Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id FAA13384; Tue, 17 Dec 1996 05:06:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 05:06:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199612171006.FAA13384@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #665 TELECOM Digest Tue, 17 Dec 96 05:06:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 665 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Echelon: The Global Surveillance System (Ian Geldard) The InterNIC: A Case Study in Bad Database Management (Monty Solomon) Nevada Regulators Approve SBC-Pacific Telesis Merger (Mike King) Book Review: "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server" by Gerber (Rob Slade) Re: N11 Codes (Linc Madison) Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes (Nils Andersson) Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes (Clive D.W. Feather) Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes (Steven R. Kleinedler) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: igeldard@capital.demon.co.uk (Ian Geldard) Subject: Echelon: The Global Surveillance System Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 10:37:54 GMT EXPOSING THE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM by Nicky Hager ------ The article as it appears in hard copy in the magazine also includes the following sidebars: --"NSA'S BUSINESS PLAN: GLOBAL ACCESS" by Duncan Campbell --GREENPEACE WARRIOR: WHY NO WARNING? and --NZ's PM Kept in the Dark by Nicky Hager ********Hager's book "secret Power" is available from CAQ for $33.******* ----------- [See end] IN THE LATE 1980S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE US PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER'S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD'S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand's intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be interviewed. The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON. Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world. It is, of course, not a new idea that intelligence organizations tap into e-mail and other public telecommunications networks. What was new in the material leaked by the New Zealand intelligence staff was precise information on where the spying is done, how the system works, its capabilities and shortcomings, and many details such as the codenames. The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet. The computers at each station in the ECHELON network automatically search through the millions of messages intercepted for ones containing pre-programmed keywords. Keywords include all the names, localities, subjects, and so on that might be mentioned. Every word of every message intercepted at each station gets automatically searched whether or not a specific telephone number or e-mail address is on the list. The thousands of simultaneous messages are read in "real time" as they pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as the computer finds intelligence needles in telecommunications haystacks. SOMEONE IS LISTENING: The computers in stations around the globe are known, within the network, as the ECHELON Dictionaries. Computers that can automatically search through traffic for keywords have existed since at least the 1970s, but the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in Canada, and the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) in Australia. The alliance, which grew from cooperative efforts during World War II to intercept radio transmissions, was formalized into the UKUSA agreement in 1948 and aimed primarily against the USSR. The five UKUSA agencies are today the largest intelligence organizations in their respective countries. With much of the world's business occurring by fax, e-mail, and phone, spying on these communications receives the bulk of intelligence resources. For decades before the introduction of the ECHELON system, the UKUSA allies did intelligence collection operations for each other, but each agency usually processed and analyzed the intercept from its own stations. Under ECHELON, a particular station's Dictionary computer contains not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also has lists entered in for other agencies. In New Zealand's satellite interception station at Waihopai (in the South Island), for example, the computer has separate search lists for the NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE in addition to its own. Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords, it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil. The first component of the ECHELON network are stations specifically targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats) used by the telephone companies of most countries. A ring of Intelsats is positioned around the world, stationary above the equator, each serving as a relay station for tens of thousands of simultaneous phone calls, fax, and e-mail. Five UKUSA stations have been established to intercept the communications carried by the Intelsats. The British GCHQ station is located at the top of high cliffs above the sea at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Satellite dishes beside sprawling operations buildings point toward Intelsats above the Atlantic, Europe, and, inclined almost to the horizon, the Indian Ocean. An NSA station at Sugar Grove, located 250 kilometers southwest of Washington, DC, in the mountains of West Virginia, covers Atlantic Intelsats transmitting down toward North and South America. Another NSA station is in Washington State, 200 kilometers southwest of Seattle, inside the Army's Yakima Firing Center. Its satellite dishes point out toward the Pacific Intelsats and to the east. *1 The job of intercepting Pacific Intelsat communications that cannot be intercepted at Yakima went to New Zealand and Australia. Their South Pacific location helps to ensure global interception. New Zealand provides the station at Waihopai and Australia supplies the Geraldton station in West Australia (which targets both Pacific and Indian Ocean Intelsats). *2 Each of the five stations' Dictionary computers has a codename to distinguish it from others in the network. The Yakima station, for instance, located in desert country between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, has the COWBOY Dictionary, while the Waihopai station has the FLINTLOCK Dictionary. These codenames are recorded at the beginning of every intercepted message, before it is transmitted around the ECHELON network, allowing analysts to recognize at which station the interception occurred. New Zealand intelligence staff has been closely involved with the NSA's Yakima station since 1981, when NSA pushed the GCSB to contribute to a project targeting Japanese embassy communications. Since then, all five UKUSA agencies have been responsible for monitoring diplomatic cables from all Japanese posts within the same segments of the globe they are assigned for general UKUSA monitoring.3 Until New Zealand's integration into ECHELON with the opening of the Waihopai station in 1989, its share of the Japanese communications was intercepted at Yakima and sent unprocessed to the GCSB headquarters in Wellington for decryption, translation, and writing into UKUSA-format intelligence reports (the NSA provides the codebreaking programs). "COMMUNICATION" THROUGH SATELLITES The next component of the ECHELON system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by Intelsat.In addition to the UKUSA stations targeting Intelsat satellites, there are another five or more stations homing in on Russian and other regional communications satellites. These stations are Menwith Hill in northern England; Shoal Bay, outside Darwin in northern Australia (which targets Indonesian satellites); Leitrim, just south of Ottawa in Canada (which appears to intercept Latin American satellites); Bad Aibling in Germany; and Misawa in northern Japan. A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based telecommunications systems is the final element of the ECHELON system. Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting large quantities of public, business, and government communications is a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks over land. Heavy cables, laid across seabeds between countries, account for much of the world's international communications. After they come out of the water and join land-based microwave networks they are very vulnerable to interception. The microwave networks are made up of chains of microwave towers relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop (always in line of sight) across the countryside. These networks shunt large quantities of communications across a country. Interception of them gives access to international undersea communications (once they surface) and to international communication trunk lines across continents. They are also an obvious target for large-scale interception of domestic communications. Because the facilities required to intercept radio and satellite communications use large aerials and dishes that are difficult to hide for too long, that network is reasonably well documented. But all that is required to intercept land-based communication networks is a building situated along the microwave route or a hidden cable running underground from the legitimate network into some anonymous building, possibly far removed. Although it sounds technically very difficult, microwave interception from space by United States spy satellites also occurs.4 The worldwide network of facilities to intercept these communications is largely undocumented, and because New Zealand's GCSB does not participate in this type of interception, my inside sources could not help either. NO ONE IS SAFE FROM A MICROWAVE: A 1994 expos of the Canadian UKUSA agency, Spyworld, co-authored by one of its former staff, Mike Frost, gave the first insights into how a lot of foreign microwave interception is done (see p. 18). It described UKUSA "embassy collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in diplomatic bags and used to monitor various communications in foreign capitals. *5 Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country. *6 The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill gaps in the American and British embassy collection operations, which were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left the CSE in 1990. Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the DSD also engages in embassy collection. *7 On the territory of UKUSA nations, the interception of land-based telecommunications appears to be done at special secret intelligence facilities. The US, UK, and Canada are geographically well placed to intercept the large amounts of the world's communications that cross their territories. The only public reference to the Dictionary system anywhere in the world was in relation to one of these facilities, run by the GCHQ in central London. In 1991, a former British GCHQ official spoke anonymously to Granada Television's World in Action about the agency's abuses of power. He told the program about an anonymous red brick building at 8 Palmer Street where GCHQ secretly intercepts every telex which passes into, out of, or through London, feeding them into powerful computers with a program known as "Dictionary." The operation, he explained, is staffed by carefully vetted British Telecom people: "It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies, all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take everything. They feed it into the Dictionary." *8 What the documentary did not reveal is that Dictionary is not just a British system; it is UKUSA-wide. Similarly, British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the US Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground into the station.9 The NSA Menwith Hill station, with 22 satellite terminals and more than 4.9 acres of buildings, is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful in the UKUSA network. Located in northern England, several thousand kilometers from the Persian Gulf, it was awarded the NSA's "Station of the Year" prize for 1991 after its role in the Gulf War. Menwith Hill assists in the interception of microwave communications in another way as well, by serving as a ground station for US electronic spy satellites. These intercept microwave trunk lines and short range communications such as military radios and walkie talkies. Other ground stations where the satellites' information is fed into the global network are Pine Gap, run by the CIA near Alice Springs in central Australia and the Bad Aibling station in Germany. *10 Among them, the various stations and operations making up the ECHELON network tap into all the main components of the world's telecommunications networks. All of them, including a separate network of stations that intercepts long distance radio communications, have their own Dictionary computers connected into ECHELON. In the early 1990s, opponents of the Menwith Hill station obtained large quantities of internal documents from the facility. Among the papers was a reference to an NSA computer system called Platform. The integration of all the UKUSA station computers into ECHELON probably occurred with the introduction of this system in the early 1980s. James Bamford wrote at that time about a new worldwide NSA computer network codenamed Platform "which will tie together 52 separate computer systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or `host environment,' for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT organization, GCHQ." *11 LOOKING IN THE DICTIONARY: The Dictionary computers are connected via highly encrypted UKUSA communications that link back to computer data bases in the five agency headquarters. This is where all the intercepted messages selected by the Dictionaries end up. Each morning the specially "indoctrinated" signals intelligence analysts in Washington, Ottawa, Cheltenham, Canberra, and Wellington log on at their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system. After keying in their security passwords, they reach a directory that lists the different categories of intercept available in the data bases, each with a four-digit code. For instance, 1911 might be Japanese diplomatic cables from Latin America (handled by the Canadian CSE), 3848 might be political communications from and about Nigeria, and 8182 might be any messages about distribution of encryption technology. They select their subject category, get a "search result" showing how many messages have been caught in the ECHELON net on that subject, and then the day's work begins. Analysts scroll through screen after screen of intercepted faxes, e-mail messages, etc. and, whenever a message appears worth reporting on, they select it from the rest to work on. If it is not in English, it is translated and then written into the standard format of intelligence reports produced anywhere within the UKUSA network either in entirety as a "report," or as a summary or "gist." INFORMATION CONTROL: A highly organized system has been developed to control what is being searched for by each station and who can have access to it. This is at the heart of ECHELON operations and works as follows. The individual station's Dictionary computers do not simply have a long list of keywords to search for. And they do not send all the information into some huge database that participating agencies can dip into as they wish. It is much more controlled. The search lists are organized into the same categories, referred to by the four digit numbers. Each agency decides its own categories according to its responsibilities for producing intelligence for the network. For GCSB, this means South Pacific governments, Japanese diplomatic, Russian Antarctic activities, and so on. The agency then works out about 10 to 50 keywords for selection in each category. The keywords include such things as names of people, ships, organizations, country names, and subject names. They also include the known telex and fax numbers and Internet addresses of any individuals, businesses, organizations, and government offices that are targets. These are generally written as part of the message text and so are easily recognized by the Dictionary computers. The agencies also specify combinations of keywords to help sift out communications of interest. For example, they might search for diplomatic cables containing both the words "Santiago" and "aid," or cables containing the word "Santiago" but not "consul" (to avoid the masses of routine consular communications). It is these sets of words and numbers (and combinations), under a particular category, that get placed in the Dictionary computers. (Staff in the five agencies called Dictionary Managers enter and update the keyword search lists for each agency.) The whole system, devised by the NSA, has been adopted completely by the other agencies. The Dictionary computers search through all the incoming messages and, whenever they encounter one with any of the agencies' keywords, they select it. At the same time, the computer automatically notes technical details such as the time and place of interception on the piece of intercept so that analysts reading it, in whichever agency it is going to, know where it came from, and what it is. Finally, the computer writes the four-digit code (for the category with the keywords in that message) at the bottom of the message's text. This is important. It means that when all the intercepted messages end up together in the database at one of the agency headquarters, the messages on a particular subject can be located again. Later, when the analyst using the Dictionary system selects the four- digit code for the category he or she wants, the computer simply searches through all the messages in the database for the ones which have been tagged with that number. This system is very effective for controlling which agencies can get what from the global network because each agency only gets the intelligence out of the ECHELON system from its own numbers. It does not have any access to the raw intelligence coming out of the system to the other agencies. For example, although most of the GCSB's intelligence production is primarily to serve the UKUSA alliance, New Zealand does not have access to the whole ECHELON network. The access it does have is strictly controlled. A New Zealand intelligence officer explained: "The agencies can all apply for numbers on each other's Dictionaries. The hardest to deal with are the Americans. ... [There are] more hoops to jump through, unless it is in their interest, in which case they'll do it for you." There is only one agency which, by virtue of its size and role within the alliance, will have access to the full potential of the ECHELON system the agency that set it up. What is the system used for? Anyone listening to official "discussion" of intelligence could be forgiven for thinking that, since the end of the Cold War, the key targets of the massive UKUSA intelligence machine are terrorism, weapons proliferation, and economic intelligence. The idea that economic intelligence has become very important, in particular, has been carefully cultivated by intelligence agencies intent on preserving their post-Cold War budgets. It has become an article of faith in much discussion of intelligence. However, I have found no evidence that these are now the primary concerns of organizations such as NSA. QUICKER INTELLIGENCE, SAME MISSION: A different story emerges after examining very detailed information I have been given about the intelligence New Zealand collects for the UKUSA allies and detailed descriptions of what is in the yards-deep intelligence reports New Zealand receives from its four allies each week. There is quite a lot of intelligence collected about potential terrorists, and there is quite a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in GATT negotiations. But by far, the main priorities of the intelligence alliance continue to be political and military intelligence to assist the larger allies to pursue their interests around the world. Anyone and anything the particular governments are concerned about can become a target. With capabilities so secret and so powerful, almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group of current "highly placed intelligence operatives" from the British GCHQ spoke to the London Observer: "We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate." They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the Observer reported: "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes it is called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to Third World aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organizations. "It is then possible to key in a trigger word which enables us to home in on the telex communications whenever that word appears," he said. "And we can read a pre-determined number of characters either side of the keyword."12 Without actually naming it, this was a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works. Again, what was not revealed in the publicity was that this is a UKUSA-wide system. The design of ECHELON means that the interception of these organizations could have occurred anywhere in the network, at any station where the GCHQ had requested that the four-digit code covering Third World aid be placed. Note that these GCHQ officers mentioned that the system was being used for telephone calls. In New Zealand, ECHELON is used only to intercept written communications: fax, e-mail, and telex. The reason, according to intelligence staff, is that the agency does not have the staff to analyze large quantities of telephone conversations. Mike Frost's expos of Canadian "embassy collection" operations described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory, that can "listen" to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken. Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers. Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from the masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for analysts back at agency headquarters. However, high volume voice recognition computers will be technically difficult to perfect, and my New Zealand-based sources could not confirm that this capability exists. But, if or when it is perfected, the implications would be immense. It would mean that the UKUSA agencies could use machines to search through all the international telephone calls in the world, in the same way that they do written messages. If this equipment exists for use in embassy collection, it will presumably be used in all the stations throughout the ECHELON network. It is yet to be confirmed how extensively telephone communications are being targeted by the ECHELON stations for the other agencies. The easiest pickings for the ECHELON system are the individuals, organizations, and governments that do not use encryption. In New Zealand's area, for example, it has proved especially useful against already vulnerable South Pacific nations which do not use any coding, even for government communications (all these communications of New Zealand's neighbors are supplied, unscreened, to its UKUSA allies). As a result of the revelations in my book, there is currently a project under way in the Pacific to promote and supply publicly available encryption software to vulnerable organizations such as democracy movements in countries with repressive governments. This is one practical way of curbing illegitimate uses of the ECHELON capabilities. One final comment. All the newspapers, commentators, and "well placed sources" told the public that New Zealand was cut off from US intelligence in the mid-1980s. That was entirely untrue. The intelligence supply to New Zealand did not stop, and instead, the decade since has been a period of increased integration of New Zealand into the US system. Virtually everything the equipment, manuals, ways of operating, jargon, codes, and so on, used in the GCSB continues to be imported entirely from the larger allies (in practice, usually the NSA). As with the Australian and Canadian agencies, most of the priorities continue to come from the US, too. The main thing that protects these agencies from change is their secrecy. On the day my book arrived in the book shops, without prior publicity, there was an all-day meeting of the intelligence bureaucrats in the prime minister's department trying to decide if they could prevent it from being distributed. They eventually concluded, sensibly, that the political costs were too high. It is understandable that they were so agitated. Throughout my research, I have faced official denials or governments refusing to comment on publicity about intelligence activities. Given the pervasive atmosphere of secrecy and stonewalling, it is always hard for the public to judge what is fact, what is speculation, and what is paranoia. Thus, in uncovering New Zealand's role in the NSA-led alliance, my aim was to provide so much detail about the operations the technical systems, the daily work of individual staff members, and even the rooms in which they work inside intelligence facilities that readers could feel confident that they were getting close to the truth. I hope the information leaked by intelligence staff in New Zealand about UKUSA and its systems such as ECHELON will help lead to change. CAQ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: CAQ (CovertAction Quarterly) has won numerous awards for investigative journalism. In 1996, it won 4 of "Project Censored" top 25 awards for investigative reporting. CAQ is read around the world by investigative reporters, activists, scholars, intelligence buffs, news junkies, and anyone who wants to know the news and analysis behind the soundbites and headlines. Recommended by Noam Chomsky; targeted by the CIA. Each article in the 64-page magazine, which is in its 19th year of publication, is extensively footnoted and accompanied by photographs and graphics. For a single issue, send $6. A one year subscription: US $22; Canada/Mexico $27; Latin America/Europe $33; Other areas $35. A two year US subscription is $38 Please send check or money order in $US to: CAQ 1500 Massachusetts Ave. #732 Washington, DC 20005, USA Mail, phone or fax Mastercard or Visa with address info and expiration date Phone: 202-331-9763 Fax: 202-331-9751 E-mail: caq@igc.org CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES: http://mediafilter.org/caq http://www.worldmedia.com/caq ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:20:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The InterNIC: A Case Study in Bad Database Management Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 18:28:23 -0800 (PST) From: Phil Agre Subject: The InterNIC: a case study in bad database management [Sorry for the heavy traffic on RRE. The world is going nuts this week.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 16:44:21 -0800 (PST) From: risks@csl.sri.com Subject: RISKS DIGEST 18.67 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Friday 13 December 1996 Volume 18 : Issue 67 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 17:07:04 -0500 From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" Subject: The InterNIC: a case study in bad database management (This message was also sent to comp.protocols.dns.ops .) The InterNIC (http://www.internic.net) is responsible for Internet domain name service for all top-level domains, as well as for second-level domains underneath all the old ARPA domains except MIL (EDU, GOV, NET, ORG, COM). Until a few years ago, domain registration services were provided by the InterNIC for free. That changed when they convinced the NSF that its grant money wasn't enough to cover their costs, so (amid much hubbub on the Net) they started charging $50 per year for any second-level domain registration, with the first two years (i.e., $100) payable in advance. According to , the InterNIC registered 638,788 new domains between August 1993 and September 1996. If I'm doing my math right, at $100 per domain, that's almost $64 million, or over $20 million per year. I would think that with that much money, they'd be able to provide competent service to their customers. Unfortunately, my experience has been that they're simply not doing an acceptable job. Some examples: ***** * Their automated systems do not function properly. They've introduced a PGP-based system for authentication of domain contacts. In other words, they allow domain contacts to register their PGP public keys in the InterNIC public-key database, and then requests which come from those contacts will only be accepted as authentic if they are signed with the corresponding provide key. Unfortunately, this system does not always work. Recently, I submitted a series of twelve database modification requests to the InterNIC in a single day. All of them were correctly signed with my PGP key. Of the twelve requests, three were returned to me in messages beginning, "We are not able to verify the PGP signed message that you sent us." To make matters worse, for one of those three failed requests, I received a message claiming the the modifications I'd requested had been completed, two days *before* I received the message informing me that they were unable to verify my PGP signature. I have asked the InterNIC multiple times why their system randomly fails to verify valid PGP signatures. They have not responded to my inquiries. Interestingly enough, another poster to comp.protocols.dns.ops claimed that when he asked an InterNIC on the telephone about their PGP authentication system, he was told that it is not currently working. That would seem to indicate that the InterNIC is aware that there are problems with it, and yet they continue to advertise it on their Web site without any indication that it might not work for any given request. * There are some data in the database which are impossible to update using the templates they provide. One of the types of data stored in the InterNIC database is hosts; in particular, hosts which act as domain-name servers for domains registered with the InterNIC have records in the database. Host records include an organization name and address associated with the host. And yet, the template for updating host records (available at ) does not have fields in it for updating that information! I believe that there are a couple of other record types in the database which have this same problem. This organization/address data has been described to me by an InterNIC employee as an "old hold-over;" it seems that new host records do not have organization and address data, but old ones do. Nevertheless, one would think that when switching to a new format for host records, the InterNIC would have either removed the obsolete data from the old records or established a procedure for updating it. Instead, the only way to update this information electronically is to send a plain-text message to hostmaster@internic.net explaining what you're trying to do, and then hope that whoever reads your message will be competent enough to understand what you're asking for and do the update by hand. Which brings me to my next point ... * When asked how to do something that is not handled automatically by their templates, their staff give incorrect answers (or simply ignore the query) more often than they give correct answers. Of the twelve requests mentioned above, six of them were handled improperly by the InterNIC staff members who processed them. Iwn several cases, I received a response instructing me to use a particular template to make the changes I had requested, when in fact those changes had nothing whatsoever to do with the template they told me to use. I finally had to escalate my requests by sending "out-of-band" E-mail to an InterNIC employee who has resolved problems of this sort for me in the past, and she was able to "bounce" my requests to a high enough level that they actually got processed. Incidentally, the InterNIC introduced one or more typographical errors into the data I sent them when processing six of my twelve requests (i.e., when they were done processing my requests, six of the twelve records I asked them to modify had one or more typographical errors in them). I suppose that sending incorrect answers is better than how things were a few months ago -- then, if you sent a request that the person who read your message did not know how to answer, he/she simply ignored it and sent no response whatsoever. * There are some data in their database which are impossible to update using their current procedures. Imagine this scenario ... Joe Admin at Foo, Inc. is responsible for system administration, including DNS administration. He therefore has a contact record in the InterNIC database indicating that he works for Foo, Inc., and he is listed as a contact for various domain, network, and host records, in the InterNIC database. Now, he leaves the company and takes a new job, with no further contact with Foo, Inc. He doesn't bother to update his contact record in the InterNIC database before he leaves. Foo, Inc. would rather not let records remain in the InterNIC database claiming that Joe works for them when in fact he does not. Therefore, they want to contact the InterNIC and tell them, "Look, the information in Joe Admin's contact record which says that he for us is incorrect. You can confirm this by attempting to send E-mail to the address in the record, or by calling the phone number in the record and asking to speak to him. The person who answers will confirm that he no longer works there. Please either delete the contact record completely or remove the information in it which associates Joe Admin with Foo, Inc." Sounds reasonable, right? Well, unfortunately, the InterNIC has *no procedures whatsoever* for allowing a company to remove contact information which incorrectly lists them. I attempted to do just what I described, i.e., to get the InterNIC to remove the contact record for a former employee of OpenVision who no longer works here, and who I cannot contact to ask him to update his own record (and considering that it's not hurting him in any way, I don't see that he'd have any incentive to update it even if I could ask him to). After several rounds of E-mail with the InterNIC, they called me on the telephone to discuss what I was trying to do. Once on the phone with them, I was "bounced up" through several layers of InterNIC staff, until I was finally able to speak to a woman who was perfectly willing to admit that yes, the scenario I described was a somewhat common one, and yes, it was perfectly reasonable for a company not to want the InterNIC database to associate non-employees with the company, but no, there's no way for anyone but the owner of a contact handle to update it. "Perhaps we need to establish a procedure for that, and I'll be glad to discuss that for you with our customer service manager, but we don't have one right now," she said, and she did not offer to make an exception and handle my particular request manually without the blessing of a "procedure". Presumably, this means that I could edit my own contact handle to indicate that I work for any company that I want, and that company would have no way to get the InterNIC to remove the fraudulent information. Similarly, presumably, that means that (to be a little morbid for a moment), if someone listed in the InterNIC database dies, there's no way for anyone else to get the InterNIC to remove the deceased's record from the database. When I pressed the woman about this, she said to me, "If you're a network administrator at this company, you presumably have control over the mail server" (an assumption which is not always true, and indeed isn't true in this case; although I can ask the people who administer the mail server to make changes and hope that they'll listen, I don't have the ability to make the changes directly). "Well," she continued," if you send us a mail message which claims to be from the former employee, asking for his record to be deleted, we'll process it." "Let me get this straight," I responded. "You're telling me that I should forge E-mail to your system in order to delete this record." She confirmed that interpretation. I said, "Surely you see the absurdity of that." She responded, "Well, obviously, ideally we wouldn't want anyone forging requests to our system, but in this case, that's the only way for you to delete the record." "What if the former employee had associated a PGP key with his contact record before he left the company." "Well, in that case, you'd need his private PGP key in order to delete the record." "But surely you know that's impossible -- the whole point of PGP is that only the owner a private key has access to it. Even if I had access to the file in which it was stored, I wouldn't know the correct password to unlock it." "Well, in that case, there would be no way for you to delete the record." ***** There are a number of countries with strict laws about the collection of private information in computerized databases. Database maintainers are required to seek permission from all individuals who have data about them stored in the database, to guarantee the security of the database, and to establish working procedures for keeping the data in the databases up-to-date. The United States has few such laws (there are laws about specific types of databases, such as credit and medical records, but no laws about databases in general). Until I started dealing with the InterNIC, I didn't see much point to them. Well, I've changed my mind. The InterNIC proves rather clearly that left to their own devices, companies will not maintain databases in a responsible manner. Incidentally, nowhere on the InterNIC's WWW site can I find the address or telephone number of the governmental office which oversees their grant and handles complaints about their services. Several months ago, I sent them E-mail asking for them so that I could file a complaint, to be considered the next time their grant comes up for renewal. Like many of my other messages to them, that request was ignored. Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@cam.ov.com ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: Nevada Regulators Approve SBC-Pacific Telesis Merger Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 19:22:48 PST ----- Forwarded Message ----- Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 16:17:53 -0800 From: sqlgate@sf-ptg-fw.pactel.com Subject: NEWS: Nevada Regulators Approve SBC-Pacific Telesis Merger FOR MORE INFORMATION: Michael Runzler, Pacific Telesis (415) 394-3643 Joyce Trombley, Nevada Bell (702) 333-4332 Larry Solomon, SBC (210) 351-3990 Nevada Regulators Approve SBC-Pacific Telesis Merger CARSON CITY, Nevada -- The Nevada Public Service Commission today became the latest regulatory body to favorably approve the proposed merger of SBC Communications and Pacific Telesis Group, the parent company of Nevada Bell. The commission voted 5 to 0 in favor of the merger. "We are pleased that the Nevada Commission approved this merger expeditiously so that consumers can soon benefit from the increased competition our combined companies will provide in the fast-changing telecommunications market," said Phil Quigley, chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis Group. "We look forward to providing our Nevada customers with a full range of local and long-distance services as all telecommunications markets open to full and fair competition." "The combination of SBC and Pacific Telesis means that Nevada Bell will be part of a stronger, more competitive global telecommunications company that will provide customers with state-of-the-art communications services and quality customer service at affordable prices," said Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of SBC Communications. In conjunction with the application for merger approval in Nevada, the companies agreed to provide at least $4 million to Nevada Bell customers in lieu of siting four headquarters and adding jobs in California. The merger has been approved overwhelmingly by shareholders of both companies, and the U.S. Department of Justice has said the merger does not violate federal antitrust laws. Approvals from the Federal Communications Commission on license transfers and the California Public Utilities Commission are pending. SBC and Pacific Telesis announced their merger agreement April 1. Together, the two companies will have more than $21 billion in annual revenues and serve the nation's two most populous states and seven of its ten largest metropolitan areas. Pacific Telesis (NYSE:PAC) is a diversified telecommunications corporation based in San Francisco. Through its Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell subsidiaries, the corporation offers a wide array of telecommunications services in California and Nevada, including directory advertising and publishing. The corporation serves nearly 15.8 million access lines. It offers Internet access services to both business and residential customers. Another subsidiary, Pacific Bell Mobile Services, has begun offering new wireless "personal communications services" (PCS) in the San Diego area, and will expand service in California and Nevada in 1997. SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) is one of the world's leading diversified telecommunications companies and the second-largest wireless communications company based in the United States. SBC provides innovative telecommunications products and services under the Southwestern Bell and Cellular One brands. Its businesses include wireline and wireless services and equipment in the United States and interests in wireless businesses in Europe, Latin America, South Africa and Asia; cable television in both domestic and international markets; and directory advertising and publishing. Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 10:31:55 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server" by Gerber BKMSXSRV.RVW 960912 "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server", Barry Gerber, 1996, 0-7821-1867-4, U$39.95 %A Barry Gerber %C 1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA 94501 %D 1996 %G 0-7821-1867-4 %I Sybex Computer Books %O U$39.99 510-523-8233 800-227-2346 Fax: 510-523-2373 info@sybex.com %P 659 %T "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server" Gerber does offer a complete and easy to follow guide to setting up an MS Exchange Server. In addition, there is direction on the use of both the Server and the client software. The material is well presented, if little different than would be found in the documentation. Singularly missing is any compelling reason to use MS Exchange Server. Those who have heard some of the claims for Exchange will find little evidence to support its purchase. Examples of real applications would have made the book more convincing, and likely more useful. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKMSXSRV.RVW 960912 Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca BCVAXLUG Envoy http://www.decus.ca/www/lugs/bcvaxlug.html ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 16:03:25 -0800 In article , nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) wrote: > I subscibe to the theory that N11 are national treasures, to be > doled out very carefully. The 311 for "non-emergency" 911 may be a > good start (clogged 911 is a major problem, at least in the LA area). > OTOH, I have no problem with re-using the N11 (except probably 911) as > AREA CODES. There should be no ambiguities, as area codes are always > preceded by a one (except from some cellphones, but the cellswich gets all > the digits and can obviously determine by the presence or absence of more > digits whether an area code N11 or a special access N11 is dialled). Problem: in some toll-alerting areas (Texas, specifically, and probably other states as well), you don't dial 411 for local directory assistance. You dial 1+411, because there is now a charge associated with the call. (It changed in the late 1970s, when D.A. stopped being free.) That leaves you with only six N11 codes to use as area codes, and that doesn't seem worthwhile, given the public perception of N11 as "special." In fact, all area codes with the second and third digits the same (i.e., 222, 233, 244, 255, etc.) are reserved for special purposes as "easily remembered" codes. > The issue of 1+411 should go away, just because 411 is a charged call does > (in a contemporary setting) not mean that it has to be dialled as 1+... Tell that to the Texas PUC! These are the same dinosaurs who still refuse to PERMIT you to dial a local call with a leading '1'. If you dial a number in a different area code that just happens to be local, you MUST NOT dial the 1. And heaven *forbid* you should ever try to dial a local number in your own area code with 1+area+number! Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com ------------------------------ From: nilsphone@aol.com (Nils Andersson) Subject: Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes Date: 16 Dec 1996 19:27:02 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com In article , D Banks writes: > Was BC the only place in North America to use 112+Number for LD instead > of 1+Number? Back in 1966 (yup, nineteen hundred and sixty-six AD), I was in Montreal. They switched sometime in the summer of that year from 112+ac to 1+ac. Regards, Nils Andersson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 18:36:31 +0000 From: Clive D.W. Feather Reply-To: clive@demon.net Subject: Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes Organization: Clive's laptop (part of Demon Internet Ltd.) In article , Nils Andersson writes > 999 is the older British code, NOT Europe-wide. (Example: Sweden uses 90 > 000.) > Various countries have had each their own emergency number. European > Union and possbly some non-EU countries in Europe are standardizing to > 112, currently some countries are in the "permissive dialling" mode, The UK has no plans to ever drop 999; 112 and 999 will run in parallel for ever. Clive D.W. Feather | Associate Director | Director Tel: +44 181 371 1138 | Demon Internet Ltd. | CityScape Internet Services Ltd. Fax: +44 181 371 1150 | | Written on my laptop - please reply to the Reply-To address ------------------------------ From: srkleine@midway.uchicago.edu (Steven R. Kleinedler) Subject: Re: Canadian Use Of N11 Codes Organization: The University of Chicago Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 18:56:08 GMT In article , D Banks wrote: > Was BC the only place in North America to use 112+Number for LD instead > of 1+Number? In my rural neck of the woods (eastern 517 quite close to the 313 (now 810) line about 20 miles southwest of Flint), until the early 80s, we had to dial 120 and then the area code and number. A live operator would come on line and we'd give our phone number, and then we were connected through. Since I lived in a small 517 corner of the school district, I did this quite a lot. This message has been brought to you by Steve Kleinedler. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #665 ******************************