THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING / Published Periodically ====================================================================== ISSN 1074-3111 Volume One, Issue Five August 1, 1994 ====================================================================== Editor-in-Chief: Scott Davis (dfox@fc.net) Co-Editor/Technology: Max Mednick (kahuna@fc.net) Consipracy Editor: Gordon Fagan (flyer@fennec.com) Information Systems: Carl Guderian (bjacques@usis.com) Computer Security: John Logan (ice9@fennec.com) ** ftp site: etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/JAUC U.S. Mail: The Journal Of American Underground Computing 10111 N. 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You will be notified by mail when it is ready for use. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING - Volume 1, Issue 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1) The Next Thirty Years: Sociolegal Implications Of The Information Technology Explosion Steve Ryan 2) Advertising On The Net Fawn Fitter 3) Availability Of TJOAUC; Overseas Fido Gateways Editors 4) Cyberpasse Manifesto Don Webb 5) AA BBS Convicted! Anon News Svc 6) Open Platform Under Threat By Monopoly Interests Anonymous 7) House Opens Vote Results; HR 3937 Shabbir Safdar 8) High-Speed Internet Access Expanded; Minnesota Dennis Fazio 9) Internet Access Now Available For All Minn. Teachers Dennis Fazio 10) Legion Of Doom T-Shirt Ad Chris Goggans 11) White House Retreats On Clipper Stanton McCandlish 12) Why Cops Hate Civilians Unknown 13) Public Space On Info Highway Ctr. Media Ed. 14) Software Key Escrow - A New Threat? Tim May 15) Hoods Hit The Highway Charlotte Lucas 16) The Internet And The Anti-Net Nick Arnett %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% The Computer Is Your Friend -Unknown Send Money, Guns, And Lawyers -H. S. Thompson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% THE NEXT THIRTY TEARS: SOCIOLEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXPLOSION By Steve Ryan (blivion@nuchat.sccsi.com) [EDITOR'S NOTE: This is facinating reading! It is a college thesis written by an attorney who is a friend of the JAUC staff. Please keep in mind that it was written in *1980* and is a fantastic and accurate look into the future from his perspective in 1980. Feel free to mail the editors with any comments on this one and especially feel free to drop Steve a note with your opinions.] I do romance the law. It's alive, it's vibrant, its' bubling. Every time society tries something, we have new laws. --Hon. Jack Pope, Associate Justice Supreme Court of Texas INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, an attempt is made to acquaint the reader with current trends in computer technology which are likely to have a major impact on American life in the forseeable future, and to provide an overview of the staggering dimensions of the information- handling revolution now in progress. Second, the response of the American legal system to this explosive growth in the application of computer technology is examined critically and areas of current and future legal concern are outlined. No attempt has been made to provide an in-depth legal analysis of the current state of the law in any single area; the reader in search of such is reffered to the numerous excellent legal periodicals presently published in this field. I. DATA-HANDLING SYSTEMS OF THE FUTURE It is difficult to overstate the rapidity oand magnitude of the technological advances occurring every year in the data processing industry. New developments and applications of those developments are announced with bewildering rapidity. Enormous amounts of dollars are poured into research and development every year by the American data processing industry, and the pace of change is so rapid that those who work with customers must keep current or risk having their knowledge and skills become obsolescent within a year or two. HARDWARE This near-exponential rate of technical progress can be quantiativley expressed through several different conceptual "handles." The number of additions per second performed by computers in the U.S. every year grew by three orders of magnitude (factor 1,000) between 1955 and 1965, and again by the same factor in the decade 1965-1975. This number appears to be still growing at the rate of 100% per year. Between 1955 and 1975 C. P. U. memory size shrank by over four orders of magnitude (factor 10,000) and this trend continues. Speed of operation has been rising more linearly, at the rate of two orders of magnitude (factor 100) per decade, and the ultimate limiting speed (dictated by the speed with which the electrical impulses propagate through conductors) is still almost two and a one-half orders of magnitude away. The cost of computer storage devices is plunging at the rate of nearly three orders of magnitude per decade. The density with which intergrated circuit chips can be packed with electronic components is now measured in the millions devices per square inch. It has been projected that during this decade the percentage of the gross national product contributed by the data processing industry (broadly defined) will outstrip that contributed by the auto industry. COMMUNICATIONS Similar advances have been occurring in the communications industry, slashing the cost of maintaining computer-to-user and computer-to-computer information links. The major trends are development of satellite, fiber optic, and laswer methods of data transmission. As initially developed, the cost to lease a 900-channel transponder on a satellite was between on and one-half and two million dollars per year. In the first half of this decade , this cost is expected to drop to $250,000 per year. The greatest expense of satellite utilization is the cost of placing it in orbit; this will become cheaper by at least this tak. The new generation of satellites launched by reusable shuttle will offer a greater number of data channels and perform switching functions as well as relay tasks; and all of this greatly reduced cost. Annual growth of data communiccations through the middle of this decade is projected to be 35 percent. Additionally, federal deregulation of and new competitor entry into the communications industry is expected to lower data communications costs in the future. ECONOMICS This author believes that the rapidly falling costs of computer hardware and data links carry tremendous implications for the future. Economic barriers to computer utilization are falling, and the end result will be an exlosive profilferation of small personal and business computers and intelligent terminals in an incredible variety of application. The structure of business relations and transactions will change radically as corporate America discovers that they cannot afford not to utilize the new technology. It will simply become bad business to process most transactions through human hands and the mails in the form of paper of documents, when powerful microprocessors having large memories are available for literally pennies per chip. Speed-of-light datalinks cheaply available for these machines will eliminate time lags as a source of inefficiency and boost productivity. PERSONAL COMPUTING The same factors that make widespread use of data handling equipment inevitable in the business world will also have the effect of placing small, cheap computers by the millions in nonbusiness or personal applications. Computers are possibly the most versatile tool human beings have ever invented to extend their capabilities. Because they deal with pure information, their potential applications are limitless, or rather limited only by the ingenuity of their users. Nowhere is this more evident than in the brand-new field of personal computers. For better or worse, the personal computer revolution is upon us. The first true personal computer was brought out in 1974 by M.I.T.S. Corporation. Baded on the Intel 8080 Comuter-on-a-chip, the Model T of microprocessors, it was sold by mail in kit form for $420.00. Customer response was overwhelming, and M.I.T.S. was unable to to keep up with demand. At the time of this writing, six years later, the American consumer is the target of an enormous marketing effort for similar small computers mounted by such corparate giants as Texas Instruments, Tandy Corp. (Radio Shack), Sears & Roebuck, and a host of smaller competitors. Clearly, these corporations believe in the market for and future of home computing enough to back their beliefs with large capital investments. The home computer, with appropriate interfaces and accessory hadware, can play games, balance its owner's checkbook, optimize household energy usage, play music, store information, show movies, do typing, draw pictures, give its owner access to any database or other systems accessible by phone, send mail, and let the cat out. Some enthusiasts predict that the home computer will remake our way of life as drastically as the automobiles, and will be the most explosive consumer product in human history, having a more revolutionary effect than any other object ever sold. it is also predicted that home and personal uses of computers will dwarf the ordinary computer industry within five or ten years, and will do IBM great economic harm by destroying the IBM-fostered image of computers as enormous, centralized, horrendouly expensive machines requiring the services of a band of devoted priest-programmers. These things remain to be seen. This author believes that the most profound effects on American society created by the microcomputer revolution will not be the result of dedicating small computers to specific business and personal tasks but rather will result from the ability of these countless small C.P.U.'s to communicate with one another economically. THE CONCEPT OF "THE NET" In recent years, as communication technology began to catch up with advanced computer technology, a trend toward distributed computation has occured in systems design. Instead of a massive central computer linked to many unitelligent I/O terminals, this new method of system architecture links a number of central processing units into a network in which tasks can be distributed to different locations for maximum efficiency in processing. Networks are very efficient method of processing where the amount of processing needed increases faster than the amount of data to be transferred, and where a common specialized resouce is shared among geographically desperesed end users. Minicomputers linked into centralized computers in some applications, and they can be linked in such a manner that individual minicomputers can fail without affecting the operational status of the network. Given the above-forecasted situation of millions of small business and personal computers linked by common inexpensive communications channels, it is easy to see how a gigantic, highly flexible meta-network of minicomputers could be said to exist. The terms "network" and "distributed processin" have customarily been used to refer to relatively small, tightly interfaced groups of processors and are thus inadequate to use in reference to such a huge complex of computers as would be formed by the potential linkage of all the home and business computers of America. Therefore the term "The Net" will be used in this paper to refer to such a potential structure. This term has already gained currency with some writers who are concerned with the social implicaitons of such an electronic network. Persons who are fearful of suspicious of the advent of The Net for whatever reason, and persons who doubt that such a broadly-based and widely linked national (and transnational) EDP system wil become an operational reality in the near future will no doubt be suprised and/or dismayed to learn that two private information utilities which demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of the Net concept are already on line and available to minicomputer users today. These are The Source and MicroNet, both about a year old. These services are accessed through telephone lines, which will be the primary method of Net linkage until new technology make satellite- based or fiber optic linkage economically competitive with ordinary landline and microwave channels. Accessing these services augments the computing power and usefulness of a home computer to and amazing extent. By linking to a large mainframe, the small ones gain the power to program in many languages ordinarily unavailable to them and gain the use of utility programs such as word processors and text editors. Large libraries of generally applicable business and financial programs and data are available to subscribers, as well as stock market information. Also available are game programs, UPI news wire service, New York Times news service, and the New York Times Consumer Data Base, which abstracts over 60 publications. The flexibility and broad utility of even these fledgling Net Linkage systems is demonstrated by other revolutionary services information utilities offer. The Source offers electonic mail service to its subscribers; when users log on, the system notifies them of any messages or mail it is holding for them. Users of the Source can also call a program named CHAT, which enables direct two-way between any users simultaneously logged on. MicroNet offers a fasicinating computerized version of CB radio in which the user selects a numbered "Channel" which, in effect is a "public airwave" of this small Net. All users linked on the same channel receive every message transmitted on that channel; they can either join the discourse or remain passive and watch the coversations of others on their CRT. A disadvantage is that like CB, two users cannot transmit on the same channel simultaneously without mutual interference. The Source and MicroNet are privately operated for profit and charge the subscriber for registration as a user and access time. An alternative mode of linking isolated home computers is provided by Computer Community Bulletin Boards (CCBBS), of which there are well over one hundred operating now in the U.S. These are free services operated by a variety of small computer users and related organizations, and are rapidly growing in popularity. Unlike the information utilities, which have phone exchanges in most large cities and therby spare their users high connect charges, CCBB users must pay long distance charges unless the usefulness of CCBBs is that no two-way communication is possible, only message posting within the system. The software package needed to establish a CCBB costs only about $65. One final, rather ominous aspect of the commercial information utilities is that it is required of applicants for user status to have a Mastercharge or Visa card account for billing purposes. In other words, person without identity in the presently existing credit subnet are denied access to these new private Net components. As the Net incorporates more data-handling subunits into itself and becomes more ubiquitous in American life, it may strike users as unfair and coercive to discover that routing one's financial transactions through the Net is a necessary prerequisite to enjoying certain limited uses and benefites of The Net. It is impossible to summarize or secribe all potential structures and applications of the net likley to impact our society in the future because of the amorphousness inherent in its conceptualization. For example, although every EDP device capable of linking to the Net must be considered a part of it, this linage may be "broad" or "Narrow": a sensitive Government EDP file system with heavy security would be only narrowly accessible from other Net components, whereas an individual's personal computer would of necessity be broadly accessible form almost all other Net components because of the wide variety of functions it performs (mail, entertainment access, retail buying and recordkeeping, phone message functions, etc.). As each new Net subunit goes online to the common Net, that subunit must determine (1) what it wants from the rest of the Net, and (2) what it is willing to make available to those who can now access it as part of the net. Thus, considerations of function and security determine what role each subunit will play in relation to The Net as a whole, and these considerations will be different for each subunit. The net must not be thought of as monolithic block of EDP devices joined together, but rater as a vast and turbulent population of dicrete subunits whose only common characteristic is a need for the efficient communication and optimal use of EDP technology provided by The Net's linkage. The Net will be far more than a group of computers exchanging data and software; widespread acceptance and utiliztion of Net linkage and effieciency concepts will probably eventually result in the routing of most current non-EDP methods of information transfer through the omnipresent microcomputers. It will become inefficient and unnecessary to have a TV set, or a newspaper, or a mailbox, or a radio in one's house when comprehensive Net access through an efficient, centralized home computer (whose sole design function is information handling) is just a keystroke away. One theme which home computer/Net enthusiasts frequently sound these days is that the Net will solve the petroleum crisis by making ti largely unnecessary for people to leave their homes. Why drive to an office when one can transact business, give a lecture, attend a class, generate documents, transfer information, access a huge variety of data bases, and receive all communications at one's home keyboard? The Net has the potential of becoming America's primary avenue of business and even social interaction in the forseeable future. One troubling question occurs as we examin the social consequence of the Net ethic of efficiency as the ultimate justification for change: what happens to individuals who, for economic or personal reasons, cannot or will not participate in the net society? Unless non-net modes of information handling are retained in all areas of Net pre-eminence, these individuals run the risk of effectibely becoming non-persons. One solution to this problem would be govermental maintenece of free public computer terminals, where those unfortunate enough to lack the cash or hardware necessary for net access could perform the necessary interactions with their electronic society. Hopefully, net Participants will keep open non-net channels of comminication to forestall the possiblity that the information revolution will create two classes of American citizens: Net-priviledged and invisible. Property utilized, The Net can be beneficial in countless ways. But even if its use becomes a new norm, legal protection is necessary to ensure that no citizen suffers injury or diadvantage as a result of failing to join The Net. This writer believes that economic considerations related to efficiency and the technology revolution now occurring cannot fail to propel us willingly down the road to a Net society, even in the face of the vague hostility most people feel toward the increasing intrusion of computers into their lives. The day may yet come when The Net is so central to American life that a person excluded from access to it by State action might successfully argue in court that his Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly have been effectively abrogated. II. AREAS OF CONTINUING LEGAL CONCERN PRIVACY Privacy will continue to be a controversial issue as computer technology increases in impact on the daily life of Americans. The magnitude of the perceived threat to individuals created by computer recordkeeping will increase as the system-to-system network of computer linkages expands. The scope of future Federal protective legislation will almost certainly extend to regulate private data collectors as well as governmental ones. Efforts have already been made in this direction. In 1974, Congressional legislation was proposed containing provisions making all private personal record systems subject to F.O.I.A.- type controls on collection, accuracy, and dissemination. This bill also set up a Federal Privacy Board to monitor and enforce its provisions, and provided criminal penalties for its violation as well as vibil remedies for persons injured by unfair information practices. The gradual development of a Net-Type structure of data processors and their associated databases will surely result in extreme public concern about its possible harmful uses. It is thus a certainty that such a system would be very heavily regulated by the congress under its commerce and "federal media" powers. In fact, it is impossible to conceive of how the public would tolerate the existence of such an intimidating system without detailed privacy controls on it. The Privacy Act of 1974 is only the first halting step toward the creation of a comprehensive code of fair information practices necessary to let Americans enjoy the benefits of advanced computer technology without fear. PROTECTION OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS Since copyright protection of proprietary computer software is inadequate to protect novel ideas and algrorithms incorporated therein, and since the patenablility of software has been effectively denied by Supreme Court ruling, further protection of substantial financial investments made in the development of software would seem to be necessary in the future. Common law and State statutory protection of such programs as trade secrets will probably be inadequate in many respects to afford the degree of protection necessary to encourage heavy corporate investment in software research and development, as the industry grows in importance to all areas of economic life. Public policy will militate that further protection be granted by explicit statutory means. The most logical way to go about this would be by act of Congress, under either of the broad copyright or commerce powers. Congress has already realized that the trend toward the use of Electronic Funds Transfers and the computerization of economic activity will present unknown problems in the future. Current EFT legislation in force has established a commission charged with the duty of evaluating the future development of this area and reporting to the congress its findings and conclusions. Present legislation concering EFT can only be considered a skeleton of what will eventually prove necessary. THE PROBLEMS OF ABUSE AND VULNERABILITY The wide linkage capabilities of the components of The Net coupled with the computerization of business records and transactions creates an enormous potential for abuse in a variety of ways. Theft of CPU time and software, manipulation of financial records, destruction of datafiles, and even sabotage of whole systems are just a few of the potential abuses that might occur. Computer people often see the compromise of a security system designed to prevenet unauthorized access as a challenging intellectual game, and try it even without criminal motive. Already, one consequence of wide use of timesharing and networking techiniques is the widespread acceptance of the ethic that any programs which may be found to be somehow accessible from remote terminals can be treated as used as if in the public domain (the "Peninsula Ethic"). Security problems are the number-one concern in the design and establishment of The Net. The Net concept is unworkable without means of controlling access and limiting possible manupulations of data contained in Net subunits. Due to its flexibility of linkage, security control in the Net will not be physical in nature but will be provided by confidential coding and password techniques. Although generally speaking, what one person can do, another can undo, new "trapdoor" cryptological techniques have been discovered that make it possible to create an access control code system that cannot be cracked even by computers in a reasonable amount of time. This offers hope for the feasibility of a fairly abuse-free Net. Still, no security system can be said to be totally proof against compromise. Prevention of abuse is the job of computer sercurity specialist, but the law can play a large role in discouraging abuse by imposing sanctions for it. The currecnt Federal criminal law provisions applicable to computer abuse are a hodge-podge of miscellaneous statutes generally oriented around traditional fraud and misappropriation-of- property concepts that often present difficulties in application to computer-related wrongful activity. In the future it will become necessary to greatly refine our collective societal concepts of what contitutes impermissible conduct in relation to computers and their manifold applications. The deterrent effect on persons tempted to misuse the vast capbilities of computers would be greatly enhanced by the passage of legislation targeted specifically at computer abuse rather than framed in terms of traditional concepts of wrongdoing like fraud, theft, and misappropriation. Prosecutors, when confronted by an instance of computer abuse that clearly has damaged someone in a criminal manner, should not be forced to search among and "stretch" the applications of the miscellaneous batch of statutory provisions enacted when computers were a laboratory curiosty. Response to this problem has been made be Senator Abraham Ribibcoff of Connecticut, the Charman of the Senat Governmenatal Affairs Committee. In 1977, he sponsered legislation entitled The Federal Computer Systems Protection Act of 1977,which has never been enacted. This proposed law provides comprehensive santions against (1) introduction of fraudulent records into computer systems, (2) improper alteration of destruction of computer records, (3) unauthorized use of computer facilities, and (4) use of computers to steal property of data. The bill was drafted to apply to all computer systems used in interstate commerce, and not just those in use by the Federal Governmet. Additionally, the measure eases the jurisdictional and evidentiary burdens on prosecutors that make prosecution of computer crime so difficult. Specific thought was given by the framers of this legislation to the problems of unauthorized access and to the need to assure the integrity of the growing EFTS network. This bill is an outstinding attempt to deal now with the computer abuse problems that will become increasingly more threatening in the future, and it is an excellent example of how the response of the legal system should aggressively track the pace of technological development. CONCLUSION The next thirty years will be a time of swift and revolutionary change in American life related to computer usage on an uprecedented scale. At this point in time, the emerging outline of the social and legal changes this will inevitably cause are visible. The first halting steps have been taken by congress to enact legislation dealing with the problems caused by these changes, but the pace of progress is so rapid that there is substantial time lag between the time a problem comes into existence and the time our legal system turns its attention to the necessary solution. This lag time must be reduced by increased awareness of the capabilities and coming applications of computers on the respective parts of legislators, attorneys, and judges; it is the duty of the legal system to serve the needs of its society, and our society cannot wait until tomorrow to be given the legal safeguards and processes it needs today in the area of data processing. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ADVERTISING ON THE NET By Fawn Fitter (fsquared@netcom.com) This article is copyright 1994 by Fawn Fitter A cybersavvy business owner could be forgiven for thinking of the Internet as an advertising opportunity like no other. After all, the Net, with its 6,000 discussion groups known as "newsgroups," connects -- at last count -- 2 million sites in 60 countries. That's 10 million potential customers already self-sorted into 6,000 demographic slots, a thought to make marketing executives weep with joy. But while many commercial online services like CompuServe and Prodigy have built electronic shopping malls where virtual vendors peddle their wares, advertising is a touchy subject on the Internet itself. Originally, commercial messages were banned on the government-funded portions of the Net. Today, while they aren't forbidden, they are still highly controversial. A practice known as "spamming" -- posting a message to all 6,000 newsgroups at once -- has infuriated longtime citizens of cyberspace. Not long ago, two Phoenix attorneys "spammed" the Net with a long post touting their expertise in U.S. immigration law. Mere weeks later, another advertiser followed suit, shilling thigh-reducing cream in every group from alt.pagan to comp.sys.mac.advocacy. Both were kicked off their respective Net access providers for inappropriate use. "The problem is not content, it's the appropriateness of the forum where the ad appears," explained Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on public interest and civil liberties issues as they relate to computer communications. "The value of the newsgroups lies in their being organized by subject matter. 'Spamming' is like reshelving all the books in a library -- the information is there, but it's impossible to find what's valuable." Although indiscriminate salesmanship is frowned upon, there are still ways to advertise online without crossing the bounds of netiquette. The simplest way is to keep ads short and tasteful, indicate in their subject headers that they are advertisements so people can skip them if they so choose, and post them only to appropriate groups. In other words, a legal advice newsgroup is the wrong place for an ad for couples workshops. Signature files, which provide a tagged-on signature (or .sig, pronounced "dot-sig") at the end of a user's post, are another inoffensive and discreet way to promote a product or service provider. Many programmers and consultants identify themselves in their .sigs, which are automatically appended to their every post in any group they frequent. The now-infamous "green card lawyers" have been dumped unceremoniously from several online systems and have been refused accounts by others. Despite the furor against them, they've defended their actions in postings and newspaper articles by claiming that mass-distributed advertising on the Net is convenient and therefore inevitable. They've even started their own Internet marketing company, Cybersell, to bring that day closer. One of the lawyers argued on CNN that "spamming" was like "picking up the newspaper and getting advertisements along with the sports pages." But Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and a well-known defender of the Net, thinks it's more like "going to your mailbox and finding two letters, a magazine, and 65,000 pieces of junk mail, postage-due." The Net works because people agree to give each other the minimal amount of cooperation necessary to keep information flowing in a free but organized way, Rheingold explained. "IIf people don't abide by an agreement to limit discussion to the appropriate group, the groups lose their function, and there will be no value in the system any more," he said. But, he added, "the day will pass when sleazebags who try to take advantage of the openness of the system will be shut out." Rheingold is executive editor of HotWired, an online magazine being launched this fall by the publisher of WIRED. HotWired will bring in revenue by soliciting "sponsors" rather than "advertisers," as the Public Broadcasting System does, he said. In the future, advertisers may also spread the word by subsidizing people's net usage, Godwin said. "They may say, 'look at our ads in e-mail and we'll give you an hour's free online time'," he speculated. "No one's actually done it yet, but companies are thinking about it." %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% AVAILIBILITY OF THIS MAGAZINE A Message from the editorial staff OVERSEAS FIDONET GATEWAYS NO LONGER SUPPORTED BY THIS MAGAZINE! We will do everything in our power to get this publication to you in a timely manner. And we certainly appreciate the hundreds of subscription requests that we have received. There is one slight issue regarding the distribution of this magazine that we must address. This new policy will take effect immediately. It is no longer feasable for us to add people to the mailing list who have OVERSEAS FIDONET GATEWAYS. The reason for this is that some administrators who operate these gateways are getting irate with the amount of traffic coming through their systems from the USA in the form of large electronic magazines. AS LONG AS YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS DOES NOT HAVE A "%" IN IT, YOU'RE OK! The second reason is that our mailing system may not handle the address line properly due to the fact that Fido addresses overseas are usually very long. We are currently working on a way to set up an automatic mailing list for those who do fit into this catagory so that you can have the magazine mailed back to you when you know that the traffic in your area will be low. We will update you as the situation develops. Thank you for your understanding. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CYBERPASSE MANIFESTO By Don Webb (0004200716@mcimail.com) This has no Copyright, and may be reposted at will. We have long awaited the moment to release our manifesto, so that we would not appear guilty of the sin of vanguardism. Since Bart Nagle has noted that book publishers now note books bearing the suffix "Cyber" in the title passe, we realize that it is time to strike while the iron is cooling. The Cyberpasse movement began on October 8, 1966 when the BBC aired *The Tenth Planet* -- part of their popular %Dr. Who% series. The Cybermen have replaced their natural bodies with plastic and thus have become disease free and nearly immortal. They represent the ideal of the Cyberpasse movement. Cyberpasse will overtake cyberpunk, because we created it as a front. The movement has great wealth and power, and is an open conspiracy. Any number may play, provided that they obey the Cyberlaws. We are the rulers of the world, the makers of the zeitgeist, and the oatmeal of reality. These are the Cyberlaws, the key to Cyberpasse: 1. You must own a computer. It must be a boring computer with lots of capacity for upward and downward networking. You favorite phrase is "The computer is a tool." You must pretend incompetence with your computer, so that people explain things for you, and do things for you. Thus you learn to tap the skills of lots of experts. 2. You must belong to a frequent flyer plan. You'll travel a lot to see other Cybermen. You must own a futon to put up traveling Cybermen. You must make your visitors look as boring as possible, so as not to tip off your neighbors that you are a planetary ruler. 3. You must appear dull. This is essential. Everyone must view you as a harmless amateur. You must practice perfect manners, so you don't get thrown out of places for being too dull. 4. You must foster a myth of a long-term illness. Thusly you can call in sick for work, whenever a learning opportunity presents itself. Knowledge is power. 5. You must You must place yourself in the middle of various webs of information. Always share information, but always filter to extend the Cybervalues of logic, and of slow and steady change. You must deny that you are trying to improve the world, as always appear to be a shambling slow witted machine that just happens to pass along the correct information at one time. Remember humans are hostile to change agents. 6. You must make sure that they're a lot of cutting edge movements around to draw fire. As a long term way to secure this, be sure and strongly support civil liberties issues. 7. You must always deny the importance of new information technologies. This is not to stifle, but to make people think they are harmless. Always argue that there is nothing new going on. This will make people, less likely to fear/resist certain changes. 8. You must act every day to bring about the change into a cybersociety. Each act must may be downplayed, but it must be constant and quiet. Accumulate power to make your actions a little stronger. Afterall the boss can OK the T1 phone lines for the business, and she can allow personal Email accounts. Always have a boring explanation, economy, efficiency, whatever. But be sure you never allow a step backward. 9. You must deny there is an organized Cyberpasse movement. Even to yourself. 10. You must seek allies in all areas of society. 11. You must never act in anger, but only with logic and harmonious feelings. Our battles are not the day to day battles of the news. Our battle is that of the vegetable empire vast and slow. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% AA BBS - CONVICTED ! MEMPHIS, Tenn -- A federal jury convicted a California couple Thursday of transmitting obscene pictures over a computer bulletin board. The case has raised questions, in this age of international computer networks, about a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that defines obscenity by local community standards. ``This case would never have gone to trial in California,'' defense lawyer Richard Williams said. Prosecutor Dan Newsom, an assistant U.S. attorney, said the trial was the first he knows of for computer bulletin board operators charged under federal law with transmitting pornography featuring sex by adults. Robert and Carleen Thomas, both 38, of Milpitas, Calif., were convicted of transmitting sexually obscene pictures through interstate phone lines via their members-only Amateur Action Bulletin Board System. The Thomases were convicted on 11 criminal counts, each carrying maximum sentences of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Thomas was acquitted on a charge of accepting child pornography mailed to him by an undercover postal inspector. The Thomases refused to comment after the verdict. They remain free on $20,000 bond to await sentencing, for which no date was set. Williams said his clients will appeal, arguing the jury was wrongly instructed on how to apply the Supreme Court's standard on obscenity. The trial raised questions of how to apply First Amendment free-speech protections to ``cyberspace,'' the emerging community of millions of Americans who use computers and modems to share pictures and words on every imaginable topic. Williams argued unsuccessfully before trial that prosecutors sought out a city for the trial where a conservative jury might be found. During the weeklong trial jurors were shown photographs carried over the Thomases' bulletin board featuring scenes of bestiality and other sexual fetishes. Williams argued this was voluntary, private communication between adults who knew what they were getting by paying $55 for six months or $99 for a year. Their conviction also covers videotapes they sent to Memphis via United Parcel Service. The videotapes were advertised over the bulletin board. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% OPEN PLATFORM UNDER THREAT BY MONOPOLY INTERESTS!!! Anonymously Submitted First off, I apologise for sending this anonymously, but my company is sufficiently close to the center of this dispute that the usual personal disclaimers would not be enough. We have to do business with these people and public criticism of them could lead to disconnexion and the collapse of our business. Recently the CIX Association (a Non-Profit 501(c)6 Trade Association) has chosen to make a change to its policies that will make entry into the internet extremely hard if not impossible for small companies or individuals or cooperatives. Some background: first there was the Arpanet, and it was for government organizations and academics only. Slowly, private companies attached to the Arpanet, but only when they had legitimate reasons to communicate with the government organizations they connected to. Soon, enough private organizations were connected that they saw advantages in talking to each other, and they put in direct links to each other because they couldn't transit the NSF backbone. Sometimes the connexion agreements for these links were informally ad-hoc, other times the people connecting would come to a 'settlement agreement'. This meant that at the end of each year, they would work out the net flow of traffic over their link, and the side that got the most benefit from it was contracted to pay the other side a cash settlement. There were the bad old days, and getting full connectivity to non-academic sites by making lots of individual connexions was expensive. Then along came the group of big companies who formed the CIX. They wrote a contract that said that members would route each others packets without settlement. People still made their own arrangements about who they physically connected to, and their share of the cost of the wire etc, but once connected, they could send packets to _anyone_ who was a mutually-connected CIX member. And just to make sure there weren't pockets of unconnected members, every member had also to make sure they had a working path to the CIX backbone. That way A could talk to B even if it meant going all the way to the CIX backbone in Falls Church VA. In fact, most of the big vendors have direct connexions to each other, and the CIX backbone itself is seldom transited. It's not an expensive or long wire--just a couple of routers in Falls Church. Now, the arrangement that CIX has decided to enforce as of November is that they will route for their clients, and people directly connected to their clients, but not people a step further downstream than that. Which means that the clients of CIX clients who re-sell services will have to become members of the CIX themselves, at a cost of $10000. This isn't small change for the majority of sites that it affects, and it is particularly insidious in that it halts completely the process that was beginning to take place where bandwidth would be split into smaller and smaller units by smaller and smaller enterprises, until you got down to the level of a guy in his garage running 6 modems on his PC allowing access to local people over his SLIP or PPP line to his own access provider down his v.fast modem, that would be a small company running a 56K line up to their access provider, who might be a medium company running a T1 to a big provider. With this change in policy, "Mom & Pop" internet connexions are no longer possible. The game is for big players only. And I mean BIG--calculations show that to reach break-even, a new vendor needs something like 400 customers from the start. The CIX board justifies their change in policy by claiming it will actually increase mutual interconnectivity, by adding more people to the communal interoperability agreement. However, the facts are that the downstream sites who are affected by this would have routed all packets going through them anyway. It is, quite simply, an attempt by the big players to lock the small players out of the market, to consolidate their oligarchy. And the fact that they'll be collecting many many more $10,000 annual fees has not gone unnoticed either. This is one area where government interference _to ensure interoperability only and to stop restrictive practises_ would be welcome by we smaller players. All that the CIX contributes is a piece of paper saying that people will cooperate--the cost of their hardware is small beer. People who are in the CIX have an incentive to stay in because it keeps the competition out. People outside the CIX _could_ make their own mutual care because we can afford the fees (almost), and it keeps out up and coming competitors. I don't feel this way, which is why I'm posting, and why I have to post anonymously. But then, I don't own the company. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% HOUSE RULES VOTE RESULTS; HR 3937 A DEAD END THIS YEAR By Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir@panix.com) Organization: Voters Telecomm Watch (vtw@vtw.org) INTRODUCTION Voters Telecomm Watch keeps scorecards on legislators' positions on legislation that affects telecommunications and civil liberties. If you have updates to a legislator's positions, from either: -public testimony, -reply letters from the legislator, -stated positions from their office, please contact vtw@vtw.org so they can be added to this list. General questions: vtw@vtw.org Mailing List Requests: vtw-list-request@vtw.org Press Contact: stc@vtw.org Gopher URL: gopher://gopher.panix.com:70/11/vtw WWW URL: We're working on it. :-) RESULT OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE VOTE ON HR 3937 Based on information gathered by volunteers, we've been able to piece together some of the positions of the House Rules Committee as to how they voted for/against opening up HR 3937 to amendments on the House floor. [This is now somewhat moot, as is explained in the next section.] Extensive kudos go to Joe Thomas gaj@portman.com (Gordon Jacobson) who both did extensive work to help find this information. Here are the results we were able to obtain: [The committee voted 5-4 to open the bill] HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE MEMBERS Dist ST Name, Address, and Party Phone ==== == ======================== ============== 9 MA Moakley, John Joseph (D) 1-202-225-8273 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 3 SC Derrick, Butler (D) 1-202-225-5301 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 24 CA Beilenson, Anthony (D) 1-202-225-5911 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 24 TX Frost, Martin (D) 1-202-225-3605 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 10 MI Bonior, David E. (D) 1-202-225-2106 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 3 OH Hall, Tony P. (D) 1-202-225-6465 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 5 MO Wheat, Alan (D) 1-202-225-4535 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 6 TN Gordon, Bart (R) 1-202-225-4231 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 28 NY Slaughter, Louise M. (D) 1-202-225-3615 Voted "open" 22 NY Solomon, Gerald B. (R) 1-202-225-5614 Voted "open" 1 TN Quillen, James H. (R) 1-202-225-6356 Told a constituent he would vote for "open". 28 CA Dreier, David (R) 1-202-225-2305 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 14 FL Goss, Porter J. (R) 1-202-225-2536 UNSPECIFIED POSITION It is probably not worth the trouble to ask the remaining legislators how they voted unless you happen to chat with their staff often. STATUS OF THE BILL (updated 7/21/94) If you read the appropriate newsgroups (or any major newspaper) you've seen the news about the Gore/Cantwell compromise. Since everyone has reprinted it already, we'll not reprint it again, though we'll happily send you a copy should you have missed it. The upshot of this is that Rep. Maria Cantwell will not be offering her amendment and therefore HR 3937 is a dead end this year for liberalizing cryptography exports. Since VTW is an organization dedicated to working on legislation, and there is no longer a piece of relevant legislation, we will be concentrating on other projects. The "cantwell" section of our archive will be reworked, and the records of legislators that voted will be kept there for future reference. [NOTE: these voting records will also be rolled into our 1994 Voters Guide] Here is the final schedule/chronology of the bill Jul 21, 94 Rep. Cantwell and Vice Pres. Al Gore compromise on seven principles, retreating on the Clipper chip; Rep. Cantwell chooses not continue to press the legislation or the amendment (see relevant articles in today's NY Times and Washington Post) Jul 20, 94 HR3937 comes to House floor; a "good" amendement will be offered Jul 11, 94 House Rules Committee marks HR3937 "open"; allowing amendments Jun 30, 94 [*** vote postponed, perhaps till the week of 7/11/94] House Rules Comm. decides whether to allow amendments on the bill when it reaches the House floor Jun 14, 94 Gutted by the House Select Committee on Intelligence May 20, 94 Referred to the House Select Committee on Intelligence May 18, 94 Passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 18 attached to HR 3937, the General Export Administration Act Dec 6, 93 Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and Nov 22, 93 Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 1994 VOTERS GUIDE Voters Telecomm Watch believes that you should be informed about your legislators' positions on key issues. We will be developing a survey to give to current legislators and their challengers that will gauge their positions on key issues involving telecommunications and civil liberties. These results will be made publicly available on the net for you to use in casting your vote in November. We'll be depending on you to help get legislative candidates to fill out and return their surveys. Please watch this space for the announcement of survey availability in the coming weeks. If you wish to participate in the development of the survey, feel free to join the working list by mailing a note to that effect to vtw@vtw.org %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS EXPANDED THROUGHOUT MINNESOTA By Dennis Fazio (dfazio@mr.net) Contact: Dennis Fazio, Executive Director Minnesota Regional Network 511 11th Avenue South, Box 212 Minneapolis, MN 55415 (612) 342-2890 dfazio@MR.Net Minneapolis, MN, July 18, 1994 -- The Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet), a nonprofit corporation that provides connections to the burgeoning world-wide Internet in Minnesota, has implemented a major statewide expansion by installing several additional access sites around the state using a new data transport technology called Frame Relay. This new technology is available as a regular service by US West s !nterPRISE Networking Services division. It allows MRNet to expand its central hub sites, which are locations where many customer connections are gathered together, to the four corners of Minnesota, providing a more economical means of connection for colleges, schools, libraries, government agencies and businesses in any city or town in the state. The Internet, a high-speed network of networks, is a current major component of what is coming to be called the "Information Superhighway". It is composed of a multitude of computer and information networks including international links, national backbones, regional and state distribution networks and campus or corporate networks. These are all connected in a seamless whole creating an information infrastructure containing several million individual computers used by ten to twenty million people around the globe. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Regional Network or MRNet, is the primary statewide distribution network for Internet access. "The deployment of these new network switching technologies has the potential to revolutionize the creation of wide-area networks," says Dennis Fazio, Executive Director of MRNet. "It has reduced the cost of providing high-speed connections to customer sites, not only within the US West Frame Relay service areas, but even in the outlying towns beyond the suburbs and in between the major state metropolitan areas." Previously, point-to-point phone circuits had to be connected and expensive multi-port hub equipment installed in hub sites. Frame Relay service allows MRNet to install smaller less complex and less expensive equipment since the aggregation of traffic from multiple customer connections is done within US West s switching equipment. It is necessary to only have a single connection from the hub site into the Frame Relay service. Additionally, the end-site connection links are less expensive, since they now only need a termination point at the customer's site. The other end of the link is brought directly into the Frame Relay system and doesn t incur any termination charges, which are the most expensive portion of a digital circuit. This means that it is now more economical to cover the entire state by extending links to the nearest Frame Relay service area than it is to distribute many more hubs to cover the large number of communities necessary to provide full state-wide access. Finally, Frame Relay service is a much higher quality of service, since all links are monitored and maintained 24 hours a day by US West s advanced engineers and technicians. With this new expansion, MRNet can provide lower cost direct Frame Relay access in Duluth, Hibbing, Thief River Falls, Bemidji, Brainerd, Moorhead, Willmar, St. Cloud, Marshall, Owatonna and Rochester in addition to the Twin Cities metro area. Those towns outside these areas can be served by extending a link to one of these 12 distributed sites. MRNet has established partnerships with the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and Duluth and the Minnesota State University System to share long distance trunk lines, which bring the outstate traffic to the Twin Cities for forwarding to the Internet, and to obtain space to house equipment. Beyond this initial new deployment, plans are being put in place to expand local calling access for dialup subscribers in other parts of the state. This will provide lower-cost links to the Internet for individuals and small organizations who cannot yet justify the effort and expense of a high-speed digital link. Presently, local calling access is available in the Twin Cities, Rochester and St. Cloud. Toll-free access is already available to Minnesota educators in all parts of the state through the InforMNs demonstration project, a joint effort implemented by MRNet, TIES and the Minnesota Department of Education. This effort is partially subsidized by the state to provide equal access to all state educators. There are now about 1,000 subscribers on the InforMNs system. The ability to provide this state-wide network expansion was helped in part with funds from the National Science Foundation via a grant to CICNet, a regional network comprised primarily of the Big-10 Universities in which several state networks including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana participated. This was a for a project titled "Rural Datafication" whose purpose was to extend Internet access to areas not easily served in the major metropolitan areas. The Minnesota Regional Network is an independent member-based nonprofit corporation that has been providing access to the Internet since 1988. Its mission is to enhance the academic, research and economic environment of the state through the use of computer and information networks. It is the leading provider of Internet access in Minnesota and now has more than 100 colleges, universities, libraries, school districts, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and businesses listed as connected members. Additionally, over 250 individuals and small organizations or businesses have access via various forms of dialup connections. MRNet works cooperatively with the state s higher education community, the state government and several other service organizations of all types to expand and increase the level and quality of world-wide network access for the improvement of education, general research and commercial business operations. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% INTERNET ACCESS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ALL MINNESOTA TEACHERS By Dennis Fazio (dfazio@mr.net) MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MN, July 24, 1994 -- Nearly 1,000 Minnesota teachers are cruising the information superhighway this summer via InforMNs - Internet for Minnesota Schools, a service offered to K-12 educators throughout the state. Using the direct full-function access to the Internet that InforMNs provides, teachers browse through on-line databases and library catalogs around the world; they have access to U.S. government information from a number of agencies including NASA, the Department of Education, and the National Institutes of Health; and they share lesson plans, ideas for more effective teaching, and thematic classroom activities with other teachers and students. For instance, the Wolf Studies Project of the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota allows students and teachers around the world to hear, see, and track radio-collared wolves in the Superior National Forest via the Internet. They can read reports, see pictures and video images, and hear sound files about the wolves' movement and activity that are posted on the Wolf Studies Project Gopher server. In another project, students and teachers in Minnesota have been exchanging electronic mail with their counterparts in Kamchatka, Russia for the past year. This August the Kamchatka Ministry of Education is sponsoring the Second Annual Educational Travel Seminar to the Russian Far East with the help of the Minnesota Global Education Resource Center. These kinds of resources and activities, and the communication that happens between people, are what make the Internet what is -- a worldwide network of computers, resources, and the people that use them. InforMNs is available to teachers, administrators, and staff from any school district, public or private, in Minnesota. Subscriptions run for a 12-month period and can start at any time. The fee is $20 per month, paid annually, and provides up to 30 hours of toll free access per month. Software, user guides, and a toll free helpline for on-going support are included. In addition, the InforMNs service provides one day of training for one person in each subscribing school building to prepare that person to give on-site assistance to his or her colleagues. To subscribe or for more information, call InforMNs at (612) 638-8786 or send email to howe@informns.k12.mn.us. InforMNs is funded in part by an appropriation from the state legislature to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to provide Internet access to all Minnesota schools. The appropriation subsidizes the cost of providing the service so that toll free dial-up access is ensured from any school in the state, regardless of its location. Of the 1,000 subscribers, approximately half connect to the network via local calls in St. Cloud, Rochester, and the Twin Cities, and half use the InforMNs 800 toll free access number. In addition to toll free access, InforMNs subscribers receive all the software they need to connect their Macintosh or IBM-compatible personal computers directly to the Internet. After making a dial-up connection with an ordinary phone line and a modem, the InforMNs user's computer becomes one of the estimated two million computers now on the Internet worldwide. This method of connection differs from the more familiar link to a bulletin board system or on-line service like Compuserve, where the user's access to the Internet is relayed through a central computer operated by the bulletin board owner or on-line service provider. The InforMNs direct connection allows teachers to use all the features and resources available on the Internet including news groups, discussion lists, electronic mail, Gopher-organized resources, the World Wide Web, and file transfer. Information flows from a distant Internet repository directly to the user's own Macintosh or PC. The InforMNs service is provided by a partnership of the Minnesota Department of Education, the Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet), and Technology Information and Educational Services (TIES). In addition, the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State University System (MSUS) share use of their telecommunications infrastructure with the project, and InforMNs was launched with the support of the Minnesota Educational Media Organization (MEMO) and the Project for Automated Libraries (PALS) at Mankato State University. For more information, contact: Marla Davenport, davenpo@informns.k12.mn.us, (612)638-8793 Margo Berg, mberg@mr.net, (612)724-2705 InforMNs - Internet for Minnesota Schools 2665 Long Lake Road, Suite 250 Roseville, MN 55113-2535 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% LEGION OF DOOM T-SHIRTS By Chris Goggans After a complete sellout at HoHo Con 1993 in Austin, TX this past December, the official Legion of Doom t-shirts are available once again. Join the net luminaries world-wide in owning one of these amazing shirts. Impress members of the opposite sex, increase your IQ, annoy system administrators, get raided by the government and lose your wardrobe! Can a t-shirt really do all this? Of course it can! "THE HACKER WAR -- LOD vs MOD" This t-shirt chronicles the infamous "Hacker War" between rival groups The Legion of Doom and The Masters of Destruction. The front of the shirt displays a flight map of the various battle-sites hit by MOD and tracked by LOD. The back of the shirt has a detailed timeline of the key dates in the conflict, and a rather ironic quote from an MOD member. (For a limited time, the original is back!) "LEGION OF DOOM -- INTERNET WORLD TOUR" The front of this classic shirt displays "Legion of Doom Internet World Tour" as well as a sword and telephone intersecting the planet earth, skull-and-crossbones style. The back displays the words "Hacking for Jesus" as well as a substantial list of "tour-stops" (internet sites) and a quote from Aleister Crowley. All t-shirts are sized XL, and are 100% cotton. Cost is $15.00 (US) per shirt. International orders add $5.00 per shirt for postage. Send checks or money orders. Please, no credit cards, even if it's really your card. Name: __________________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________________ City, State, Zip: __________________________________________ I want ____ "Hacker War" shirt(s) I want ____ "Internet World Tour" shirt(s) Enclosed is $______ for the total cost. Mail to: Chris Goggans 603 W. 13th #1A-278 Austin, TX 78701 These T-shirts are sold only as a novelty items, and are in no way attempting to glorify computer crime. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WHITE HOUSE RETREATS ON CLIPPER By Stanton McCandlish (mech@eff.org) Yesterday, the Clinton Administration announced that it is taking several large, quick steps back in its efforts to push EES or Clipper encryption technology. Vice-President Gore stated in a letter to Rep. Maria Cantwell, whose encryption export legislation is today being debated on the House floor, that EES is being limited to voice communications only. The EES (Escrowed Encryption Standard using the Skipjack algorithm, and including the Clipper and Capstone microchips) is a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) designed by the National Security Agency, and approved, despite a stunningly high percentage anti-EES public comments on the proposal) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since the very day of the announcement of Clipper in 1993, public outcry against the key "escrow" system has been strong, unwavering and growing rapidly. What's changed? The most immediate alteration in the White House's previously hardline path is an expressed willingness to abandon the EES for computer applications (the Capstone chip and Tessera card), and push for its deployment only in telephone technology (Clipper). The most immediate effect this will have is a reduction in the threat to the encryption software market that Skipjack/EES plans posed. Additionally, Gore's letter indicates that deployment for even the telephone application of Clipper has been put off for months of studies, perhaps partly in response to a draft bill from Sens. Patrick Leahy and Ernest Hollings that would block appropriation for EES development until many detailed conditions had been met. And according to observers such as Brock Meeks (Cyberwire Dispatch) and Mark Voorhees (Voorhees Reports/Information Law Alert), even Clipper is headed for a fall, due to a variety of factors including failure in attempts to get other countries to adopt the scheme, at least one state bill banning use of EES for medical records, loss of NSA credibility after a flaw in the "escrowed" key system was discovered by Dr. Matt Blaze of Bell Labs, a patent infringement lawsuit threat (dealt with by buying off the claimant), condemnation of the scheme by a former Canadian Defense Minister, world wide opposition to Clipper and the presumptions behind it, skeptical back-to-back House and Senate hearings on the details of the Administration's plan, and pointed questions from lawmakers regarding monopolism and accountability. One of the most signigicant concessions in the letter is that upcoming encryption standards will be "voluntary," unclassified, and exportable, according to Gore, who also says there will be no moves to tighten export controls. Though Gore hints at private, rather than governmental, key "escrow," the Administration does still maintain that key "escrow" is an important part of its future cryptography policy. EFF would like to extend thanks to all who've participated in our online campaigns to sink Clipper. This retreat on the part of the Executive Branch is due not just to discussions with Congresspersons, or letters from industry leaders, but in large measure to the overwhelming response from users of computer-mediated communication - members of virtual communities who stand a lot to gain or lose by the outcome of the interrelated cryptography debates. Your participation and activism has played a key role, if not the key role, in the outcome thus far, and will be vitally important to the end game! Below is the public letter sent from VP Gore to Rep. Cantwell. ****** July 20, 1994 The Honorable Maria Cantwell House of Representatives Washington, D.C., 20515 Dear Representative Cantwell: I write to express my sincere appreciation for your efforts to move the national debate forward on the issue of information security and export controls. I share your strong conviction for the need to develop a comprehensive policy regarding encryption, incorporating an export policy that does not disadvantage American software companies in world markets while preserving our law enforcement and national security goals. As you know, the Administration disagrees with you on the extent to which existing controls are harming U.S. industry in the short run and the extent to which their immediate relaxation would affect national security. For that reason we have supported a five-month Presidential study. In conducting this study, I want to assure you that the Administration will use the best available resources of the federal government. This will include the active participation of the National Economic Council and the Department of Commerce. In addition, consistent with the Senate-passed language, the first study will be completed within 150 days of passage of the Export Administration Act reauthorization bill, with the second study to be completed within one year after the completion of the first. I want to personally assure you that we will reassess our existing export controls based on the results of these studies. Moreover, all programs with encryption that can be exported today will continue to be exportable. On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this year to assure that over time American companies are able to include information security features in their programs in order to maintain their admirable international competitiveness. We can achieve this by entering into an new phase of cooperation among government, industry representatives and privacy advocates with a goal of trying to develop a key escrow encryption system that will provide strong encryption, be acceptable to computer users worldwide, and address our national needs as well. Key escrow encryption offers a very effective way to accomplish our national goals, That is why the Administration adopted key escrow encryption in the "Clipper Chip" to provide very secure encryption for telephone communications while preserving the ability for law enforcement and national security. But the Clipper Chip is an approved federal standard for telephone communications and not for computer networks and video networks. For that reason, we are working with industry to investigate other technologies for those applications. The Administration understands the concerns that industry has regarding the Clipper Chip. We welcome the opportunity to work with industry to design a more versatile, less expensive system. Such a key escrow system would be implementable in software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof, would not rely upon a classified algorithm, would be voluntary, and would be exportable. While there are many severe challenges to developing such a system, we are committed to a diligent effort with industry and academia to create such a system. We welcome your offer to assist us in furthering this effort. We also want to assure users of key escrow encryption products that they will not be subject to unauthorized electronic surveillance. As we have done with the Clipper Chip, future key escrow systems must contain safeguards to provide for key disclosure only under legal authorization and should have audit procedures to ensure the integrity of the system. Escrow holders should be strictly liable for releasing keys without legal authorization. We also recognize that a new key escrow encryption system must permit the use of private-sector key escrow agents as one option. It is also possible that as key escrow encryption technology spreads, companies may established layered escrowing services for their own products. Having a number of escrow agents would give individuals and businesses more choices and flexibility in meeting their needs for secure communications. I assure you the President and I are acutely aware of the need to balance economic an privacy needs with law enforcement and national security. This is not an easy task, but I think that our approach offers the best opportunity to strike an appropriate balance. I am looking forward to working with you and others who share our interest in developing a comprehensive national policy on encryption. I am convinced that our cooperative endeavors will open new creative solutions to this critical problem. Sincerely, Al Gore AG/gcs %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WHY COPS HATE CIVILIANS Author Unknown Posted By Don Montgomery (donrm@sr.hp.com) Why Cops Hate You or If You Have to Ask, Get Out of the Way Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the window, and smash your face into the front fender? Have you ever had a noisy little spat with someone, and a cop cruising by calls, Everything all right over there? Did you maybe sense that he really hoped everything was not all right, that he wanted one of you to answer, No, officer, this idiot's bothering me? That all he was looking for was an excuse to launch himself from the cruiser and play a drum solo on your skull with his nightstick? Did you ever call the cops to report a crime, maybe someone stole something from your car or broke into your home, and the cops act as if it were your fault? That they were sorry the crook didn't rip you off for more? That instead of looking for the culprit, they'd rather give you a shot in the chops for bothering them with your bullshit in the first place? If you've picked up on this attitude from your local sworn protectors, it's not just paranoia. They actually don't like you. In fact cops don't just dislike you, they hate your fucking guts! Incidentally, for a number of very good reasons. First of all, civilians are so goddamn stupid. They leave things lying around, just begging thieves to steal them. They park cars in high crime areas and leave portable TVs, cameras, wallets, purses, coats, luggage, grocery bags and briefcases in plain view on the seat. Oh, sure maybe they'll remember to close all the windows and lock the doors, but do you know how easy it is to bust a car window? How fast can it be done? A ten-year-old can do it in less than six seconds! And a poor cop has another Larceny from Auto on his hands. Another crime to write a report on, waste another half hour on. Another crime to make him look bad. Meanwhile the asshole who left the family heirlooms on the back seat in the first place is raising hell about where were the cops when the car was being looted. He's planning to write irate letters to the mayor and the police commissioner complaining about what a lousy police force you have here; they can't even keep my car from getting ripped off! What, were they drinking coffee somewhere? And the cops are saying to themselves. Lemme tell ya, fuckhead, we were seven blocks away, taking another stupid report from another jerkoff civilian about his fucking car being broken into because he left his shit on the back seat too! These civilians can't figure out that maybe they shouldn't leave stuff lying around un-attended where anybody can just pick it up and boogie. Maybe they should put the shit in the trunk, where no one but Superman is gonna see it. Maybe they should do that before they get to wherever they're going just in case some riffraff is hanging around watching them while the car is being secured. Another thing that drives cops wild is the, "surely this doesn't apply to me" syndrome, which never fails to reveal itself at scenes of sniper or barricade incidents. There's always some asshole walking down the street (or jogging or driving) who thinks the police cars blocking off the area, the ropes marked Police Line: Do Not Cross, the cops crouched behind cars pointing revolvers and carbines and shotguns and bazookas at some building has nothing whatsoever to do with him, so he weasels around the barricades or slithers under the restraining ropes and blithely continues on his way, right into the field of fire. The result is that some cop risks his ass (or her's, don't forget, the cops include women now) to go after the cretin and drag him, usually under protest, back to safety. All of these cops, including the one risking his ass, devoutly hope that the sniper will get off one miraculous shot and drill the idiot right between the horns, which would have two immediate effects. The quiche-for-brains civilian would be dispatched to his just reward and every cop on the scene would instantaneously be licensed to kill the scumbag doing the sniping. Whereupon the cops would destroy the whole fucking building, sniper and all, in about 30 seconds, which is what they wanted to do in the first place, except the brass wouldn't let them because the motherfucker hadn't killed anybody yet. An allied phenomenon is the My isn't this amusing behavior exhibited, usually by Yuppies or other members of higher society, at some emergency scenes. For example, a group of trendy types will be strolling down the street when a squad car with lights flashing and siren on screeches up to a building. They'll watch the cops yank out their guns and run up to the door, flatten themselves against the wall, and peep into the place cautiously. Now, if you think about it, something serious could be happening here. Cops usually don't pull their revolvers to go get a cup of coffee. any five-year-old ghetto kid can tell you these cops are definitely ready to cap somebody. But do our society friends perceive this? Do they stay out of the cops way? Of course not! They think it's vastly amusing. And, of course, since they're not involved in the funny little game the cops are playing, they think nothing can happen to them! While the ghetto kid is hiding behind a car for the shooting to start, Muffy and Chip and Biffy are continuing their stroll, right up to the officers, tittering among themselves about how silly the cops look, all scrunched up against the wall, trying to look in through the door without stopping bullets with their foreheads. What the cops are hoping at that point is for a homicidal holdup man to come busting out the door with a sawed-off shotgun. They're hoping he has it loaded with elephant shot, and that he immediately identifies our socialites as serious threats to his personal well-being. They're hoping he has just enough ammunition to blast the shit out of the gigglers, but not enough to return fire when the cops open up on him. Of course, if that actually happens, the poor cops will be in a world of trouble for not protecting the innocent bystanders. The brass wouldn't even want to hear that the shitheads probably didn't have enough sense to come in out of an acid rain. Somebody ought to tell all the quiche eaters out there to stand back when they encounter someone with a gun in his hand, whether he happens to be wearing a badge or a ski mask. Civilians also aggravate cops in a number of other ways. One of their favorite games is Officer, can you tell me? A cop knows he's been selected to play this game whenever someone approaches and utters those magic words. Now, it's okay if they continue with How to get to so and so street? or Where such and such a place is located? After all, cops are supposed to be familiar with the area they work. But it eats the lining of their stomachs when some jerkoff asks, Where can I catch the number fifty-four bus? Or, Where can I find a telephone? Cops look forward to their last day before retirement, when they can safely give these douche bags the answer they've been choking back for 20 years: No, maggot, I can't tell you where the fifty-four bus runs! What does this look like an MTA uniform? Go ask a fucking bus driver! And, No, dog breath, I don't know where you can find a phone, except wherever your fucking eyes see one! Take your head out of your ass and look for one. And cops just love to find a guy parking his car in a crosswalk next to a fire hydrant at a bus stop posted with a sigh saying, Don't Even Think About Stopping, Standing, or Parking Here. Cars Towed Away, Forfeited to the Government, and Sold at Public Auction. And the jerk asks, Officer, may I park here a minute? What are you nuts? Of course ya can park here! As long as ya like! Leave it there all day! Ya don't see anything that says ya can't, do ya? You're welcome. See ya later. The cop then drives around the corner and calls a tow truck to remove the vehicle. Later, in traffic court, the idiot will be whining to the judge But, Your Honor, I asked an officer if I could park there, and he said I could! No, I don't know which officer, but I did ask! Honest! No, wait, Judge, I can't afford five hundred dollars! This isn't fair! I'm not creating a disturbance! I've got rights! Get your hands off me! Where are you taking me? What do you mean , ten days for contempt of court? What did I do? Wait, wait,... If you should happen to see a cop humming contentedly and smiling to himself for no apparent reason, he may have won this game. Wildly unrealistic civilian expectations also contribute to a cop's distaste for the general citizenry. An officer can be running his ass off all day or night handling call after call and writing volumes of police reports, but everybody thinks their problem is the only thing he has to work on. The policeman may have a few worries, too. Ever think of that? the sergeant is on him because he's been late for roll call a few days; he's been battling like a badger with his wife, who's just about to leave him because he never takes her anywhere and doesn't spend enough time at home and the kids need braces and the station wagon needs a major engine overhaul and where are we gonna get the money to pay for all that and we haven't had a real vacation for years and all you do is hang around with other cops and you've been drinking too much lately and I could've married that wonderful guy I was going with when I met you and lived happily ever after and why don't you get a regular job with regular days off and no night shifts and decent pay and a chance for advancement and no one throwing bottles or taking wild potshots at you? Meanwhile, that sweet young thing he met on a call last month says her period is late. Internal Affairs is investigating him on fucking up a disorderly last week; the captain is pissed at him for tagging a councilman's car; a burglar's tearing up the businesses on his post; and he's already handled two robberies, three family fights, a stolen auto, and a half dozen juvenile complaints today. Now here he is, on another juvenile call, trying to explain to some bimbo, who's the president of her neighborhood improvement association, that the security of Western Civilization is not really threatened all that much by the kids who hang around on the corner by her house. Yes, officer, I know they're not there now. They always leave when you come by. But after you're gone, they come right back, don't you see, and continue their disturbance. It's intolerable! I'm so upset, I can barely sleep at night. By now, the cops eyes have glazed over. What we need here, officer, she continues vehemently, Is greater attention to this matter by the police. You and some other officers should hide and stake out that corner so those renegades wouldn't see you. Then you could catch them in the act! Yes, ma'am, we'd love to stake out that corner a few hours every night, since we don't have anything else to do, but I've got a better idea, he'd like to say. Here's a box of fragmentation grenades the Department obtained from the Army just for situations like this. The next time you see those little fuckers out there, just lob a couple of these into the crowd and get down! Or he's got and artsy-craftsy type who's moved into a tough, rundown neighborhood and decides it's gotta be cleaned up. You know, Urban Pioneers. The cops see a lot of them now. Most of them are intelligent(?), talented, hard-working, well-paid folks with masochistic chromosomes interspersed among their otherwise normal genes. They have nice jobs, live in nice homes, and they somehow decide that it would be a marvelous idea to move into a slum and get yoked, roped, looted, and pillaged on a regular basis. What else do you expect? Peace and harmony? It's like tossing a juicy little pig into a piranha tank. Moving day: Here come the pioneers, dropping all their groovy gear from their Volvo station wagon, setting it on the sidewalk so everyone can get a good look and the food processor, the microwave, the stereo system, the color TV, the tape deck, etc. At the same time, the local burglars are appraising the goods unofficially and calculating how much they can get for the TV down at the corner bar, how much the stereo will bring at Joe's garage, who might want the tape deck at the barber shop, and maybe mama can use the microwave herself. When the pioneers get ripped off, the cops figure they asked for it, and they got it. You want to poke your arm through the bars of a tiger cage? Fuck you! Don't be amazed when he eats it for lunch! The cops regard it as naive for trendies to move into crime zones and conduct their lives the same way they did up on Society Hill. In fact, they can't fathom why anyone who didn't have to would want to move there at all, regardless of how they want to live or how prepared they might be to adapt their behavior. That's probably because the cops are intimately acquainted with all those petty but disturbing crimes and nasty little incidents that never make the newspapers but profoundly affect the quality of life in a particular area. Something else that causes premature aging among cops is the, I don't know who to call, so I'll call the police ploy. Why, the cops ask themselves, do they get so many calls for things like water leaks, sick cases, bats in houses, and the like, things that have nothing whatsoever to do with law enforcement or the maintenance of public order? They figure it's because civilians are getting more and more accustomed to having the government solve problems for them, and the local P.D. is the only governmental agency that'll even answer the phone a 3:00 am, let alone send anybody. So, when the call comes over the radio to go to such-and-such address for a water leak, the assigned officer rolls his eyes, acknowledges, responds, surveys the problem, and tells the complainant, Yep, that's a water leak all right! No doubt about it. Ya probably ought to call a plumber! And it might not be a bad idea to turn off your main valve for a while. Or, Yep, your Aunt Minnie's sick all right! Ya probably ought to get'er to a doctor tomorrow if she doesn't get any better by then.S Or, Yep, that's a bat all right! Mebbe ya ought to open the windows so it can fly outside again! In the meantime our hero is wasting his time on this bullshit call, maybe someone is having a real problem out there, like getting raped, robbed or killed. Street cops would like to work the phones just once and catch a few of these idiotic complaints: A bat in your house? No need to send an officer when I can tell ya what to do right here on the phone, pal! Close all your doors and windows right away. Pour gasoline all over your furniture. That's it. Now, set it on fire and get everybody outside! Yeah, you'll get the little motherfucker for sure! That's okay, call us anytime. Probably the most serious beef cops have with civilians relates to those situations in which the use of force becomes necessary to deal with some desperado who may have just robbed a bank, iced somebody, beat up his wife and kids, or wounded some cop, and now he's caught but won't give up. He's not going to be taken alive, he's going to take some cops with him, and you better say your prayers, you pig bastards! Naturally, if the chump's armed with any kind of weapon, the cops are going to shoot the shit out of him so bad they'll be able to open up his body later as a lead mine. If he's not armed, and the cops aren't creative enough to find a weapon for him, they'll beat him into raw meat and hope he spends the next few weeks in traction. They view it as a learning experience for the asshole. You fuck up somebody, you find out what it feels like to get fucked up. Don't like it? Don't do it again! It's called Street Justice, and civilians approve of it as much as cops do, even if they don't admit it. Remember how the audience cheered when Charles Bronson fucked up the bad guys in Death Wish? How they scream with joy every time Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry makes his day by blowing up some rotten scumball with his .44 Magnum? What they applaud is the administration of street justice. The old eye-for-an-eye concept, one of mankind's most primal instincts. All of us have it, especially cops. It severely offends and deeply hurts cops when they administer a dose of good old-fashioned street justice only to have some bleeding- heart do-gooder happens upon the scene at the last minute, when the hairbag is at last getting his just deserts, and start hollering about police brutality. Cops regard that as very serious business indeed. Brutality can get them fired. Get fired from one police department, and it's tough to get a job as a cop anywhere else ever again. Brutality exposes the cop to civil liability as well. Also, his superior officers, the police department as an agency, and maybe even the local government itself. You've seen those segments on 60 Minutes, right? Some cop screws up, gets sued along with everybody else in the department who had anything to do with him, and the city or county ends up paying the plaintiff umpty-ump million dollars, raising taxes and hocking its fire engines in the process. What do think happens to the cop who fucked up in the first place? He's done for. On many occasions when the cops are accused of excessive force, the apparent brutality is a misperception by some observer who isn't acquainted with the realities of police work. For example, do you have any idea how hard it is to handcuff someone who really doesn't want to be handcuffed? Without hurting them? It's almost impossible for one cop to accomplish by himself unless he beats the hell out of the prisoner first, which would also be viewed a brutality! It frequently takes three or four cops to handcuff one son of a bitch who's determined to battle them. In situations like that, it's not unusual for the cops to hear someone in the crowd of onlookers comment on how they're ganging up on the poor bastard and beating him unnecessarily. This makes them feel like telling the complainer, Hey, motherfucker, you think you can handcuff this shithead by yourself without killing him first? C'mere! You're deputized! Now, go ahead and do it! The problem is that, in addition to being unfamiliar with how difficult it is in the real world to physically control someone without beating his ass, last-minute observers usually don't have the opportunity to see for themselves, like they do in the movies and on TV, what a fucking monster the suspect might be. If they did, they'd probably holler at the cops to beat his ass some more. They might actually even want to help! The best thing for civilians to do if they think they see the cops rough up somebody too much is to keep their mouths shut at the scene, and to make inquiries of the police brass later on. There might be ample justification for the degree of force used that just wasn't apparent at the time of the arrest. If not, the brass will be very interested in the complaint. If one of their cops went over the deep end, they'll want to know about it. Most of this comes down to common sense, a characteristic the cops feel most civilians lack. One of the elements of common sense is thinking before opening one's yap or taking other action. Just a brief moment of thought will often prevent the utterance of something stupid or the commission of some idiotic act that will, among other things, generate nothing but contempt from the average street cop. Think, and it might mean getting a warning instead of a traffic ticket. Or getting sent on your way rather than being arrested. Or continuing on to your original destination instead of to the hospital. It might mean getting some real assistance instead of the runaround. The very least it'll get you is a measure of respect cops seldom show civilians. Act like you've got a little sense, and even if the cops don't love you, at least they won't hate you. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% PUBLIC SPACE ON INFO HIGHWAY: CALL CONGRESS ASAP! By The Center For Media Education (cme@access1.digex.net) People For the American Way is 300,000-member nonpartisan constitutional liberties public interest organization. 2000 M Street NW, Suite 400, Washington DC 20036. ACTION ALERT -- From People For the American Way (DC) SENATE TO ACT ON INFO-HIGHWAY BILL -- ACTIVISTS NEEDED TO ENSURE THAT PUBLIC ACCESS PROVISIONS ARE INCLUDED. The Issue - The "information superhighway" has the potential to give rise to a new era of democratic self governance by providing the means through which civic discourse can flourish. Turning this into a reality means that those committed to promoting this new marketplace of ideas must be given the tools to use new telecommunications networks. - A diverse coalition of public interest organizations is supporting legislation introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the Communications Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, to encourage this new marketplace of ideas by ensuring that the public has access to the information superhighway is protected (S. 2195). - Without reserved capacity, the ability of local governmental institutions, libraries, schools, public broadcasters and other nonprofit organizations to take advantage of new telecommunications technologies will be determined by private gatekeepers who have few economic incentives to permit those institutions without the means to pay commercial rates access to their networks. - Without Senator Inouye's legislation, the information superhighway will carry little more than video games, movies on demand and home shopping. - There has been a great deal of rhetoric about the telecommunications networks of the future being of unlimited capacity. This is certainly the goal. However, it is necessary to ensure that between now and the time that such capacity is unlimited, that there is meaningful access available for those entities proving important educational, cultural, informational, civic and charitable services to the public. - Senator Inouye's legislation must be included in the debate with the larger telecommunications legislation (S. 1822) introduced by Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. LEGISLATIVE TIMING Senator Hollings (D-SC), Chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Danforth (R-MO), Ranking Minority Member of the Commerce Committee are busily working on amendments to S. 1822, a major telecommunications reform bill. Next week, the full Committee is expected to consider these amendments. Therefore, a public access provision must be included now. ACTION REQUEST - Please call Senator Hollings at the Commerce Committee and Senator Danforth (Ranking Minority Member) immediately!! Ask them to support S. 2195 and guarantee that requirements are put in place for public access at low or no-cost rates are included in the Chairman's Mark. Phone calls on this issue by the public will have a profound effect on the outcome of this legislation--so please call! Senator Hollings 202-224-5115 Senator Danforth 202-224-6154 - Please also call Senator Inouye and encourage him to continue to push for passage of S. 2195 and to seek it's combination with S. 1822. Inouye (D-HI) 202-224-3934 - Please try to find the time to make a few calls and ask the other Senators on the Commerce Committee to support S. 2195 and ensure public access provisions are included in S. 1822. Other Senators on the Commerce Committee are: Exon (D-NB) 202-224-4224 Ford (D-KY) 202-224-4343 Rockefeller (D-WV) 202-224-6472 Kerry (D-MA) 202-224-2742 Breaux (D-LA) 202-224-4623 Bryan (D-NV) 202-224-6244 Robb (D-VA) 202-224-4024 Dorgan (D-ND) 202-224-2551 Matthews (D-TN) 202-224-4944 Packwood (R-OR) 202-224-5244 Pressler (R-SD) 202-224-5842 Stevens (R-AK) 202-224-3004 McCain (R-AZ) 202-224-2235 Burns (R-MT) 202-224-2644 Gorton (R-WA) 202-224-3441 Lott (R-Miss.) 202-224-6253 Hutchison (R-TX) 202-224-5922 - Calling these Senators *works*!! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% SOFTWARE KEY ESCROW - A NEW THREAT? By Timothy May (tcmay@netcom.com) At the June Cypherpunks meeting, Whit Diffie (co-inventor of public-key crypto, as you should all know) filled us in on a workshop on "key escrow" held in Karlsruhe, Germany. All the usual suspects were there, and I gather that part of the purpose was to bring the Europeans "into the tent" on key escrow, to deal with their objections to Clipper, and so on. Diffie described in some detail a software-based scheme developed by NIST (and Dorothy Denning, if I recall correctly) that, as I recall the details, avoids public key methods. Perhaps this was also described here on the list. I know Bill Stewart has recently discussed it in sci.crypt or talk.politics.crypto. What has me worried about it now is evidence from more than one source that this program is actually much further along than being merely a "trial balloon" being floated. In fact, it now looks as though the hardware-based key escrow systems will be deemphasized, as Al Gore's letter seems to say, in favor of software-based schemes. While I've been skeptical that software-based schemes are secure (the bits are hardly secure against tampering), the addition of negotiation with another site (a lot like online clearing of digital cash, it seems) can make it nearly impossible for tampering to occur. That is, I'm now more persuaded that the NIST/NSA(?) proposal would allow software-based key escrow. Here's the rub: * Suppose the various software vendors are "incentivized" to include this in upcoming releases. For example, in 30 million copies of Microsoft's "Chicago" (Windows 4.0) that will hit the streets early in '95 (betas are being used today by many). * This solves the "infrastructure" or "fax effect" problem--key escrow gets widely deployed, in a way that Clipper was apparently never going to be (did any of you know _anybody_ planning to buy a "Surety" phone?). (Granted, this is key escrow for computers, not for voice communication. More on this later.) * Once widely deployed, with not talk of the government holding the keys, then eventual "mandatory key escrow" can be proposed, passed into law by Executive Order (Emergency Order, Presidential Directive, whatever your paranoia supports), an act of Congress, etc. I don't claim this scenario is a sure thing, or that it can't be stopped. But if in fact a "software key escrow" system is in the works, and is more than just a "trial balloon," then we as Cypherpunks should begin to "do our thing," the thing we've actually done pretty well in the past. To wit: examine the implications, talk to the lobbyist groups about what it means, plan sabotage efforts (sabotage of public opinion, not planting bugs in the Chicago code!), and develop ways to make sure that a voluntary key escrow system could never be made mandatory. (Why would _anyone_ ever use a voluntary key escrow system? Lots of reasons, which is why I don't condemn key escrow automatically. Partners in a business may want access under the right circumstances to files. Corporations may want corporate encryption accessible under emergencyy circumstances (e.g., Accounting and Legal are escrow agencies). And individuals who forget their keys--which happens all the time--may want the emergency option of asking their friends who agreed to hold the key escrow stuff to help them. Lots of other reasons. And lots of chances for abuse, independent of mandatory key escrow.) But there are extreme dangers in having the infrastructure of a software key escrow system widely deployed. I can't see how a widely-deployed (e.g., all copies of Chicago, etc.) "voluntary key escrow" system would remain voluntary for long. It looks to me that the strategy is to get the infrastructure widely deployed with no mention of a government role, and then to bring the government in as a key holder. (The shift of focus away from telephone communications to data is an important one. I can see several reasons. First, this allows wide deployment by integration into next-gen operating systems. A few vendors can be "incentivized." Second, voice systems are increasingly turning into data systems, with all the stuff surrounding ISDN, cable/telco alliances, "set-top" boxes, voice encryption on home computers, etc. Third, an infrastructure for software key escrow would make the backward extension to voice key escrow more palatable. And finally, there is a likely awareness that the "terrorist rings" and "pedophile circles" they claim to want to infiltrate are more than likely already using computers and encryption, not simple voice lines. This will be even more so in the future. So, the shift of focus to data is understandable. That it's a much easier system in which to get 40-60 million installed systems _almost overnight_ is also not lost on NIST and NSA, I'm sure.) In other words, a different approach than with Clipper, where essentially nobody was planning to buy the "Surety" phones (except maybe a few thousand) but the government role was very prominent--and attackable, as we all saw. Here, the scenario might be to get 40-60 million units out there (Chicago, next iteration of Macintosh OS, maybe Sun, etc.) and then, after some series of events (bombings, pedophile rings, etc.) roll in the mandatory aspects. Enforcement is always an issue, and I agree that many bypasses exist. But as Diffie notes, the "War on Drugs" enlistment of corporations was done with various threats that corporations would lose assets/contracts unless they cooperated. I could see the same thing for a software-based key escrow. A potentially dangerous situation. I was the one who posted the Dorothy Denning "trial balloon" stuff to sci.crypt, in October of 1992, six months before it all became real with the announcement of Clipper. This generated more than a thousand postings, not all of them useful (:-}), and helped prepare us for the shock of the Clipper proposal the following April. I see this software-based key escrow the same way. Time to start thinking about how to stop it now, before it's gone much further. Putting Microsoft's feet to the fire, getting them to commit to *not* including any form of software-based key escrow in any future releases of Windows (Chicago or Daytona) could be a concrete step in the right direction. Ditto for Apple. I'm sure we can think of other steps to help derail widespread deployment of this infrastructure. --Tim May %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% HOODS HIT THE HIGHWAY; COMPUTER USERS WARNED OF SCAMS By Charlotte-Anne Lucas Austin Bureau of The Dallas Morning News REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS AUSTIN -- Computer users, beware: Driving on the information highway, it's possible to get fleeced. Scam artists have hit the cyberspace, offering high-tech ponzi schemes, sending illegal electronic chain letters and hyping virtually worthless stock, according to state securities regulators across the nation. In Texas, regulators say an Austin retiree lost $10,000 in a fake mutual fund deal sold by a man who promoted his "money managing" skills through an on-line computer service. "The danger here is that cyberspace, which could be a beneficial way for consumers to do a better job of informing themselves, will instead be discredited as a haven for fast-buck artists," said Denise Voigt Crawford, the Texas Securities Commissioner. In New Jersey and Missouri on Thursday, securities regulators filed cease and desist orders against promoters who used computer links to tout allegedly fraudulent deals. Texas regulators say it is likely that they will seek an indictment in the case of the nonexistent mutual fund. But with nearly 4 million computer users nationwide linked into commercial computer services and 20 million people on the internet, a world-wide computer network, "it is almost too big to police effectively," said Jared Silverman, chief of the New Jersey Bureau of Securities and chairman of a multi-state team that investigates computer fraud. In response, regulators in all 50 states issued a bulletin to investigators, describing the potential frauds and listing steps small investors can take to protect themselves. "We're trying to tell people to be careful," said Ms. Crawford, "there is a new fraud on the horizon." Although regulators are concerned about the problem, Ms. Crawford acknowledges enforcement will be a challenge. Because electronic conversations, or E-mail, are considered private, "we don't know what difficulties we are going to have getting subpoenas enforced or what kind of cooperation we will get from (commercial bulletin board systems)." [sic] Officials say promoters tend to advertise offers or stock tips on the financial bulletin board sections of on-line computer services such as CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy, or in the specialized discussion forums in the Internet. Regulators said that of 75,000 messages posted on one computer service bulletin board during a recent two-week period, 5,600 were devoted to investment topics. While some commercial computer bulletin board services try to control the publicly posted investment tips, most do not try to control most communications on the service. What begins as innocent E-mail can end with an unwary investor "getting cleaned out by high-tech schemers," said Ms. Crawford. In Texas, the case under investigation began when an Austin retiree posted a public note in a commercial bulletin board system looking for conversations about the stock market, according to John A. Peralta, deputy director of enforcement at the Texas Securities Board. "He was contacted. It turned into a private E-mail conversation, a telephone conversation and then exchanges through the mail," said Mr. Peralta. But the person who promoted himself on the computer as a skilled money manager turned out to be unlicensed -- and the mutual fund the retiree invested in turned out to be nonexistent. Mr. Peralta said at least one other person, not from Texas, invested $90,000 in the same deal, "We are aware of two, but we don't really know," he said. "There may be dozens of victims." Securities regulators began taking interest in on-line scams last fall, after Mr. Silverman -- a computer junkie -- raised the issue at a national meeting of regulators. "I heard stories about things going on on computer bulletin board services, and I have been monitoring these things for close to a year," he said. In fact, the New Jersey case came from Mr. Siverman's off-hours cruising of an on-line service. "I sit at a keyboard two hours a day -- to the chagrin of my wife -- scanning these things," he said. What he found was a promoter pushing an E-mail chain letter. The promoter, identified only as from San Antonio, claimed that in exchange for $5, investors could earn $60,000 in three to six weeks. Regulators said participants were told to send $1 to each of five people on a list in the computer bulletin board, add their own name to the list and post it on 10 different computer bulletin board sites. That, regulators said in a statement, "amounted to a high-tech variation on the old pyramid scam, which is barred by federal and state laws." In Missouri, regulators Thursday moved against an unlicensed stockbroker for touting his services and "making duubious [sic] claims for stocks not registered for sale in the state." Among other things, regulators said, the promoter falsely claimed that Donald Trump was a "major, behind-the-scenes player in a tiny cruise line" whose stock he pitched. Ms. Crawford said that while computer users may be sophisticated in some ways, they still are attractive targets because they tend to have discretionary income and frequently are looking for ways to invest their money. Some of the commercial services also allow users to use various aliases, making it all the more difficult for investigators to figure out who they are really communication with. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% THE INTERNET AND THE ANTI-NET By Nick Arnett (nicka@mccmedia.com) Two public internetworks are better than one Networking policy debates tend to paint a future monolithic internetwork that will follow consistent policies despite a number of independent operators. Although that's how the interstate highway and telephone systems -- favorite metaphors for network futurists -- operate, historical comparisons suggest that it is probably not what the future holds. Two distinct, interconnected publicly accessible digital internetworks are likely to emerge, which is surely better than just one. One of the future internetworks will grow out of today's Internet, whose roots are in the technology and scientific/academic communities, funded by government, institutions and increasingly, corporate and individual users. Although the Internet will support commercial services, they rarely will depend on advertising. The other great internetwork will grow out of the technology and mass communications industries, especially cable and broadcast industries. The "Anti-net" will rely on advertising revenue to recoup the cost of the infrastructure necessary to create cheap, high-speed bandwidth. (I call this second network the Anti-net not to be a demagogue but to make a historical allusion, explained shortly.) All three communities -- technology, science and academia, and mass media -- will participate in many joint projects. The most successful new ventures often will arise from three-way collaborations; skills of each are essential to create and deliver network-based information products and services. The Internet community reacts with profound anger and resentment at Anti-net behavior on the Internet -- in net-speak, "spamming" advertising messages into hundreds of discussions. The outrage is based in part on the idealistic traditions of academic and scientific freedom of thought and debate, but there's more behind it. Anger and resentment fueled by the world's love-hate relationship with the mass media, particularly television, surface in many other contexts. Nearly everyone in the modern world and large segments of the third world watches television; nearly all think broadcast television is stupid, offering a homogenized, sensationalized point of view that serves advertising interests above all others. In competition with television's hypnotic powers, or perhaps simply due to the high cost of distribution, other mass media have followed suit. Idealistic defenders of the Internet's purity believe they are waging a humanitarian or even a holy war that pits a democracy of ideas against the mass media's empty promises and indulgences. Television and its kin offer the false idols and communities of soaps, sitcoms and sports. The mass media tantalize with suggestions of healing, wealth, popularity and advertising's other blessings and temptations. Internet idealists even question the U.S. administration's unclear proposal of an "information superhighway," suspecting that the masses will be taxed only to further expand the Anti-net's stranglehold on information. The same kind of stage was set 500 years ago. The convergence of inexpensive printing and inexpensive paper began to loosen the Roman Catholic church's centuries-old stranglehold on cultural information. The church's rise to power centuries earlier had followed the arrival of the Dark Ages, caused in Marshall McLuhan's analysis by the loss of papyrus supplies. The church quickly became the best customer of many of the early printer-publishers, but not to disseminate information, only to make money. The earliest dated publication of Johann Gutenberg himself was a "papal indulgence" to raise money for the church's defense against the Turk invasions. Indulgences were papers sold to the common folk to pay for the Pope's remission of their sins, a sort of insurance against the wrath of God. Indulgences had been sold by the church since the 11th century, but shortly after the arrival of printing, the pope expanded the market considerably by extending indulgences to include souls in purgatory. Indulgence revenue was shared with government officials, becoming almost a form of state and holy taxation. The money financed the church's holy wars, as well as church officials' luxurious lifestyles. Jumping on the new technology for corrupt purposes, the church had sown the seeds of its own undoing. The church had the same sort of love-hate relationship with common people and government that the mass media have today. The spark for the 15th-century "flame war," in net-speak, was a monk, Martin Luther. Outraged by the depth of the church's corruption, Luther wrote a series of short theses in 1517, questioning indulgences, papal infallibility, Latin-only Bibles and services, and other authoritarian, self-serving church practices. Although Luther had previously written similar theses, something different happened to the 95 that he nailed to the church door in Wittenburg. Printers -- the "hackers" of their day, poking about the geographic network of church doors and libraries -- found Luther's theses. As an academic, Luther enjoyed a certain amount of freedom to raise potentially heretical arguments against church practice. Nailing his theses to the Wittenburg door was a standard way to distribute information to his academic community for discussion, much like putting a research paper on an Internet server today. In Luther's time, intellectual property laws hadn't even been contemplated, so his papers were fair game for publication (as today's Internet postings often seem to be, to the dismay of many). Luther's ideas quickly became the talk of Europe. Heresy sells, especially when the questioned authority is corrupt. But the speed of printing technology caught many by surprise. Even Luther, defending himself before the pope, was at a loss to explain how so many had been influenced so fast. Luther's initial goal was to reform the church. But his ideas were rejected and he was excommunicated by his order, the pope and the emperor, convincing Luther that the Antichrist was in charge in Rome. Abandoning attempts at reform, but accepting Biblical prophecy, Luther resisted the utopian goal of removing the Antichrist from the papacy. Instead, as a pacifist, he focused on teaching and preaching his views of true Christianity. Luther believed that he could make the world a better place by countering the angst and insecurity caused by the Antichrist, not that he could save it by his own powers. Luther's philosophy would serve the Internet's utopians well, especially those who believe that the Internet's economy of ideas untainted by advertising must "win" over the mass media's Anti-net ideas. The Internet's incredibly low cost of distribution almost assures that it will remain free of advertising-based commerce. Nonetheless, if lobbying by network idealists succeeds in derailing or co-opting efforts to build an advertising-based internetwork, then surely commercial interests will conspire with government officials to destroy or perhaps worse, to take over the Internet by political and economic means. Historians, instead of comparing the Internet to the U.S. interstate highway system's success, may compare it with the near-destruction of the nation's railroad and trolley infrastructure by corrupt businesses with interests in automobiles and trucking. (which, like the Internet, was originally funded for military purposes) The printing press and cheap paper did not lead to widespread literacy in Europe; that event awaited the wealth created by the Industrial Revolution and the need for educated factory workers. Printing technology's immediate and profound effect was the destruction of the self-serving, homogenized point of view of a single institution. Although today's mass media don't claim divine inspiration, they are no less homogenized and at least as self-serving. The people drown in information overload, but one point of view is barely discernable from another, ironically encouraging polarization of issues. Richard Butler, Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, draws the most disturbing analogy of all. Butler, a leader in disarmament, compares the church's actions to the nuclear weapons industry's unwillingness to come under public scrutiny. Like the church and its Bible, physicists argued that their subject was too difficult for lay people. Medieval popes sold salvation; physicists sold destruction. Neither was questioned until information began to move more freely. The political power of nuclear weapons has begun to fall in part due to the role of the Internet and fax communications in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The truly influential and successful early publishers, such as Aldus Manutius, were merchant technologists who formed collaborations with the scientific/academic community and even the church, especially those who dissented against Rome. Out of business needs for economies of scale, they brought together people with diverse points of view and created books that appealed to diverse communities. The Renaissance was propelled in part by books that allowed geniuses such as Copernicus to easily compare and contrast the many points of view of his predecessors, reaching world-changing conclusions. Today we are at a turning point. We are leaving behind a world dominated by easy, audiovisual, sensational, advertising-based media, beginning a future in which the mass media's power will be diluted by the low cost of distribution of many other points of view. Using the Internet is still something like trying to learn from the pre-Gutenberg libraries, in which manuscripts were chained to tables and there were no standards for organization and structure. But like the mendicant scholars of those days, today's "mendicant sysops," especially on the Internet, are doing much of the work of organization in exchange for free access to information. Today, the great opportunity is not to make copies of theses on the digital church doors. It is to build electronic magazines, newspapers, books, newsletters, libraries and other collections that organize and package the writings, photos, videos, sounds and other multimedia information from diverse points of view on the networks. The Internet, with one foot in technology and the other in science and academia, needs only a bit of help from the mass media in order to show the Anti-net how it's done. ------------ Nick Arnett [nicka@mccmedia.com] is president of Multimedia Computing Corporation, a strategic consulting and publishing company established in 1988. On the World-Wide Web: Recommended reading: "The printing press as an agent of change: Communications and cultural transformation in early-modern Europe," Vols. I and II. Elizabeth Eisenstein. Cambridge University Press, 1979. Copyright (c) 1994, Multimedia Computing Corp., Campbell, Calif., U.S.A. This article is shareware; it may be distributed at no charge, whole and unaltered, including this notice. If you enjoy reading it and would like to encourage free distribution of more like it, please send a contribution to Plugged In (1923 University Ave., East Palo Alto, CA 94303), an after-school educational program for children in under-served communities. Multimedia Computing Corp. Campbell, California %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% .