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Russia claims North Pole with Arctic flag stunt
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 6:51pm BST 01/08/2007

Russia will fire the starting gun on the world’s last colonial scramble today when a submarine plants a flag under the North Pole to symbolize the Kremlin’s claim to the Arctic and its vast energy resources.



In an unprecedented and potentially perilous mission, veteran Arctic explorer Artur Chilingarov will descend 14,000 feet in a deep sea submersible and drop a Russian tricolor cast in titanium onto the seabed.

With Russia’s northern rivals, all eager to extend their own Arctic ambitions, looking on uneasily, two Russian ships reached the North Pole after ploughing their way through deep ice for over a week.

In a nation that, in Soviet times, pioneered Arctic exploration, Mr Chilingarov’s expedition has fired the Russian public’s imagination.

But Mr Chilingarov also caused international concern after declaring that the Arctic and the North Pole were Russian.
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Global warming has given renewed impetus to the race for control of the Arctic.

Melting ice sheets could open up the fabled North East passage, the quest for which claimed countless sailors’ lives, for the first time.

The route, which could dramatically cut the length of a journey from Europe to Asia, could become navigable to commercial traffic within eight years.

The more clement conditions make for an equally tantalizing prospect.

According to some estimates, the Arctic is home to a quarter of the world’s untapped energy reserves - now more accessible than they ever have been.

For all Mr Chilingarov’s posturing, his expedition is little more than a public relations stunt designed by the Kremlin to attract public support for Russia’s long held claim to a 463,000 mile chunk of the Arctic - about half the size of Western Europe.

The Kremlin has long believed the territory belonged to Russia - it was marked as such on Soviet maps from the 1920s.

But in 1997, Russia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea, which limits the five nations on the Arctic Ocean Russia, Norway, Canada, the United States (through Alaska) and Denmark (through Greenland) to 200 miles of territorial waters.

But under the treaty, the five nations are allowed to file claims to a UN commission for greater territory if they can prove that their continental shelves are geographically linked to the Arctic seabed.



In 2001, Russia became the first country to file a claim, arguing that the underwater Lomonosov ridge was not merely a chain of mountains in international waters but was actually an extension of Siberia’s continental shelf.

The commission, however, was not convinced and asked for seismology reports and sonar measurements to support Russia’s submission.

After a six week expedition that ended in June, Russia’s Institute of Ocean Geology maintained it had a vital breakthrough - a claim that prompted Mr Chilingarov to set off on his patriotic mission.

But the institute warned that Russia was still along way off presenting a credible claim, saying it would not be in a position to do so until 2010 at the earliest.

"It would be far fetched to claim at this point that the evidence we have gathered is conclusive,” said Georgy Cherkashev, the institute’s deputy director.

“There is progress in that direction but I would be cautious until the data has been properly processed and analysed.”

Even so, the development has galvanized other Arctic nations into action. Denmark is to submit its own claim and Canada has announced it will build eight armed ships capable of cutting through the ice.

Both countries are also expected to study the Lomonosov Ridge, which runs through Greenland to Canada’s Ellesmere Island.

The area is believed to have up to 10 billion barrels of oil.

With the United States and Norway also having filed claims, the prospect for bitter territorial disputes has been raised. Russia, however, remains quietly confident.

The territory it seeks is a triangle running from the country’s western Kola Peninsula in the West to the Chukotka Peninsula in the East with the Apex running through the Pole itself.

Even if the sector is not awarded to Russia, it is unlikely any other country could seize it. If Russia is successful, however, its already mighty energy reserves would be given a massive boost - although there is still doubt about the technical feasibility of extracting oil and gas from the Arctic.

Despite growing concerns over the way Moscow uses its energy for political gain, Russian scientists have repeatedly pledged that there is no intention to grab any part of the Arctic.

"A unilateral annexation of the area by Russia is impossible,” said Viktor Posyolov of the Russian Institute of Ocean Geology, which has led the Arctic exploration. “We will strictly abide by the UN convention.”
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Martial Law Threat is Real: Lucky that the Military is Breaking Down
Dave Lindorff
Friday, July 27, 2007

The looming collapse of the US military in Iraq, of which a number of generals and former generals, including former Chief of Staff Colin Powell, have warned, is happening none too soon, as it may be the best hope for preventing military rule here at home.

From the looks of things, the Bush/Cheney regime has been working assiduously to pave the way for a declaration of military rule, such that at this point it really lacks only the pretext to trigger a suspension of Constitutional government. They have done this with the active support of Democrats in Congress, though most of the heavy lifting was done by the last, Republican-led Congress.

The first step, or course, was the first Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used to claim—improperly, but so what? —that the whole world, including the US, is a battlefield in a so-called “War” on Terror, and that he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress. As constitutional scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes, that one claim, that the US is itself a battlefield, is enough to allow this or some future president to declare martial law, “since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All he’d need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside the U.S.”

The 2001 AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the Bill of Rights. Around the same time, the president began a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was and remains a program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and at the administration’s political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would never have raised no objections to spying on potential terrorists. (And it, and other government spying programs, have resulted in the government’s having a list now of some 325,000 “suspected terrorists”!)

The other thing we saw early on was the establishment of an underground government-within-a-government, though the activation, following 9-11, of the so-called “Continuity of Government” protocol, which saw heads of federal agencies moved secretly to an underground bunker where, working under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the “government” functioned out of sight of Congress and the public for critical months.

It was also during the first year following 9-11 that the Bush/Cheney regime began its programs of arrest and detention without charge—mostly of resident aliens, but also of American citizens—and of kidnapping and torture in a chain of gulag prisons overseas and at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

The following year, Attorney General John Ashcroft began his program to develop a mass network of tens of millions of citizen spies—Operation TIPS. That program, which had considerable support from key Democrats (notably Sen. Joe Lieberman), was curtailed by Congress when key conservatives got wind of the scale of the thing, but the concept survives without a name, and is reportedly being expanded today.

Meanwhile, last October Bush and Cheney, with the help of a compliant Congress, put in place some key elements needed for a military putsch. There was the overturning of the venerable Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which barred the use of active duty military inside the United States for police-type functions, and the revision of the Insurrection Act, so as to empower the president to take control of National Guard units in the 50 states even over the objections of the governors of those states.

Put this together with the wholly secret construction now under way--courtesy of a $385-million grant by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc--of detention camps reportedly capable of confining as many as 400,000 people, and a recent report that the Pentagon has a document, dated June 1, 2007, classified Top Secret, which declares there to be a developing “insurgency” within the U.S, and which lays out a whole martial law counterinsurgency campaign against legal dissent, and you have all the ingredients for a military takeover of the United States.

As we go about our daily lives--our shopping, our escapist movie watching, and even our protesting and political organizing—we need to be aware that there is a real risk that it could all blow up, and that we could find ourselves facing armed, uniformed troops at our doors.

Bruce Fein isn’t an alarmist. He says he doesn’t see martial law coming tomorrow. But he is also realistic. He says, “This is all sitting around like a loaded gun waiting to go off. I think the risk of martial law is trivial right now, but the minute there is a terrorist attack, then it is real. And it stays with us after Bush and Cheney are gone, because terrorism stays with us forever.” (It may be significant that Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president, has called for the revocation of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq, but not of the earlier 2001 AUMF which Bush claims makes him commander in chief of a borderless, endless war on terror.)

Indeed, the revised Insurrection Act (10. USC 331-335) approved by Congress and signed into law by Bush last October, specifically says that the president can federalize the National Guard to “suppress public disorder” in the event of “national disorder, epidemic, other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident.” That determination, the act states, is solely the president’s to make. Congress is not involved.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has added an amendment to the upcoming Defense bill, restoring the Insurrection Act to its former version—a move that has the endorsement of all 50 governors--but Fein argues that would not solve the problem, since Bush still claims that the U.S. is a battlefield. Besides, a Leahy aide concedes that Bush could sign the next Defense Appropriations bill and then use a signing statement to invalidate the Insurrection Act rider.

Fein argues that the only real defense against the looming disaster of a martial law declaration would be for Congress to vote for a resolution determining that there is no “War” on terror. “But they are such cowards they will never do that,” he says.

That leaves us with the military.

If ordered to turn their guns and bayonets on their fellow Americans, would our “heroes” in uniform follow their consciences, and their oaths to “uphold and defend” the Constitution of the United States? Or would they follow the orders of their Commander in Chief?

It has to be a plus that National Guard and Reserve units are on their third and sometimes fourth deployments to Iraq, and are fuming at the abuse. It has to be a plus that active duty troops are refusing to re-enlist in droves—especially mid-level officers.

If we are headed for martial law, better that it be with a broken military. Maybe if it’s broken badly enough, the administration will be afraid to test the idea.
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Insider Info on the FBI's Spyware
Gregg Keizer
on 31 July, 2007

CIPAV is the agency's name for what the rest of us would call spyware--software the FBI wanted to plant on the PC.

Tucked into an affidavit filed by an FBI agent last month was the first hard evidence that federal agents are equipped with more than automatic pistols and handcuffs: The agency was asking a federal judge to let it infect a PC with spyware so they could finger its owner.

The case, which was reported locally in Olympia, Wash., last month and received more national exposure this month, involved bomb threats e-mailed to Timberline High School in Lacey, Wash., an IP trail that went cold in Italy and a call to the FBI.

Special Agent Norm Sanders, who swore out the affidavit, could be Efrem Zimbalist Jr.'s doppelganger for all we know, but he must have been more talkative than the close-lipped character from the late-1960s TV drama The FBI to win over a judge. Sanders had to spill some beans about CIPAV, the agency's name for what the rest of us would call spyware -- software the FBI wanted to plant on the PC used to e-mail the bomb threats in the hope of identifying its owner, and thus the sender.

Until Computerworld's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request is granted and more information on CIPAV is reviewed -- and maybe not even then -- all we have to go on is this:

What is CIPAV? CIPAV, which stands for "Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier," is secret surveillance software that the FBI used last month to help identify whoever was e-mailing bomb threats almost daily to a Washington high school. Although at least one security professional agreed that CIPAV fits the description of spyware, much of what it is, or does, is unknown. What is known: The software collects a wide range of information from the target PC and sends it back to control -- in this case, the FBI -- and automatically records every outbound communication, though not the contents of said communication. If that sounds like a bot, well. ...

What does CIPAV do? As the affidavit spelled out, "the exact nature of [CIPAV] commands, processes, capabilities and their configuration is classified as a law enforcement-sensitive investigative technique," so not all the facts are in.

But according to the court filing, this is what the CIPAV collects from the infected computer:

-- IP address

-- Media Access Control address for the network card

-- List of open TCP and UDP ports

-- List of running programs

-- Operating system's type, version and serial number (in Windows, the serial number is the 25-digit alphanumeric product activation key)

-- Default browser and its version

-- Default language of the operating system

-- Currently logged-in user (username) and registered company name (The latter is optional in Windows.)

-- Last visited URL

Once that initial inventory is conducted, the CIPAV slips into the background and silently monitors all outbound communication, logging every IP address to which the computer connects, and time and date stamping each. The affidavit called this a "pen register." The content of each communication -- the data packets that made up an e-mail message, for instance -- were expressly not to be collected.

What happens to the data the CIPAV collects? According to the warrant application, the CIPAV transmits the information to a computer "controlled by the FBI" in the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court's Eastern District of Virginia. Presumably, the server is at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., which is within the Eastern District.

Does the CIPAV capture keystrokes? We don't know, and the FBI isn't talking.

Can the CIPAV spread on its own to other computers, either purposefully or by accident? Does it erase itself after its job is done? We don't know. The only clue in the affidavit is that the CIPAV would operate as a pen register for up to 60 days after the software had been "activated" by the recipient. In other words, the FBI swore that the monitor would "time out" after 60 days. But not that it would delete itself or not be able to spread in some worm or bot fashion.

Speculation ahead: The affidavit was mum on whether the CIPAV collected the kind of information necessary to propagate, such as e-mail addresses in the PC's address book, instant messaging contacts or even, since it was launched at an as-then-unidentified MySpace user, MySpace's messaging list).

Does the FBI have just one stock CIPAV model? The affidavit does seem to hint that the spyware comes in more flavors than just vanilla. It said, "Because the FBI cannot predict whether any particular formation of a CIPAV [emphasis ours] to be used will cause a person(s) controlling the activating computer to activate a CIPAV, I request that this Court authorize the FBI to continue using additional CIPAV's in conjunction with the target MySpace account (for up to 10 days after this warrant is authorized), until a CIPAV has been activated by the activating computer."

How did the CIPAV get onto the targeted computer? Hard to say specifically, but we can deduce some things from the affidavit and MySpace, which the CIPAV took aim at. Some user action was clearly required to infect the PC with the CIPAV. In the warrant application, the FBI used the term activate several times and alluded to a spyware plant failure if the target did not trigger the CIPAV through the targeted MySpace account.

MySpace accounts can't receive traditional e-mail, so one hacker standard -- attach the CIPAV to a message and hope the recipient is stupid enough to launch it -- wasn't available. Instead, the most likely tactic would have been to send a URL to the suspect account using MySpace's own instant messaging and/or Web mail system. If the suspect clicked on the link -- it would have had to be enticing, so use your imagination here -- and visited the FBI-owned malicious site, an exploit for a zero-day vulnerability (or unpatched one on the suspect's PC) would have let the government download CIPAV to the target hard drive.

But which vulnerability? We don't know. Conceivably, it could have been the FBI's own super-duper flaw, but Occam's razor says it was probably one of the many effective, yet run-of-the-mill, bugs in the wild. Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs, took a guess. "If I had to bet, I'd bet on ANI," Thompson said in an IM interview.

Good bet. The animated cursor flaw harks back only to late March, and although Microsoft Corp. patched it in an out-of-cycle update on April 2, it's effective enough to still be used by the notorious multistrike hacker exploit kit Mpack as recently as last month, long after CIPAV was deployed.

I remember something about the FBI having something called "Magic Lantern." Any connection? Unlikely, other than as descendant. Magic Lantern was the code name given to FBI-made surveillance software in a November 2001 story broken by MSNBC.com, which outlined a keylogger-type Trojan horse to be delivered as an e-mail attachment.

But that was nearly seven years ago. To give you an idea, that news preceded major security events such as the Slammer and MyDoom worms (2003 and 2004, respectively) and the rise of phishing attacks. Government bureaucracy may move slowly, but seven-year-old security or exploit technology is nearly worthless.

Did the CIPAV work? Apparently. Before the CIPAV's appearance, bomb threats had been received by the school and school administrators on June 4, 5, 6 and 7. Until at least June 8, local police and the FBI had been stymied in their attempts to identify the sender using more traditional methods, such as requesting user information from Google Inc. and MySpace.com and contacting Italian police with a request to locate the computer routing through an Internet service provider's server there.

Once the CIPAV made an entrance, however, the case moved quickly. The warrant application was filed June 12, a Tuesday. At 2 a.m. Thursday, June 14, Lacey, Wash., police arrested an unnamed teenager in his home. The suspect, who had already been identified in news reports as a Timberline High School student, had bail set at US$100,000 in a hearing the following Monday, June 18. On July 15, after he pleaded guilty in juvenile court to charges of identity theft and making bomb threats, the teen was sentenced to 90 days' detention.

With the exception of the affidavit filed by Sanders, however, authorities remained mum throughout as to the specific part that the CIPAV played. We don't know, for instance, when the spyware was activated, whether it was activated after just one version of the CIPAV had been delivered, or what information it collected actually led the police to the boy's home.
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