/misc | Sep 30, 2006

Tuesday 26 September 2006

United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Arlen Specter, Chairman
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member


Dear Senators:

We write as experienced intelligence and military officers who have  
served in the frontlines in waging war against communism and Islamic  
extremism. We fully support the need for proactive operations to  
identify and disrupt those individuals and organizations who wish to  
harm our country or its people. We also recognize that intelligence  
operations, unlike law enforcement initiatives, enjoy more  
flexibility and less scrutiny, but at the same time must continue to  
be guided by applicable US law.

We are very concerned that the proposals now before the Congress,  
concerning how to handle detainees suspected of terrorist activities,  
run the risk of squandering the greatest resource our country enjoys  
in fighting the dictators and extremists who want to destroy us ? our  
commitment as a nation to the rule of law and the protection of  
divinely granted human rights.

Apart from the moral considerations, we believe it is important that  
the Congress send a clear message that torture is not an effective or  
useful tactic. As noted recently by the head of Army Intelligence,  
Lt. Gen. John Kimmons:


No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think  
history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last  
five years, hard years, tells us that.

Our nation was created in response to the abuses visited on our  
ancestors by the King of England, who claimed the right to enter  
their homes, to levy taxes at whim, and to jail those perceived as a  
threat without allowing them to be confronted by their accusers. Now,  
230 years later, we find our own President claiming the right to put  
people in detention centers without legal recourse and to employ  
interrogation methods that, by any reasonable legal standard, are  
categorized as torture.

We ask that the Senate lead the way in upholding the principles set  
forth in the Declaration of Independence and affirmed in the Geneva  
Conventions regarding the rights of individuals and the obligations  
of governing authorities towards those in their power. We believe it  
is important to combat the hatred and vitriol espoused by Islamic  
extremists, but not at the expense of being viewed as a nation who  
justifies or excuses torture and incarceration without recourse to a  
judicial procedure.

The US has been in the forefront of the human rights campaign  
throughout the 20th century, led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow  
Wilson. The end of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust  
inspired the United States to take the lead in making the case that  
human rights were universal, not parochial. Until recently the policy  
of our country was that all people, not just citizens of the United  
States, were entitled to these protections. It is important that the  
world understand that we remain committed to these principles. In  
fighting our enemies we must wage this battle in harmony with the  
traditional values of our society that were enshrined in the opening  
clause of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to  
be self-evident...."

Respectfully yours,

CIA Officers:

Milton Bearden, Directorate of Operations
Ray Close, Directorate of Operations
Vincent Cannistraro, Directorate of Operations
Philip Giraldi, Directorate of Operations
James Marcinkowski, Directorate of Operations
Melissa Mahle, Directorate of Operations
Paul Pillar, Directorate of Intelligence
David MacMichael, Directorate of Intelligence
Melvin Goodman, Directorate of Intelligence
Ray McGovern, Directorate of Intelligence
Mary O. McCarthy, DCI professional staff

US Military and Department of Defense:

W. Patrick Lang, (Colonel, US Army retired, Director Defense Humint  
Services, retired)
A. D. Ackels, (Colonel, US Army, retired)
Karen Kwiatkowski, (Lt. Colonel, USAF, retired)

US Department of State:

Thomas R. Maertens, Deputy Coordinator, Office of Counter Terrorism,  
US Department of State
Larry C Johnson, Office of Counter Terrorism, US Department of State

Federal Bureau of Investigation:

Christopher Whitcomb, Hostage Rescue Team

/misc | Sep 30, 2006

• is silent and fanless
• has HDD sleep support
• offers gigabit speed
• supports SMB, AFP, and FTP
• has 3 USB 2.0 ports for printer sharing, connecting backup drives, copying pictures directly from cameras, etc
• retails for around $300 (250GB model)

/misc | Sep 27, 2006

/mac | Sep 27, 2006

• MacStumbler 0.75b [131k] {S} Displays information about nearby 802.11b and 802.11g wireless access points.  
• iStumbler Release 97 [730k] Wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices and Bonjour services.  

/mac | Sep 21, 2006

•  NetCPS [23k] {S}+ Measure the effective performance of a TCP/IP network.  
•  PCATTCP [60k] {S}+ PCAUSA's port of Test TCP (TTCP), a command-line sockets-based benchmarking tool for measuring TCP and UDP performance between two systems.  

/windows | Sep 20, 2006

• Mac: Bouncer [59k] Script to bounce emails back to sender. Versions for Microsoft Entourage (2001 and X) and Outlook Express.
• Windows: Bounce Spam Mail v.1.8 [271k] + Send fake bounce messages. Does not support SMTP authentication.    
• Windows: BounceBully [1260k] Bounce spam messages. Works with Outlook or Outlook Express.

/misc | Sep 20, 2006

/windows | Sep 18, 2006

/windows | Sep 17, 2006

/windows | Sep 17, 2006

/windows | Sep 17, 2006

/windows | Sep 16, 2006

/windows | Sep 15, 2006

A little more digging turned up the freeware Windows Registry Recovery, "The best tool for crashed machine registry recovery". In addition to the raw registry data, it provides a host of information:

• File Information: In this explorer you can see basic file properties and checksums.
• Security Record Explorer: Displays all security records used in registry. Usage counter, owner SID, group SID, list of affected keys and list of SACL and DACL is displayed for every record with flags and permissions enumerated. This explorer is available only for NT based system registry hives.
• SAM: Displays Machine SID and part of SYSKEY. Enumerates local user and group accounts and some of their properties. This explorer is available only for NT based system registry SAM hive.
• Windows Instalation: Displays Windows name, ID and key, install date and user registration info. Enumerates installed software with descriptions and install date and list of installed hotfixes wih description. This explorer is available only SOFTWARE registry hive (Product ID and key are extracted in SYSTEM hive too).
• Control Set: Displays all configured devices that worked on host machine. They are displayed in "like Device Manager" tree with some properties. This explorer is available for SYSTEM registry hive.
• User Data: Displays user and machine name and tree based Start menu for selected USER hive. This explorer is available for USER registry hive.
• Startup Applications: Enumerates applications that are registered to be run after startup. This explorer is available for SOFTWARE registry hive.
• Services and Drivers: Enumerates all installed services and drivers with properties. This explorer is available only for NT based system registry SYSTEM hive.
• Network Configuration: Displays all installed network clients, protocols and services. Enumerates all defined network connections with its TCP/IP configuration. This explorer is available only for NT based system registry SYSTEM hive.
• Environment: Displays all environment variables. This explorer is available only for NT based system registry SYSTEM hive.
• Raw Data: This explorer displays whole registry in known tree format. Contains powerful searching and data interpreter.

/windows | Sep 15, 2006

/windows | Sep 15, 2006

/windows | Sep 14, 2006

/misc | Sep 14, 2006

/windows | Sep 13, 2006

/windows | Sep 11, 2006

/mac | Sep 11, 2006

/misc | Sep 10, 2006

• Delete Doctor - Delete files that are difficult to delete, such as some files left by viruses and trojans, or files with corrupted file names. This program can also delete files like the "index.dat" files, which store Internet history, by scheduling them for deletion upon system restart.
• Dr Delete - Delete in-use files by scheduling them to be deleted at the next start-up. Download and review.
• Inuse.exe - Provides individuals and administrators with "on-the-fly" capability to replace files that are currently in use by the operating system.
• Locked Files Wizard (formerly CopyLock) - Replace, move, delete or rename one or more files or folders which are in use by the system or any running process. Additionally, you can display and possibly stop the processes or services that lock a file, and manage files flagged to be processed by the system on next reboot. Command line version also included.
• MoveOnBoot - Copies, moves or deletes files and folders on the next system boot. The utility is very useful when the user needs to replace or delete files which are locked by other applications, loaded into the memory or just cannot be changed until next system boot. Note: scroll to the bottom and look for "Old Version (Freeware)"
• Unlocker - Delete, move or rename locked files from the context menu.

/windows | Sep 06, 2006