[This explanation may be reading a bit much into a language barrier. "Daniel Pearl" is not a common name in some countries, and mispelling it accidentally seems understandable. --Declan] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 12:29:37 -0800 From: Xeni Jardin <xeniat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: NYT, LAT:Pearl's captors may have taken steps to elude Net "wiretaps" Declan-- Perhaps relevant to politech: Two stories today that explore steps that Pearl's kidnappers may have taken to ensure that their online communications are untraceable. Like many, many others around the world, I hope he's released soon, unharmed, and that the reports today of his having been executed are not true. FWIW, this web site appears to belong to the group that Pakistani police claim is responsible--Harkat-ul-Mujahideen: <http://www.ummah.net.pk/harkat/> Safe travels, --XJ ------------------------ NYT: <snip> <<One curious element in the kidnappers' e-mail messages has been the persistent but inconsistent misspellings. Mr. Pearl's name, for instance, is seldom spelled the same way twice (Mr.danny, Mr.d.Parl, Daniel). Nor is the word "journalist," which is missing a different letter in each message. Mark Seiden, a computer security consultant in San Jose, Calif., speculated today that the kidnappers might be familiar with the Internet equivalent of wiretaps. The misspellings could indicate, he said, that they understand how such "sniffing" programs hunt for key words to try to isolate suspect e-mail as it is being sent. Deliberate misspellings of telltale words, like Mr. Pearl's name, would indicate that "they are somewhat sophisticated about this technology," Mr. Seiden said.>> </snip> <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/international/asia/01REPO.html> LAT: <snip> <<Other aspects of the e-mails, their sophisticated delivery and the senders' knowledge of U.S. media have led authorities to believe at least some of the kidnappers are well educated. "They obviously know about e-mails because they keep changing names and routing them differently," Noorani said. "They are obviously into international publicity, and they are getting it. They are not part of the uncouth, locally educated group of people. One or two of them are smart.">> <http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000008136feb01.story ?coll=la%2Dnews%2Da%5Fsection> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Events: Congreso Nacional de Periodismo Digital in Huesca, Spain from Jan. 17-18 (http://www.congresoperiodismo.com) and the Second International Conference on Web-Management in Diplomacy in Malta from Feb. 1-3. (http://www.diplomacy.edu/Web/conference2/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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