Talk:Inslaw

message: I created a stub on Peter Videnieks to fill the void which existed.  It is now ready for as much additional information as we can find.  I look forward to everyone's input.ThsQ (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice job, ThsQ.  I like how it fills in missing information for Inslaw, but I'm wondering if it will remain that way over time?  Anway, until editors begin structuring it, and filling in more info, and that sort of thing, it's great to have it around.  I'm going to discus something further with you.  But not here.  As soon as I figure out where (and what I really want to say), I'll get in touch.  Stay tuned...:o)  oi vie,  Anne Teedham (talk) 14:11, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thumbs up, Theo! —Dixie Brown (talk) 17:36, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Peter Videnieks

message: As this page is very quiet, I've put my comments at WP:NPOVN. Dougweller (talk) 10:06, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: for future reference, your post and the reply by Ronz was archived in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 42#Inslaw. It looks like a closer examination of the sourcing for this article is still warranted. - Location (talk) 01:01, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The claim that Hanssen sold a "Promis-derivative" to the KGB came from a handful of news-stories in 2001. NONE of the numerous book-length studies of the Hanssen case (including Cherkashin, Havill, Schiller, Vise, and Wise), or the government reports on Hanssen's activities such as Fine, refer to this claim. Without much more solid sourcing, this claim should be removed.
The claim that Osama Bin Laden acquired a "Promis-derivative" which he used for "money laundering" has even less basis. It is sourced in the article to Michael Ruppert's website and to a single Fox news report by Carl Cameron in October 2001. Ruppert's website is not a reliable source, and the Cameron story is not adequate support for the claims made in the article.  Again, in all the books and articles on Bin Laden and his various funding schemes since 2001 (a huge number), no reliable source has ever substantiated this claim, or even repeated it. This claim should also be removed until better support is available. Rgr09 (talk) 17:23, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hanssen, Bin Laden, and Promis 

message: The book Gideon's Spies (GS) by Gordon Thomas is incorrectly characterized as an "authorized history" of Mossad. It was not authorized by Mossad; instead, it is a highly controversial book, with many reviewers observing that it is for the most part unsourced, and has frequent and obvious factual errors. It should also be noted that the book does not quote Rafael Eitan himself on the use of "Promis", it quotes Ari Ben-Menashe as making claims about Eitan's use of "Promis." Ben-Menashe is also a controversial figure; Hayden Peake, in his  review of Thomas's book on Robert Maxwell, bluntly calls Ben-Menashe "a well-known liar."  
 I have revised the article to remove false claim that GS is "authorized", and to correctly attribute claims about Eitan to Ben-Menashe, not Eitan himself. Rgr09 (talk) 18:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gideon's Spies as a source 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The origins section contains the following claim:
:On January 1, 1978, amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976 took effect, automatically conferring upon Inslaw as the author of Promis five exclusive software copyright rights, none of which could be waived except by explicit, written waiver. The federal government negotiated licenses to use but not to modify or to distribute outside the federal government some but not all versions of Promis created after the January 1978 effective-date of the copyright amendments.
The reference cited for this was a ruling of Court of Federal Claims (95-338X). This ruling is also cited in the section "Inslaw Affair divides into two separate issues," where it is discussed more clearly.  Both of these sections seem to mischaracterize the ruling. The 1978 amendments of the Copyright Act are not mentioned in the ruling at all. More specifically, the section discussing the effect of copyright does NOT state that the federal government's license does not allow it "to distribute outside the federal government some but not all versions of Promis" and gives NO reference at all to a January 1978 date.  I'll take a harder look at this, but right now it looks like someone may have taken Inslaw's argument and attributed it to the Court that ruled against Inslaw. Rgr09 (talk) 07:23, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins section 

message: A bill was introduced in the House in 1994 that would have referred Inslaw's claims to the Court of Federal Claims, but apparently it failed to pass the Committee of the Whole. The next year (1995) another bill was introduced in the Senate, again referring Inslaw's claims to the COFC, but this one passed. The original description of these two bills and their significance in the article was confused, and conspiratorial significance was attached to the failure of the House bill to pass, but in fact the main effect of both was the same; after the Bankruptcy Court's ruling in favor of Inslaw was vacated the Court of Appeals, a Congressional reference to the COFC was their best/only chance to gain financial compensation for the monetary losses they claimed. The article is complex enough without going through every maneuver in the case, successful and unsuccessful, major and minor, so I dropped the description of the 1994 bill, which failed, and kept the description of the Senate bill, which passed. You can view the article's history for the original descriptions. Rgr09 (talk) 11:52, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  House and Senate Bills 

message: There are no reliable second-hand sources for the Inslaw law suit. (The two books listed in the article are from non-RS publishers.)  The newspaper and magazine stories are mostly from around 1992 and focus on the House investigation.  The Bua report has newspaper coverage, but little discussion of the complex details; the 1994 DOJ review of the report has very little coverage, and the Court of Federal Claims finding of facts and ruling seem to have no coverage at all.  
Given the lack of reliable second-hand coverage, the article will have to be built with the congressional and judicial reports.  The current version already uses these extensively. I will put links to all these in the article's external links section, here'll I just post about possible sourcing issues. The Senate and House reports are available on Hathitrust, the Bua report and the DOJ review are available from governmentattic.com, which got them from the DOJ's OIP; all of these are reliable enough to use. The ruling of the Bankruptcy Court came in two form, oral, given in the Senate report, and written, available from Justia.com. The Inslaw claims are sometimes not available even in reliable first hand forms.  For example, the Inslaw analysis and rebuttal of the Bua report is only available in a text-file version posted on pinknoiz.com; there is no guarantee that this is reliable enough for use here.  Inslaw's 1994 Addendum is available in what looks to be the original form, but its source is not clear.  These should be cited from sparingly, at least until someone can come up with better sourced versions. The COFC ruling is available from the COFC website; it is unfortuate that there is no reliable second-hand source on this. The article contains claims about this ruling that the COFC website version does not seem to support.  I'm not a lawyer, perhaps someone with legal knowledge could double check this part. Rgr09 (talk) 01:25, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources for the article 

message: This article originally used a very elaborate reference structure, similar to the system in articles such as Pericles, with 'explanatory notes' in one section and 'citations' in another section. This is very unwieldy to edit, and makes it unnecessarily difficult to figure out which sources support which claims. My revisions to the article don't use this system, and so as I work my way through the remaining sections, the explanatory material will either be incorporated into the article or dropped. Much of the remaining material at this point deals with conspiratorial claims, that is often sourced to listserv postings.  These are simply not good sources (how do you know the text file is a complete and accurate version of the source?) and I intend to drop all of them. Rgr09 (talk) 07:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Most of those notes are unnecessary, and some seem to highlight innuendo and/or speculation of a conspiracy. Good job! -Location (talk) 14:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with references grouping 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The lead paragraph was revised recently. I have reverted these revisions and offer the following comments. 
The revision changed the name of Inslaw and Promis software to use all caps. Although this was the preferred usage of the plaintiffs in the case, it is inconsistent with the remainder of the article, and more to the point, it is inconsistent with most of the news coverage and legal documents.
The main point of the recent revisions was to provide a critique of the Federal Claims Court ruling against Inslaw, arguing that "the refusal in 1998 of that court's appellate authority to allow INSLAW to re-open discovery" was not "in accordance with the correct litigation standard of copyright infringement." This critique should not be in the lead and requires a reliable source to substantiate it. Please first provide and discuss the sources for this claim before adding it into the article again. Do not add it into the lead.
The lead revisions also removed the ultimate resolution of the case, and in its place reiterated the plaintiffs' version of the litigation and investigation of the case, including complaints about the Court of Appeals ruling against Inslaw and the special counsel's investigation of various aspects of the case. I have reverted this as failing NPOV. Rgr09 (talk) 22:33, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revised lead 

message: There was very little news coverage of the CFC ruling on the Inslaw case. The article therefore cites the ruling itself; although this is a primary source, as long as it is just stating or summarizing the conclusions, this is acceptable WP practice. However, the citation of the ruling in the article was later revised to offer an interpretation of the ruling which seems to claim, inter alia, that the CFC found that "Inslaw had never granted the government a license to "modify Promis to create derivative software" although Inslaw was automatically vested with the exclusive copyright rights to Promis." The phrase "Inslaw was automatically vested with the exclusive copyright rights to Promis" does not appear in the text of the ruling; this seems to be a later claim of the plaintiffs that is here incorrectly attributed to the CFC. I have deleted this problematic interpretation of the ruling.  Also, the text of the ruling is sourced to a file on Archive.org. It would be strongly preferable to source to official or commercial on-line court records if possible; I will check to see whether I can find an alternative source. Rgr09 (talk) 00:22, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Court of Federal Claims ruling 

message: A recent addition to the section on "later developments" referenced several posts on the Muckrock website. The first of these Mudrock posts discussed Inslaw's claim that Israel acquired its Enhanced Promis program and re-engineered it to serve as a Trojan horse in a vast number of foreign intelligence operations. 
Inslaw's allegations that Israel intelligence stole its software were dealt with at length in the 1994 Dwyer review of the Bua Report (pp. 74-80). Dwyer states that Joseph Ben Orr, an Israeli lawyer working for DOJ in 1982-83, said he met William Hamilton in February 1983 to discuss Promis. After this discussion, Ben Orr requested a copy of the Promis program from the DOJ. Ben Orr told Dwyer that DOJ had provided a copy of the program on magnetic tape, which he took back to Israel. When Dwyer asked if Ben Orr still had the tape, Ben Orr had the tape delivered to the U.S. Embassy. The tape turned out to be the PDP-11 public version of Promis, not the disputed Enhanced Promis. 
Inslaw owner William Hamilton, however, had claimed that the person whom he spoke to was not identical to the picture of Dr. Ben Orr the he was later shown. Instead, he identified the person that visited him in 1983 as Rafi Eitan, an Israeli intelligence officer. This claim was later repeated in books by writers Ari Ben-Menashe and Gordon Thomas.
The recent addition stated that "The Department of Justice denied these allegations, stating that they gave a copy of the software to Dr. Ben Orr. However, Department of Justice files show that Ben Orr was out of the country when the Department of Justice claims to have met with him."
Muckrock's new information consists of a file of Dwyer's correspondence detailing his efforts to retrieve Ben Orr's copy of Promis. This FOIA document confirms the details of Dwyer's request for the tape. It does not in any way confirm the claims of Hamilton, Ari Ben-Menashe, or Gordon Thomas that Rafi Eitan met with Hamilton posing as Ben Orr. Per the Dwyer review, Ben Orr told Dwyer in 1994 that HE met Hamilton. He denied knowing Rafi Eitan, and called Hamilton's claims "sheer lies and invention."
The FOIA material Muckrock cites also includes a note from Dwyer that Ben Orr stated his passport had visas to the US for September 1982 to April 30, 1983, and July 15 1983 to September 15 1983. The Muckrock post claims that for some reason this means Ben Orr couldn't have received the tapes from DOJ, and in a leap of logic implies that Ben Orr's visa dates confirm that Eitan, not Ben Orr, met Hamilton in February 1983. This specious post is not worth citing in the article and I have removed the reference. Rgr09 (talk) 00:22, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Later developments: allegations of Israeli involvement 

message: A recent edit to the "Later developments" section claims that "In 2017, the FBI and Department of Justice confirmed they still had an open investigation into the PROMIS affair." A closer look shows that this claim is based on the FBI's denial of a Muckrock FOIA request. The FBI denial cited the b7A exemption to the FOIA law. Muckrock interprets this to mean specifically that the "Promis investigation" is still 'open'. A Muckrock interpretation, however, is not equivalent to an FBI confirmation. I have therefore deleted the claim. Rgr09 (talk) 05:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Later developments: status of case 

message: Recent edits to the "Later developments" section added claims that "In 2017, it was revealed that FBI's sources indicated Edwin Meese's guilt in the PROMIS affair. The files also showed that leads were dropped in the Congressional investigation and that some evidence disappeared." These claims are sourced to two posts on Muckrock. These posts are based on heavily redacted FBI files that are not otherwise identified in the posts. This is far from acceptable sourcing. Rgr09 (talk) 08:40, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:   Later developments: claims on Meese and the House Judiciary Committee