinkle, is the Picayune Intellegence. The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary "I quit smoking tobacco." He died one month later. A lead pencil is good for about 50,000 words. 1960 was the last model year for Edsel and Desoto. Woodbury Soap was the first product to show a nude woman in its advertisements. The year - 1936. The photo, by Edward Steichen, showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing - wearing only sandals. London's Millennium Dome, the largest of its kind in the world, is over one kilometer in circumference and covers over 80,000 square meters. The Dome is supported by 43 miles of high-strength cable which holds up 100,000 square meters of fabric. The translucent roof is 50 meters high at the center and strong enough to support a jumbo jet. The Dome could contain two Wembley Stadiums or the Eiffel Tower on its side. You could even fit the Great Pyramid of Giza inside it. St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers. It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0. According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction. The car-making Dodge brothers Horace and John were Jewish, that's why the first Dodge emblem had a star of David in it. Studebaker was the only major car company to stop manufacturing cars while making a profit on them. The issue of leap year and the weirdness of February is always worth looking at because, coming so infrequently, who can remember the explanation for it from the last time? The earth revolves around the sun every 365.24 days, not an even 365. That produces an extra day's worth of hours every four years. We could distribute them as a bonus to everyone: a one-day time-out every fourth year in which the clock is stopped and we stay in bed all day. But we don't. Instead we add an extra day onto February. Why February? It was originally the last month on the Roman calendar and a logical place to stick the extra day. But Julius Caesar changed the first month to January, stranding February and its little peculiarity in the second spot. The first person selected as the Time Magazine Man of the Year - Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Kate "God Bless America" Smith sold more U.S. war bonds than anyone else during World War II. She sold $600 million worth. The Nike "swoosh" logo was designed by University of Oregon student Carolyn Davidson in 1964, four years after business undergraduate Phil Knight and track coach Bill Bowerman founded the company they originally called Blue Ribbon Sports. Ms. Davidson was paid $35 dollars for her design. If you need to dial the telephone and your dial is disabled, you can tap the button in the cradle. If, for example, you need to dial 911, you can tap the button 9 times, then pause, then tap once, then again. Turning a clock's hands counterclockwise while setting it is not necessarily harmful. It is only damaging when the timepiece contains a chiming mechanism. On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her sixty feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled "Stormy Weather." Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them. The height and width of modern American battleships was originally determined by insuring they had to be able to go beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and through the Panama Canal. Nobody knows where the body of Voltaire is. It was stolen in the nineteenth century and has never been recovered. The theft was discovered in 1864, when the tomb was opened and found empty. Owing to a faulty cornerstone, the church of St. John in Barmouth, Wales, crashed in ruins a minute after it was finished. It was rebuilt, and the new edifice has endured to the present day. A car operates at maximum economy, gas-wise, at speeds between 25 and 35 miles per hour. A car that shifts manually gets 2 miles more per gallon of gas than a car with automatic shift. A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average automobile. Many of us feel that we have at least one book in us. But the business of publishing and the process of creating and selling a book can be forbidding. In New York City, America's publishing capital, things have gotten so hectic that some agents are seeing several editors over the course of one lunch. The Lord's Prayer appears twice in the Bible, in Matthew VI and Luke XI. The Luxor Hotel (shaped like an Egyptian Pyramid) is 36 stories tall, required more than 150,000 cubic yards of concrete, six thousand construction workers and 18 months to build. It takes a specially designed window washing device 64 hours to clean the sides of the pyramid, which is covered by 13 acres of glass. The Luxor atrium is the world's largest and could comfortably hold nine Boeing 747 airplanes. To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in crap games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches, less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair. A 41-gun salute is the traditional salute to a royal birth in Great Britain. At the height of the teddy bear's huge popularity in the early 1900s, there is record of one Michigan priest who publicly denounced the teddy as an insidious weapon. He claimed that the stuffed toy would lead to the destruction of the instincts of motherhood and eventual racial suicide. Beatrix Potter created the first of her legendary "Peter Rabbit" children's stories in 1902. The Sarah Winchester house, in San Jose, CA, is a truly bizarre piece of architecture. Mrs. Winchester, after losing first a daughter and then her husband to disease, consulted a medium to find the reason for her terrible luck. The medium advised her that there was a curse on her family, brought about by her husband's manufacturing of rifles when he was alive. To escape the curse, the medium advised, she should move West and build, and perhaps would live forever. Mrs. Winchester did just that, using the fortune she had inherited to buy a house and just keep building­adding on room after room for 36 years. Each room had 13 windows (the number was considered spiritual rather than unlucky) and many of the windows contained precious jewels. Other odd features of the house­intended to confuse evil spirits­included a staircase that went straight to a ceiling, doors that open onto two-story drops, a room with a glass floor, and a room without windows that - once entered - a person cannot leave without a key. The house contains 160 rooms, 2000 doors, and 10,000 windows, some of which open onto blank walls. There are also secret passageways. If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That's why it's technically incorrect to speak of the "cold of outer space" - space has no temperature, and is known as a "temperature sink," meaning it drains heat out of things. The gesture of a nose tap, in Britain, means secrecy or confidentiality. In Italy, a tap to the nose signifies a friendly warning. In 1981 a guy had a heart attack after playing the game BERSERK - video gaming's only known fatality. Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame, appeared in the 1981 arcade game, Donkey Kong. His original name was Jumpman, but was changed to Mario to honor the Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segali. Alcoholics are twice as likely to confess a drinking problem to a computer than to a doctor, say researchers in Wisconsin. In the game Monopoly, the most money you can lose in one travel around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn is $5070. The Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington in the U.S., completed in 1942, was hailed in its time as a structure more massive than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. A 17th-century Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French. The Metro subway of Washington, DC, has several really deep stations. Its Forrest Glen station - in the Maryland suburbs - is 196 feet deep and has the longest subway escalator in the Western Hemisphere. But MOST of the subway stations in Leningrad are deeper than that. Out of all of the postage stamps in the United States with people's faces on them, there is not one that has the picture of someone alive. "Fine turkey" and "honeycomb" are terms used for different qualities and textures of sponges. In order to sell his sets of Shakespeare door-to-door, David McConnell offered free perfume to his customers. He realized the perfume was more popular and began selling cosmetics door-to-door. This began the company that grew into Avon. Some china is called "bone" china because some powdered animal bone is mixed in with the clay used to make this china: it gives the china a special kind of strength, whiteness, and translucency. Russians are buying skateboards from the U.S. - but not for recreational purposes. They see them as an answer to some of the country's transportation needs, because the boards are less expensive than bicycles and require little storage space. The first boards went to school instructors so they could train pupils how to ride them. The "black box" that houses an airplane's voice recorder is orange so it can be more easily detected amid the debris of a plane crash. The Colgate Company started out making starch, soap, and candles. In 1881, Procter & Gamble's Harley Procter decided that adding the word pure to his Ivory soap would give its sales a necessary shot in the arm. Analysis proved that Ivory was almost 100% pure fatty acids and alkali, the stuff that most soap is made of. Ivory's impurities were limited to 0.56%­0.11% uncombined alkali, 0.28% carbonates, and 0.17% mineral matter. Harley marked his soap 99 and 44/100% pure, deciding that using the exact number sounded more credible than rounding up to 100%. Since most people are right-handed, the holes on men's clothes have buttons on the right - to make it easier for men to push them through the holes. Well, that's easy, but aren't women mostly right-handed too? Women's buttons are on the OPPOSITE side so their maids can dress them. When buttons were first used, they were expensive and only wealthy women had them. Since a maid faces the woman she is dressing, having the buttons on the left of the dress places them on the maid's right. Each of the suits on a deck of cards represents the four major pillars of the economy in the middle ages: heart represented the Church, spades represented the military, clubs represented agriculture, and diamonds represented the merchant class. The 3rd year of marriage is called the leather anniversary. World Tourist day is observed on September 27. Street Boulevard in Joplin, Missouri was named for Gabby Street, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1930's. Liberace Museum has a mirror-plated Rolls Royce; jewel-encrusted capes, and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing 59 pounds and almost a foot in diameter. Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old. Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young, or been dethroned. Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age. Shampoo was first marketed in the USA in 1930 by John Breck, who was the captain of a volunteer fire department. Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs, kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was superseded by paper. Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff. Historians claim that the first valentine was a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. In the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first valentine's cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800's and now the date is very commercialized. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a large post office business around February 14. In 1969 the Navy spent $375,000 on an "aerodynamic analysis of the self-suspended flare." The study's conclusion was that the Frisbee was not feasible as military hardware. In 1970, "MCI" stood for "Microwave Communications, Inc." No longer used as an acronym, it now stands alone. The orange things that crossing guards, construction and high way workers, etc. wear is called a retroreflective vest, or "International Orange". Roger Wrenn was the photographer who took the famous picture of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines in October 1944. If a person counted at the rate of 100 numbers a minute and kept counting for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take a little over 4 weeks to count to one million and just over 80 years to reach a billion. February is Black History Month. WHAT CAN TELL ABOUT AN INTERSTATE HIGHWAY FROM ITS NUMBER? If it's an odd-number, it's a north-south route. Even-numbered Interstates run east-west. A three-digit number beginning with an even-number is a beltway while a three-digit number beginning with an odd-number is a bypass or spur. Some people think that the stage musical Les Miserables runs a bit long, but it's a mere flash in time compared with one of the sentences in the novel on which it is based. Supposedly to make it easy to read, that 3-page, 823-word sentence is divided by 93 commas, 51 semicolons and 4 dashes. By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before. Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." -Albert Einstein (That one's for who the page is dedicated to...) It would take 11 Empire State Buildings, stacked one on top of the other, to measure the Gulf of Mexico at its deepest point. Nearly a quarter of all U.S. pet owners bring their pet on the job. Last June, 200 American companies participated in the first ever "Take Your Dog to Work Day". Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were. The Las Vegas MGM Grand's 170,000-square-foot casino is larger than the playing field at Yankee Stadium. It contains more than 3,000 gaming machines. Buckingham Palace consists of 600 rooms. Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another. Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost. Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939. There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners. The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines. The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building. The Pentagon is twice the size of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and has three times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York. It is one of the world's largest office buildings. The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood. At age ninety, Peter Mustafic of Botovo, Yugoslavia, suddenly began speaking again after a silence of 40 years. The Yugoslavian news agency quoted him as saying, "I just didn't want to do military service, so I stopped speaking in 1920; then I got used to it." A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch. Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering. On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles. Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day. Because of its size, the Pentagon operates much like a small city; it has it's own shopping mall, bank, power plant, water and sewage facilities, fire station, police force, fast food restaurants and a "mayor". At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building. The Procrastinators Club of America sends news to its members under the masthead "Last Month's Newsletter." The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters. Shakespeare's volume, Sonnets, contains 154 sonnets. Sonnets 1-126 are addressed to a male friend and sonnets 127-152 are addressed to a mysterious woman. Sonnets 153 and 154 fit in neither category. The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000. There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre. There are 63,360 inches in a mile. There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls. A man irate about his income tax paid Uncle Sam with a plaster of Paris check that weighed several pounds. He wasn't all that bright, because once the government cashed the check, it was returned to him and he had to keep it for five years for his records. Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time. Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships. If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet. Little known, and even less appreciated, the United States actually has a mothers-in-law day. Young priests of the island of Leukas, Greece, to qualify for service at the temple of Apollo, were required in ancient Greece to don the wings of an eagle and plunge from Cape Dukato into the sea, a dive of 230 feet. It was assumed that the gods would eliminate those unfit, but no diver was ever injured, although the ordeal was performed for centuries. The blueprints for the Eiffel Tower covered more than 14,000 square feet of drafting paper. Elwood Edwards' voice is heard more than 27 million times a day (which comes to more than 18,000 times per minute). Edwards is the man behind those special 3 words (not "I love you") "You've got mail!". Back in 1989, Edwards' wife, Karen, was working in customer service for a little-known outfit in Vienna, Virginia called Quantum Computer Services. Quantum had an online service called Q-Link. Karen overheard the company's CEO, a young guy by the name of Steve Case, describe how he wanted to add a voice to its user interface. Her advice: "I said, 'Hey, you ought to try Elwood.'" Her husband had spent his entire career in local radio and TV. Edwards agreed to record four simple phrases on a run-of-the-mill cassette player: "Welcome!"; "File's done"; "Goodbye"; and, of course, "You've got mail!". Quantum changed its name to AOL and Edwards's voice debuted on AOL 1.0 in October 1989. When the Titanic sank in 1912, hundreds of passengers were saved only because a Marconi wireless operator, David Sarnoff, reportedly picked up the ship's radio distress messages and alerted ships in the area. Sarnoff went on to become president of the first radio network, the National Broadcasting Company. Pudden'head Wilson, the title character in Twain's novel about switched babies, is regarded by the townspeople as a fool because of his hobby of collecting finger impressions on glass. His strange pasttime, however, leads to his identification of a murderer and his revelation of an incident where two babies, one the son of a slave and one the son of a slaveholder, were switched. It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun. In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.' Snoopy stood on two legs for the first time in a 1958 strip. Snoopy and Charlie Brown appeared together on the March 17th, 1967 cover of Life Magazine. The Apollo X astronauts took the duo into space in 1969. Charlie Brown hits a game-winning home run on March 30, his first in 43 years. Unfortunately - he NEVER got to kick the football. Charles Schulz was born November 26, 1922, to Carl and Dena Schulz of St. Paul, Minnesota. Within a week, however, Charles became known as "Sparky," christened by an uncle with a soft spot for Barney Google's horse "Sparkplug." Schulz never lost his nickname, proof of a life devoted to comics. Schulz died Saturday February 12th, 2000 - shortly after completing work on what was scheduled to be the last Sunday PEANUTS strip. Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth. If you took a standard slinky and stretched it out it would measure 87 feet. Rebecca Elizabeth Marier was the first woman to graduate "top of the class" at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. The rankings are based on academic, military, and physical accomplishments. Jean Marie Butler was the first woman graduate from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 1980. She also was the first woman to graduate from any U.S. service academy. Huckleberry Finn's remedy for warts was swinging a dead cat in a graveyard at midnight. Three teaspoons make up one tablespoon. Daisy is the name of Dagwood Bumstead's dog. Dr. Jekyll's first name is Henry. Camera shutter speed "B" stands for bulb. The color black moves first in checkers. Mario Puzo wrote "The Godfather." The first American in space was Alan B. Shepard Jr. IBM's motto is "Think." Mr. Boddy is the murder victim in the game "Clue." There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board. Aladdin's nationality was Chinese. Sherlock Holmes archenemy was Professor Moriarty. Superman's boyhood home was Smallville, Illinois. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Expertly Hunt Real Spies, Real Eavesdroppers, and Real Wiretappers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 381-9111 Granite Island Group Fax: 127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web: http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 Email: mailto:jmatk@tscm.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8408 From: savanted1© Date: Fri Apr 2, 2004 1:15pm Subject: Re: FAE Explosives Dear, Group Members As far as I know fuel air explosives have to be confined to a container to have the mixture enclosed so I thin that this type of scenario would not be plausible. I did not however read the initial information and was basing my opinions on the comments presented on the daily digest. I am an ordnance man with ten years of experience in both air-layed and hand held weaponry. If I am not mistaken the F.A.E. bomb are composed of a gel agent that expands when exposed to the air. I do believe that the actual percentage of gel mixture in the container is 75% gel and 25% air inside the container the 25% is for expansion. The gel can be viewed through a viewing window which is 3 degrees right from the aft lug that is used to load the weapon. Very Respectfully Garrett Hord AO1 (AW/NAC) USN ret. Savanted1© Mr. Garrett Hord Innovations At The Speed Of A Thought® You Cannot Do Today's Work With Yesterday's Skills® --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway - Enter today [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 8409 From: Date: Thu Apr 1, 2004 6:05am Subject: New Member here Hello members I am Roger Holloway located in North Texas. Please take a look at my site to learn more on my services. If I can be of help please fell free to contact me. Cordially, Roger Roger Holloway TPLI PO Box 851 Iowa Park, TX 76367 940-592-7000 www.TexasDetective.com TX License # A10709 Member: TPSA, TALI, IPSA, ION, NNA, NSA, NAPPS, USPSA, NRRN "CONFIDENTIALITY WARNING": This electronic message contains Information which may be privileged and/or confidential. The information is intended for use only by the individual(s) or entity named/indicated above. Be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the content of this message / information is prohibited. If you received this message in error please contact us right away. Please be advised any advice or opinions should not be considered legal advice I am not an Attorney. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 8410 From: James M. Atkinson Date: Sat Apr 3, 2004 10:48am Subject: The Spy Who Blew the Whistle http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/1831.cfm From the April 2004 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 51, No. 4) WMD Intelligence Tested The Spy Who Blew the Whistle Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Julian Borger, The Guardian (liberal), London, England, Feb. 26, 2004 Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence officer, walked free from the Old Bailey yesterday [Feb. 25] and rekindled the debate over the war in Iraq. Her arrest for disclosing an unethical-and potentially illegal-U.S.-British bugging operation against friendly countries raises new questions about the events running up to the Iraq war, the behavior of the intelligence services, and the validity of the legal advice given by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, to the government. Gun's appearance in the Old Bailey had its origin in New York more than a year ago. In the final fortnight before war in Iraq, six members of the U.N. Security Council-Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico, and Chile-found themselves caught up in a swirl of U.S.-British diplomacy. The British government desperately wanted them to swing behind a resolution on Iraq. But the six were proving difficult to persuade, and the U.S. and British governments urgently wanted any snippets about their likely voting intentions. The U.S. government opted for underhand methods and asked the British government-and its intelligence services, including its listening agency, GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters]-to help out. Frank Koza, of the U.S. National Security Agency, sent out a memo and included in the recipients was GCHQ. The top secret memo asked for information about the voting intentions of Security Council members, jokingly adding "minus U.S. and GBR of course." He asked for "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises." He asked agents to focus on what had been dubbed at the U.N. "the U6": the undecided six Security Council members. The memo seems to have been distributed widely within GCHQ. But it is not known whether the agency itself acted on the request. Had it done so, its role would have been to eavesdrop on foreign embassies in London. It is commonplace, though never admitted, for the U.S. and British governments to listen in on friendly states. Intelligence analysts said yesterday that it was not surprising that the offices and even homes of the U.N. swing states were bugged. he 1994 Intelligence Services Act allows GCHQ to eavesdrop "in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defense and foreign policies of Her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom." The wording can be interpreted extremely broadly. During the fevered diplomacy in New York, the role of the six countries was pivotal. The U.S. public assessment was that they could be brought around. The [British] Foreign Office was privately more pessimistic, especially in regards to Mexico and Chile. James Welch, a solicitor for Liberty, the civil rights group, and Gun's lawyer, said yesterday: "Clearly what was being sought was an edge at a time when they were trying to secure a second U.N. resolution....What the United States was asking Britain to do was clearly unlawful in international law. It was a clear breach of the Vienna convention and it is also very arguably unlawful in domestic law." This diplomatic maneuvering was taking place while another, related row was brewing behind closed doors in Britain over whether existing U.N. resolutions provided a legal basis for going to war. Clare Short, who was in the Cabinet at the time, yesterday praised Gun for her bravery. Short, then the international development secretary, said there had been "something smelly, fishy" about the legal advice from the attorney general. She said she suspected the case against Gun had been dropped "because they do not want the light shone on the attorney general's advice." At the time, Short said, Cabinet members had been given only two pages of advice, and no discussion was allowed in Cabinet. Those pages have been made public but, she said, lots of crucial information related to the advice remained confidential. While Gun is becoming a cause célèbre in Britain, the case has not yet resonated in the United States, where it has attracted scant attention. It has been a bigger issue in Latin America. Mexico sent diplomatic notes to the U.S. and British governments this month seeking information about Gun's allegations. A Chilean government spokesman, Patricio Santamaria, confirmed that in early 2003 wiretaps had been found in most of the phones at Chile's U.N. mission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Expertly Hunt Real Spies, Real Eavesdroppers, and Real Wiretappers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 381-9111 Granite Island Group Fax: 127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web: http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 Email: mailto:jmatk@tscm.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8411 From: David Alexander Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 2:22am Subject: RE: Other In Britain's House of Commons, the government and opposition sides of the House are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is two swords' lengths, a reminder of just how seriously the Brits used to take their politics. Actually it's two sword lengths and one foot Ok, ok, so I'm picky David Alexander Dbi Consulting Ltd Stoneleigh Park Mews Stoneleigh Abbey Kenilworth Warwickshire CV8 2DB Office : 01926 515515 Mobile: 07836 332576 Email : David.Alexander@d... Have you visited our website? http://www.dbiconsulting.co.uk 8412 From: Steve Uhrig Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 0:45pm Subject: Re: FAE Explosives Once upon a midnight dreary, savanted1© pondered, weak and weary: > As far as I know fuel air explosives have to be confined to a > container to have the mixture enclosed so I thin that this type of > scenario would not be plausible. With respect Garrett, this list is not the appropriate place for such a discussion. This is an open list, and with an open list where anyone can belong, there are some areas which should not be discussed. This especially is true where the area of discussion has wandered way off the mission of the list. There are more appropriate places to discuss this type of info. The primary mission of this list is to discuss technical aspects of technical countermeasures. As this is a popular hobbyist/enthusiast/groupie topic, you can be certain not every one of the 1110 members here are discreet professionals. Regards ... Steve ******************************************************************* Steve Uhrig, SWS Security, Maryland (USA) Mfrs of electronic surveillance equip mailto:Steve@s... website http://www.swssec.com tel +1+410-879-4035, fax +1+410-836-1190 "In God we trust, all others we monitor" ******************************************************************* 8413 From: Shawn Hughes Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 10:04pm Subject: Re: Digest Number 1531 Garrett, Without getting into a large discussion on the merits of munitions, if this statement: "fuel air explosives have to be confined to a container to have the mixture enclosed so I thin that this type of scenario would not be plausible." means that you believe that a FAE needs to be enclosed to function, you are mistaken. While having the munition function as designed in an enclosed target space makes for a much greater effect, it isn't necessary for functioning. Discussion of the ordnance filler you discuss is NSI Classified Information. However, it is public knowledge that the science of FAE/thermobaric rounds have advanced past the point of what you've released, and utilize certain other liquid and solid fillers. I am familiar with the round you mention, however, I encourage you to google for the terms "finely divided particle explosion" and "Russian RPG FAE" for more up-to-date data. I'll be happy to point you in the direction of specific munitions if you'd like. For everyone else, a fuel air explosive is very similar to what happens in a grainery or silo explosion, or when a flammable gas escapes in volume and meets an ignition source. Weaponizing this type of effect is fairly difficult, but accidents due to this effect are unfortunately fairly common. Remember that all explosions are simply very, very, VERY rapid burning of product. Garrett, if you want to continue this offline, I'll be happy to, but I don't want to take up anymore of the others' time on the topic. V/R, Shawn Shawn Hughes Lead Instructor Explosive and WMD Operations Tactical Response Incorporated www.warriormindset.com At 09:02 AM 4/4/04 , you wrote: >Dear, Group Members > >As far as I know fuel air explosives have to be confined to a container to >have the mixture enclosed so I thin that this type of scenario would not >be plausible. I did not however read the initial information and was >basing my opinions on the comments presented on the daily digest. I am an >ordnance man with ten years of experience in both air-layed and hand held >weaponry. If I am not mistaken the F.A.E. bomb are composed of a gel >agent that expands when exposed to the air. I do believe that the actual >percentage of gel mixture in the container is 75% gel and 25% air inside >the container the 25% is for expansion. The gel can be viewed through a >viewing window which is 3 degrees right from the aft lug that is used to >load the weapon. > >Very Respectfully >Garrett Hord >AO1 (AW/NAC) >USN ret. 8414 From: Shawn Hughes Date: Sun Apr 4, 2004 10:19pm Subject: apologies Steve, I apologize. I receive the digest version, and did not get this response from you. Shawn 8415 From: Mitch D Date: Mon Apr 5, 2004 5:30am Subject: US Eavesdropping efforts leads to arrests Subject: Eavesdropping by U.S. agency led to arrests of terrorist suspects: report LONDON- The arrests of nine terrorist suspects in Britain and one in Canada last week began with a message intercepted by the National Security Agency in the United States that appeared to give instructions for an attack in the United Kingdom by al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan, The Sunday Times reports. The newspaper says the message was received by computers at the NSA's electronic eavesdropping centre in Maryland, which monitors millions of telephone calls and e-mails a day. Police in Britain were alerted of the threat after the NSA analysed the automatic translation of the communication that The Sunday Times said was "thought to be between Britain and Pakistan." Once alerted, senior British police and intelligence officers, including David Veness, head of special operations at Scotland Yard, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5, set up Operation Crevice, the code name for the international anti-terrorist sweep. Meanwhile in Canada, the RCMP arrested Momin Khawaja, 24, a software developer in Ottawa, in an investigation they have dubbed Project Awaken. He is the first Canadian charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act and faces two counts for unspecified offences between Nov. 10, 2003 and last Monday. Published reports say the RCMP had Khawaja under surveillance for more than a month at the request of British police. During a recent visit to Britain he was shadowed by British undercover police. Investigators claim he had a "pivotal role" in the alleged plot, as well as links to Saudi Arabian extremists, The Sunday Times said. But Khawaja's lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said Friday there has been "no link established at this time" between the case and allegations of the London bomb plot. Khawaja is slated for a bail hearing Wednesday and will plead not guilty, Greenberg added. The Mounties have said legal and operational limitations prevent them from releasing more information on the case. Detectives from the National Crime Squad in Britain were redeployed from dealing with organized crime to keep surveillance on the suspects in Britain and the operation led to the seizure last week of a half a tonne of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a chemical used to make home-made terrorist bombs, in a storage garage near London's Heathrow Airport. The newspaper said the original tip, picked up by NSA satellites, was given high priority because it appeared to be instructions for an attack passing between Al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan and associates in Britain. The sender was apparently in the circle around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be the mastermind of attacks in Baghdad and Karbala last month in Iraq that killed 280 people during a Muslim religious festival. The link to Pakistan is also seen as significant because it disproves a view that al-Qaida's command structure had been broken up and scattered by the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and arrests made around the world in the last 21 years of the war on terror, The Sunday Times said. "We all thought there were cells operating in isolation and had been told that the al-Qaida network had been destroyed from the top when suddenly we find a chain of command leading back to Pakistan," a senior Scotland Yard source is quoted as saying. Source> http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=world_home&article ===== Mitch Davis TSCM/Special Operations Group Inc. Nashville,TN.USA MitchD@t... site:www.tscmusa.com. Tel (615)837-9933 FAX (615) 523-0300 Cell(615) 364-6776