The Kosovo-Crisis

During the Kosovo Crisis and during the war that followed, and probably also after it, all sides of the conflict were manipulating their people and others as well, whenever they could. Some of the propaganda shown on TV was as primitive as in World War II, others were subtler. This propaganda started by telling the history of the geographic point of discussion from the own point of view, it went on with the interpretation of the motives of the enemy and finally came to censorship, manipulation of the number of victims ( for more information see: http://www.oneworld.org/index_oc/kosovo/kadare.html , spreading of atrocity stories and so on.
Many journalists and scientists are still working to detect more propaganda and disinformation stories.

An interesting detail about this war was that more people than ever before took their information about the war out of the internet. In part this had to do with the biased TV-reports on all sides. All parties put their ideas and perspectives in the net, so one could get an overview of the different thoughts and types of disinformation.
One of the big lies of NATO was the numbers of destroyed military facilities in Serbia. After the war the numbers had to be corrected down to a ridiculous number of about 13 destroyed tanks. At the same time the numbers of civilian victims turned out to be much higher than NATO had admitted in the first line. The method how European and American people had been persuaded to support the NATO-bombings was the promise to bomb only targets of the military or military-related facilities. Nearly every day NATO had to stretch this interpretation, as many civilian houses got destroyed. A cynical word was created for this kind of excuse: collateral damage.

The Serbs were not better than Western governments and media, which worked together closely. Serb TV showed the bombed targets and compared persons like Bill Clinton to Adolf Hitler and called the NATO fascist. On the other hand pictures from the situation in Kosov@ were left out in their reports.

More:
http://www.voa.gov/editorials/08261.htm (91)
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/vol3/prog3n22.html (92)
http://www.serbia-info.com/news (93)
http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/Belgrade041399.html (94)
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1999/08/SAID/12320.html (95)

TEXTBLOCK 1/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658714
 
Introduction: The Substitution of Human Faculties with Technology: Computers and Robots

With the development of modern computing, starting in the 1940s, the substitution of human abilities with technology obtained a new dimension. The focus shifted from the replacement of pure physical power to the substitution of mental faculties. Following the early 1980s personal computers started to attain widespread use in offices and quickly became indispensable tools for office workers. The development of powerful computers combined with progresses in artificial intelligence research also led to the construction of sophisticated robots, which enabled a further rationalization of manufacturing processes.

TEXTBLOCK 2/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659302
 
Timeline 1970-2000 AD

1971 IBM's work on the Lucifer cipher and the work of the NSA lead to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (= DES)

1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish their book New Directions in Cryptography, playing with the idea of public key cryptography

1977/78 the RSA algorithm is developed by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman and is published

1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act

- The Hacker Quarterly is founded

1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is passed in the USA

- Electronic Communications Privacy Act

1987 Chicago prosecutors found Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force

1988 U.S. Secret Service covertly videotapes a hacker convention

1989 NuPrometheus League distributes Apple Computer software

1990 - IDEA, using a 128-bit key, is supposed to replace DES

- Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard publish their work on Quantum Cryptography

- Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network nationwide


1991 PGP (= Pretty Good Privacy) is released as freeware on the Internet, soon becoming worldwide state of the art; its creator is Phil Zimmermann

- one of the first conferences for Computers, Freedom and Privacy takes place in San Francisco

- AT&T phone crash; New York City and various airports get affected

1993 the U.S. government announces to introduce the Clipper Chip, an idea that provokes many political discussions during the following years

1994 Ron Rivest releases another algorithm, the RC5, on the Internet

- the blowfish encryption algorithm, a 64-bit block cipher with a key-length up to 448 bits, is designed by Bruce Schneier

1990s work on quantum computer and quantum cryptography

- work on biometrics for authentication (finger prints, the iris, smells, etc.)

1996 France liberates its cryptography law: one now can use cryptography if registered

- OECD issues Cryptography Policy Guidelines; a paper calling for encryption exports-standards and unrestricted access to encryption products

1997 April European Commission issues Electronic Commerce Initiative, in favor of strong encryption

1997 June PGP 5.0 Freeware widely available for non-commercial use

1997 June 56-bit DES code cracked by a network of 14,000 computers

1997 August U.S. judge assesses encryption export regulations as violation of the First Amendment

1998 February foundation of Americans for Computer Privacy, a broad coalition in opposition to the U.S. cryptography policy

1998 March PGP announces plans to sell encryption products outside the USA

1998 April NSA issues a report about the risks of key recovery systems

1998 July DES code cracked in 56 hours by researchers in Silicon Valley

1998 October Finnish government agrees to unrestricted export of strong encryption

1999 January RSA Data Security, establishes worldwide distribution of encryption product outside the USA

- National Institute of Standards and Technologies announces that 56-bit DES is not safe compared to Triple DES

- 56-bit DES code is cracked in 22 hours and 15 minutes

1999 May 27 United Kingdom speaks out against key recovery

1999 Sept: the USA announce to stop the restriction of cryptography-exports

2000 as the German government wants to elaborate a cryptography-law, different organizations start a campaign against that law

- computer hackers do no longer only visit websites and change little details there but cause breakdowns of entire systems, producing big economic losses

for further information about the history of cryptography see:
http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/timeline.html
http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~crypto/Timeline.html
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/cryptology/history.html
http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/hocryp.html
http://all.net/books/ip/Chap2-1.html
http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/eni-intro.htm
http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/cryptofr.html
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/milestones.shtml

for information about hacker's history see:
http://www.farcaster.com/sterling/chronology.htm:

TEXTBLOCK 3/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438658960
 
Bandwidth

The bandwidth of a transmitted communications signal is a measure of the range of frequencies the signal occupies. The term is also used in reference to the frequency-response characteristics of a communications receiving system. All transmitted signals, whether analog or digital, have a certain bandwidth. The same is true of receiving systems.

Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. For example, it takes more bandwidth to download a photograph in one second than it takes to download a page of text in one second. Large sound files, computer programs, and animated videos require still more bandwidth for acceptable system performance. Virtual reality (VR) and full-length three-dimensional audio/visual presentations require the most bandwidth of all.

In digital systems, bandwidth is data speed in bits per second (bps).

Source: Whatis.com

INDEXCARD, 1/3
 
John von Neumann

b. December 3, 1903, Budapest, Hungary
d. February 8, 1957, Washington, D.C., U.S.

Mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, logic, meteorology, and computer science. His theory of games had a significant influence upon economics. In computer theory, von Neumann did much of the pioneering work in logical design, in the problem of obtaining reliable answers from a machine with unreliable components, the function of "memory," machine imitation of "randomness," and the problem of constructing automata that can reproduce their own kind.

INDEXCARD, 2/3
 
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)

Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is a standard reference model for communication between two end users in a network. It is used in developing products and understanding networks.

Source: Whatis.com

INDEXCARD, 3/3