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Computer Undergroud Digest Vol. 09 Issue 62
Computer underground Digest Sun Aug 17, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 62
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #9.62 (Sun, Aug 17, 1997)
File 1--Jacking in from the "Slam the Spam" Port (CyberWire Disp)
File 2--Islands in the Clickstream: Sex, Religion and Cyberspace
File 3--CIVIL LIB GROUPS ASK FCC TO BLOCK FBI ELEC SURVEIL. PROPOSAL
File 4--HOPE On A Rope, report from NYC hacker convention, from Netly
File 5--The extent of spam
File 6--ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update, August 7, 1997
File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 15:33:30 -0500
From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
Subject: File 1-- Jacking in from the "Slam the Spam" Port (CyberWire Disp)
CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1997 // August 6 //
Jacking in from the "Slam the Spam" Port:
By Lewis Z. Koch
Special correspondent
CyberWire Dispatch
CHICAGO--Fuck you!!!
Do I have your attention? I know I have your attention.
Granted, "Fuck you" is an unpleasant way of getting your attention,
especially in reasonably polite society. And if this kind of in-your-face,
attention-getting device were to occur several times a day, well, it might
not be surprising then if the greeting were judged as akin to "fighting
words," words that the Supreme Court has long defined as excluded from First
Amendment protection.
Fighting words have been conceptualized by the Court as words "likely to
provoke the average person to retaliation, and thereby cause a breach of the
peace," yet every day, people are receiving a "Fuck You" invasion of their
computers, their peace breached by unwanted, undesired, distasteful E-mail a
form known universally as "spam."
Today spammers say "Fuck you" via your computer five or ten times a day.
Next month, or next year, it may be fifty times a day.
This is just a sample of a sample dredged from a single day of my E-mail:
"Forgive me for taking a moment of your time. But here is the IDEAL
Christmas gift...ten traditional Christmas carols recorded in REAL, HARD
ROCK versions." (Note: this is August and I am Jewish.)
Or this (regardless of ethnicity) "*Sexy *Erotic *Lewd and Desirable
LIVE NUDE DANCES -24 hours a day." (Lewd AND Desirable?)
Yet, for the most part, recipients are unable to retaliate in force or in
kind, in such a way as the Court might well approve. The "self-help" remedy
of reaching out to the spammers machines and turning off the outbound flow
at the source falls afoul of most states', and countries' computer crime
laws.
Joe and Jane Citizen-User find themselves hapless, captive targets of this
daily assault because spammers use their cunning to invade your personal
computer yet all the while hiding their identity. Where can we go for
redress?
Wait! What's that I hear? From out of the West-it's the thundering
hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! There, over there on the horizon, a
masked man, sitting a top on a white stallion, crying out, "Hi Ho Silver!
Awwaaayyyy"
Who is that masked man?
It's the Lone Ranger, only this time he's called "Hacker X."
The Lone Ranger, aka Hacker X, posted today, for the second time in six
months, the password file for SpamMeister Sanford Wallace's Cyberpromo
server to various Usenet newsgroups including alt.2600, alt.news and
news.misc.
Hacker X previously posted the names, addresses and yes, phone numbers of
Wallace's clients. Needless to say, Wallace was outraged. He posted a
reward and called the FBI.
Nothing much happened except that Wallace's clients received many, many
irate phone calls.
Wallace, and spammeisters are as irrepressible as they are greedy. Our "in"
boxes continue to be filled with trash, like the drunk who hurls his empty
whiskey bottle against our front porch steps, already littered with the
shards of empty whiskey bottles tossed away by passing drunks/spammiesters.
Hacker X also deserves some plaudits from the gay community as his renegade
Usenet posting includes the evidence that Wallace offers support for serious
hate mongering in housing the "godhatesfags.com" domain and lists the
password and attendant IP information for that as well.
Along with this treasure drove of mined data, Hacker X also published a
note/rant of his own:
"As I assumed, Mr. Wallace has not learned his lesson from the last time I
talked to you, so I decided to go a bit father this time, post up more
information, from more systems, and a little bit of news on what that low-
life degenerate, festering pile of goo is doing in front of his keyboard,
behind your backs, right under your noses...
"Sanford Wallace uses the same password on every machine, and the same root
password as his regular password. Guess he has no admin. What a class
operation Not exactly rocket science. His userid is wallace, with a
Password of "sTUv6x8r." Guessed the root password yet? Go knock yourself
out."
The Wallace Factor
================
After the first assault by Hacker X, Wallace reportedly offered a $15,000.00
reward - reportedly, that is, if you want to take his Spamship's word for it
that he would pay anyone $15,000.00 for anything. Wallace also said he
alerted the FBI to the hack. Now, the likelihood of an FBI task force doing
some kind of federal step-and-fetch-it routine to help Wallace seems to be
about zero, especially considering that there are some people in the Justice
Department who don't much particularly believe in spammers' rights to spam
and have the power to say "no" to the FBI. Besides, the FBI had better be
chasing and locking down every subway-bombing terrorist before they start
devoting energy to satisfying demands by wealthy, irate spammers.
"Contrary to Wallace's claim, he didn't catch me," says Hacker X, "My thanks
go out to all of you who offered up your support in advance (defense fund
and so on). It was greatly appreciated. If you want to show your support,
send the funds to the NAACP college fund - they could put it to better use."
To the hackers who trashed Wallace's Web site, Hacker X had this sage
advice, "Those of you who decided to make changes to Mr. Wallace's web page
- please, PLEASE clean up after yourselves. If you can't clean up, you
probably should just leave it, as you will be caught."
Hacker X also offered a warning note to "the folks at Netcom. Mr. Wallace
has a script that fingers @netcom.com every 10 minutes, and sifts for new
users to add to a list. Netcom is a complete waste of bandwidth and I can't
stand them and their users for the most part, but some of them are actually
cool, and deserve SOME sort of notification of what that sleezebag is doing
to them."
Spam is increasing not decreasing. Spammer self-regulation? In this
instance, it's more like self-abuse. They're not only going to do it until
they need glasses, they're likely to do it even if they were to go blind.
I am a First Amendment purist and believe that those rights even extend to
advertising. But the First Amendment also gives me the right to be left
alone. I choose to get E-mail and I receive over 250 a day from
organizations and lists I have chosen to ask for E-mail. My choice.
Spammers, on the other hand, are forcing their way into my computer, into my
mind. Spam E-mail is a physical invasion, a physical intrusion. It is their
"Fuck you" to me. No choice. No choice but to fight back, or at least
support those who are fighting for me. One group, CAUCE is fighting by
being uncompromising in their lobbying for a flat out ban on unsolicited
commercial mail.
Spamford Wallace is an Internet outlaw who has violated the basic open
tenets upon which the Net was built. If the citizens of Netville and the Net
marshals can't stop the outlaw spammers - then it's time call for the Lone
Ranger.
Hi ho Silver, Aaaaaaawaaaay (with spam).
---------------------
Lewis Z. Koch <lzkoch@wwa.com> is an investigative reporter and former NBC
correspondent.
[Note:. If you want one just one killer-complete story about unsolicited
bulk e-mail, check out Barry D. Bowen's 6,200 word, three sidebars plus
extensive resources piece at the Sun-World site.
http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/swol-08-1997/swol-08-junkemail.html]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 14:47:20
From: Richard Thieme <rthieme@thiemeworks.com>
Subject: File 2--Islands in the Clickstream: Sex, Religion and Cyberspace
There aren't many safe bets in the world, but here's one:
things are often the opposite of what they seem.
Religion and sex, for example.
Carl Jung noted that when people talk about religion, they
are often talking about sexuality, and when people talk about
sexuality they are often talking about religious and spiritual
realities.
Religious experience involves a contextual shift in how we
understand everything and our relationship to it. We let go of
the psychic center around which we have organized ourselves and
our boundaries dissolve. We lose ourselves and find ourselves.
Our personality undergoes a hierarchical restructuring, and we
feel ourselves literally being "made new" as we organize around a
new center.
The experience has nothing to do with the way people
subsequently interpret the experience. That is the work of a
religious community which teaches an initiate to fuse its
construction of reality with an experience that in itself is
beyond words. That's the work of organized religion.
The vision of universal connectedness that often attends
religious experience is simply the truth about the world. Mystics
are just ordinary people who see that.
Sexuality too is about losing ourselves in the deepest
intimacy, our boundaries dissolving as we become present to
another so profoundly that we are transformed by the experience.
Sexual love in its depths is as redemptive as any sacrifice, as
fulfilling as any self-surrender.
Over time we bring to the persons we truly love an attitude
that is almost religious. The person to whom we come closer and
closer becomes at the same time more and more an unknowable
mystery. We discover a kind of piety and gratitude infusing our
relationship, what some traditions call grace.
Carl Jung's one-time mentor, Sigmund Freud, said that
neurosis is the price we pay for civilization. Neurosis is a kind
of mental artifact, a structure we build and live in as if it is
reality itself. The towers and pinnacles of our cultures are
built on the bedrock of our need to simulate the world.
That means we live in our heads instead of our real
experience. Our religious experience devolves into religious
symbols. We relate to the symbols as if they are the things they
stand for.
We do the same thing with sexuality and love. We exchange
words or symbols of our intimacy -- in speech, in writing, and in
pixels -- as if we are experiencing the intimacy that touched us
in the depths of our being.
It IS hard to know when we're talking about sexuality and
when we're talking about religious experience, isn't it? In both
domains, we struggle to find a language to say what it means to
lose ourselves and find ourselves. The metaphorical language of
paradox is the only way. Those metaphors are powerful, often
archetypal images, and we project the depths of our souls onto
them so quickly and unconsciously that we don't even know we're
doing it.
Sexuality is rampant in cyberspace. I don't mean the
millions of explicit images but the quest of a civilization to
connect with itself, to lose itself in a self-transcendent
experience, to "get it together" in a new way.
It is no accident that so many cybergames take the form of a
Quest, an archetypal journey in search of a Holy Grail.
It is also no accident that cyberspace sizzles with sex.
VCRs first became popular after "x-rated films" were tolerated in
mainstream movie theaters and middle Americans wanted to take
them home. Then the home-video industry was built. Now x-rated
videos account for about 25% of all rentals, and sex related
sites are the envy of entrepreneurs who want to make money in
cyberspace.
Where your heart is, your cash travels rapidly. Cash is the
dye in the arteries of our souls.
And where there's sex and money, there's religion. Not
religious experience but religion.
The virtual nights are alive with the echoing boots of the
rigidly righteous, the thought police on patrol down these mean
streets.
The CyberPolice are upset about sex. Naturally. It doesn't
take a psychiatrist to know that people condemn the things they
crave to do. Hypocrisy -- especially in the religious
establishment -- has always been the first enemy of real
spirituality.
The intertwined tendrils of sexuality and religion tell us
what the CyberPolice fear most. They seldom get upset about
hatred, cruelty, and chilling indifference. Bodies can pile up by
the thousands in the Balkans with nary a peep from the pulpit,
but let women begin to control their own bodies -- through
contraception, abortion, or divorce -- and they're damned and
denounced daily.
Better to face ourselves than rage at our heart's desire in
another.
The end result of real spirituality is the growth of the
whole human being, the integration of our fragmented selves and
the connection of our integrated self with others and with the
universe. The spiritual journey always involves confronting the
truth of ourselves and welcoming it into our heads and hearts.
Luke Skywalker tore off Darth Vadar's helmet and stared at
his own face. In nightmares, we run from fragments of ourselves,
only to be liberated when we turn and embrace them.
Cyberspace is a symbolic representation of the human soul.
Everything that shows up in cyberspace is an image of ourselves.
And for what else, after all, do we hunger and thirst but
connection with one another and with ultimate meaning and with
others throughout the universe? The search for extraterrestrial
life is nothing but consciousness in one form or manifestation
striving to connect with consciousness in another. The goal of
consciousness is to become aware of itself in all of the forms
through which it constructs representations of reality.
Between we human beings and our own souls there are
ultimately no barriers but the ones we erect to protect ourselves
from the terror of self-knowledge and self-transcendence. Between
we human beings and those we love, there are ultimately no
barriers but the ones we erect to protect ourselves from the
dizzying freefall of intimacy and self-surrender.
Those are powerful realities emerging in cyberspace.
Of course the hoofbeats of the CyberPolice come thundering
at once, driven by their fear of freedom, their horror at their
own humanity. But the triumph of the human heart is to seek
itself and to find itself and from that quest and adventure no
one can keep us.
for Shirley, on her birthday
**********************************************************************
Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by
Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions
of computer technology. Comments are welcome.
Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this
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Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer
focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and
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Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1997. All rights reserved.
ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 16:54:26 -0400
From: Jonah Seiger <cdt-editor@CDT.ORG>
Subject: File 3-- CIVIL LIB GROUPS ASK FCC TO BLOCK FBI ELEC SURVEIL. PROPOSAL
The Center for Democracy and Technology /____/ Volume 3, Number 12
----------------------------------------------------------------
CDT POLICY POST Volume 3, Number 12 August 11, 1997
(1) CIVIL LIBERTIES GROUPS ASK FCC TO BLOCK FBI ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE
PROPOSAL
The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation today filed a petition with the Federal Communications
Commission to block the FBI from using the 1994 "Digital Telephony" law to
expand government surveillance powers.
The law, officially known as the "Communications Assistance for Law
Enforcement Act" (CALEA), was intended to preserve law enforcement
wiretapping ability in the face of changes in communications technologies.
In their filing, CDT and EFF argue that the FBI has tried to use CALEA to
expand its surveillance capabilities by forcing telephone companies to
install intrusive and expensive surveillance features that threaten privacy
and violate the scope of the law.
The CDT/EFF petition follows a July 16 petition by the Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), which asked the FCC to
intervene in the implementation of CALEA. Under a provision of CALEA
designed to ensure public accountability over law enforcement surveillance
ability, CDT and EFF urged the Commission to accept the CTIA request and
expand its inquiry to cover privacy issues.
CALEA specifically prevents law enforcement from dictating the design of
telecommunications networks. Instead, CALEA created a public process for
developing technical standards through industry standards bodies. However,
since CALEA was enacted, the FBI has sought to force industry to agree to
standards that would dramatically expand law enforcement surveillance
power.
The full text of the CDT/EFF petition, links to the CTIA petition, as well
as background on the debate over CALEA implementation, are available online
at http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/
________________________________________________________________________
(2) SUMMARY OF CDT/EFF FCC PETITION
CDT and EFF allege that the FBI is using CALEA to expand its surveillance
ability well beyond what the law allows and in ways that pose serious risks
to privacy:
* ACCESS TO CONTENTS OF DIGITAL MESSAGES WITHOUT SEARCH WARRANT:
In packet switching systems (currently used on the Internet, but
likely to be the future of voice switching as well), the FBI wants
delivery of the entire packet data stream in response to a pen
register order, which is issued on the most minimal of justifications,
relying on law enforcement to "minimize" the content to get at the
addressing information. This would effectively obliterate the
distinction between call contents and 'signaling' information, and
would amount to a substantial expansion of law enforcement
surveillance authority, and falls well beyond the intent of CALEA.
CDT and EFF urge the Commission to delete this provision from the
proposed standards. This is one of the most far reaching aspects of
CALEA implementation.
* REAL-TIME LOCATION TRACKING INFORMATION ON WIRELESS PHONE USERS: CDT
and EFF asked the FCC to block FBI and industry proposals for
location information in wireless networks. The proposed standard
would effectively turn the cellular network into a nationwide, real
time location tracking system. CDT and EFF argue that the proposal
goes too far and violates CALEA.
* MONITORING OF ALL PARTICIPANTS IN A CONFERENCE CALL, EVEN AFTER THE
TARGET IS NO LONGER PARTICIPATING: The FBI wants to expand the
standard to include this feature. Such monitoring, CDT and EFF
argue, would violate the limits of the Constitution's Fourth
Amendment.
* ACCESS TO A BROADER RANGE OF INFORMATION UNDER SO-CALLED PEN REGISTERS
AND TRAP AND TRACE DEVICES: Law enforcement can obtain approval for
these devices, which are supposed to collect only dialed number
information, under a very low legal standard, much lower than the
showing required to intercept the content of communications. The FBI
is urging the industry to put more detailed "profiling" information on
the signaling channel, on the assumption that it would be accessible
under the lower legal standard. CDT and EFF urge the Commission to
address privacy concerns about access to transactional data.
Specifically, CDT and EFF ask the Commission to require the telephone
companies to ensure that law enforcement only gets the information it
is authorized to receive.
CDT and EFF believe that the FCC must intervene to ensure that privacy is
protected as CALEA is implemented.
The full text of the filing is available online at
http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/
________________________________________________________________________
(3) CALEA BACKGROUND AND THE INDUSTRY STANDARDS SETTING PROCESS
The digital telephony law, officially known as the Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), was adopted in 1994 and
requires telephone companies to ensure that their systems can accommodate
law enforcement wiretaps. The law also includes a privacy provision,
requiring law enforcement and industry to implement the surveillance
requirements in a manner that "protect[s] the privacy and security of
communications ... not authorized to be intercepted."
CALEA defers in the first instance to industry standards-setting bodies to
develop technical standards for implementing the law's general surveillance
assistance requirements. Industry bodies have developed a draft standard,
to which the FBI vociferously objected on the grounds that it did not give
law enforcement enough surveillance powers. The FBI's objections have
prevented the adoption of a consensus standard.
The CDT/EFF filing relies on Section 107(b) of CALEA, which provides:
"If industry associations or standards-setting organizations
fail to issue technical requirements or standards or if a
Government agency or any other person believes that such
requirements or standards are deficient, the agency or person
may petition the Commission to establish, by rule, technical
requirements or standards that ... (2) protect the privacy
and security of communications not authorized to be
intercepted ... "
The Commission has yet to decide whether it will address CALEA issues. The
Commission may solicit further comments on the CTIA, CDT, and EFF
pleadings, issue a Notice of Inquiry, or issue a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking. CALEA is scheduled to take full effect on October 25, 1998
with our without a standard being adopted.
_____________________________________________________________________________
(4) SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
Be sure you are up to date on the latest public policy issues affecting
civil liberties online and how they will affect you! Subscribe to the CDT
Policy Post news distribution list. CDT Policy Posts, the regular news
publication of the Center For Democracy and Technology, are received by
more than 13,000 Internet users, industry leaders, policy makers and
activists, and have become the leading source for information about
critical free speech and privacy issues affecting the Internet and other
interactive communications media.
--------
To subscribe to CDT's Policy Post list, send mail to
policy-posts-request@cdt.org
with a subject:
subscribe policy-posts
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 11:00:08 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: File 4--HOPE On A Rope, report from NYC hacker convention, from Netly
Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
*********
http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1282,00.html
The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
August 11, 1997
HOPE On A Rope
by Noah Robischon (noah@pathfinder.com)
Nothing makes hackers happier than breaking into
a computer that another hacker set up, especially when
an appreciative audience is watching. Small surprise,
then, that there were plenty of grins at last
weekend's Beyond HOPE hacker convention in New York
City.
The first break-in attempt came at about 4 a.m.
on Friday when a huge, tattoo-encrusted Englishman
named Cyberjunkie ran a utility that probed the
network of HOPE's Dutch sister conference, Hacking In
Progress. The plan: to expose any weaknesses, then
peel away the security measures of the target computer
like the layers of an onion. The program quickly found
several obvious security holes. "So I had to do
something," Cyberjunkie says. "It's a bit like waving
a red flag at a bull, isn't it?" Like the encierro at
Pamplona, Cyberjunkie sent a stampede of null
information into one of the server's memory buffers
until it choked and overloaded. Quietly attached at
the end was a simple script that granted him the
access he wanted. (In hacker argot, this is known as
an IMAP exploit.)
[...]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 12:04:16 +0100
From: Anthony Moore <anthony.moore@usa.net>
Subject: File 5--The extent of spam
With regards to the recent article about the Samsung hoax, I would
like to voice my opinions...
This mail is the latest in a long line of spam mails to hit my mailbox.
I get on average 10 mails per day, of which only 1 or 2 are not spam.
Why is it, that companies feel they have a god given right to fill our
mailboxes with crap? It is illegal in many places to "spam" fax
machines so why should they be allowed to "spam" the internet with
unwanted advertisements.
I have been compiling a list of all those who have spammed my box
within the last 4 months and I have no less than 200 names on it. I am
sure many others are in the situation. I am lucky in that I can
killfile on my postserver, but many others are unable to do this either
because they don't understand the concept of killfiles, or because their
mail packages don't allow killfiling.
Unfortunately killfiling doesn't always work. I have set it up to send
a rather abusive message to all those who I have indicated I don't want
to receive mail from. As soon as they realise that their mails are
bouncing back, they change there email addresses and you still get it.
This is more of a problem in the UK than the US and Canada due to the
cost of phone calls (Which is not exactly helped by those idiots who
insist on sending word documents and the like attached to emails).
What the internet needs is an opt-in system rather than an opt-out
system. The sooner it comes into force, the sooner we get clutter free
mail boxes.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 22:14:13 GMT
From: "ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update Owner"@newmedium.com
Subject: File 6--ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update, August 7, 1997
ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update Special
Thursday, August 7, 1997
* ACLU's Issues Open Letter on Internet Ratings
* Is Cyberspace Burning?
Internet Ratings May Torch Free Speech on the Net, ACLU Warns
* White Paper Executive Summary: Fahrenheit 451.2 -- Is Cyberspace Burning?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Fellow Member of the Internet Community:
I am writing to express the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) very
deep concern about the tenor and the outcome of the recent White House
"Summit" on Internet content rating and filtering. We fear that the
stunning and sweeping victory for free speech on the Internet won in the
Supreme Court case Reno v. ACLU is being put at risk by a headlong and
uncritical rush to embrace content rating and blocking systems,
that may banish provocative and controversial speech to the farthest corners
of cyberspace.
Attached is the ACLU White Paper, Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?
-- How Rating and Blocking Proposals May Torch Free Speech on the Internet.
The White Paper examines the free speech implications of the various
proposals for Internet blocking and rating. Individually, each of the
proposals poses some threat to open and robust speech on the Internet --
some pose a considerably greater threat than others.
But linked together, the various schemes for rating and blocking could
create a regime of private "voluntary" censorship that is every bit as
threatening to what the Supreme Court called "the most participatory form of
mass speech yet developed."
This time the threat may not come from the blazing inferno that would have
been set off if the CDA had gone into effect, but from the dense smoke
created by "voluntary" blocking technology, that hides all but the most
innocuous speech from plain view.
We fear that the widespread adoption of the rating and blocking schemes
will move us inexorably towards an Internet that is bland and homogenized.
The major commercial sites will still be readily available -- they will
have the resources and inclination to self-rate and third-party rating
services will be inclined to give them acceptable ratings. Quirky and
idiosyncratic speech, individual home pages, or postings to controversial
newsgroups will be blocked by the filters and made invisible by the search
engines.
As the lead plaintiff and attorneys in Reno v. ACLU, we call for an open
and genuine debate and discussion among the Net community, industry, policy
makers and family groups about the details and free speech
implications of the systems that now exist and that are being proposed.
Civil libertarians, human rights organizations, librarians, and Internet
users, speakers and providers all joined together to defeat the CDA. We
achieved a victory which established a legal framework for the Internet that
gives it the highest constitutional protection.
All that we achieved can now be squandered, if those same groups
participate in a redesign of the very architecture of the Internet that
builds in tools for content blocking that are readily available to waiting
private and governmental censors.
The movement to embrace the new blocking schemes has built with remarkable
speed, but it is not too late for the Internet community to slowly and
carefully examine these proposals and to reject those that will transform
the Internet from a true marketplace of ideas, into just another
mainstream, lifeless medium.
We urge you to read the paper and join us in the debate.
Sincerely,
Barry Steinhardt
Associate Director
[Fahrenheit 451.2 may be found at:
http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/burning.html]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is Cyberspace Burning?
Internet Ratings May Torch Free Speech on the Net, ACLU Warns
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 7, 1997
NEW YORK -- In a 15-page white paper released today, the American Civil
Liberties Union warned that government-coerced, industry efforts to rate
content on the Internet could torch free speech online.
After reviewing plans that came out of a White House summit on Internet
censorship, the ACLU said that it was genuinely alarmed at industry leaders'
unabashed enthusiasm in pledging to create a variety of schemes to regulate
and block controversial online speech.
It was not any one proposal or announcement that gave cause for alarm, the
ACLU said, but rather the failure to examine the longer-term implications
for the Internet of rating and blocking schemes.
"In the physical world, people censor the printed word by burning books,"
said Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the ACLU and one of the
paper's authors. "But in the virtual world, you can just as easily censor
controversial speech by banishing it to the farthest corners of cyberspace
with blocking and rating schemes."
The recent rush to regulate comes in the wake of a sweeping Supreme Court
victory in Reno v. ACLU, confirming that the Internet is analogous to
books, not broadcast, and is deserving of the highest First Amendment
protection. The ACLU was a lead plaintiff and litigator in the suit.
"Today, all that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright
flames of censorship then in the dense smoke of the many ratings and
blocking schemes promoted by some of the very people who fought for
freedom," the ACLU warns.
The white paper, entitled Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning? details
the free speech threats of the various ratings plans being proposed. The
ACLU offers a set of five recommendations and principles, and discusses
self-rating, third-party ratings, and the use of filtering software in
homes and libraries.
Perhaps the greatest danger to free speech online is the notion of
self-rating, the ACLU said, a concept "no less offensive to the First
Amendment than a proposal that publishers of books and magazines rate each
and every article or story, or a proposal that everyone engaged in a street
corner conversation rate his or her comments." Applying the rating
requirement to the active and vibrant conversational areas of the Internet
-- chat rooms, news groups and mailing lists -- would be analogous to
requiring all of us to rate our telephone, dinner party or water cooler
conversations, the ACLU said.
Third-party ratings systems pose free speech problems as well. With
few third-party rating products currently available, the potential
for arbitrary censorship increases.
In addition, the ACLU said that the use of filtering programs in
public libraries, which are governmental entities, would violate the
First Amendment. These programs often block access to valuable speech,
including safer sex information, gay and lesbian web sites, and even
speech that is critical of the filtering software itself.
During the summit, according to the white paper, Vice President Gore,
along with industry and non-profit groups, announced the creation of a
web site that provides direct links to a variety of blocking programs.
Calling for the producers of all of these products to put real power
in users' hands, the ACLU urged them to provide full disclosure of
their lists of blocked speech and the criteria for blocking.
The white paper was distributed today along with an open letter from
Steinhardt to members of the Internet community. "It is not too late for
the Internet community to slowly and carefully examine these proposals and
to reject those that will transform the Internet from a true marketplace
of ideas into just another mainstream, lifeless medium," Steinhardt said
in the letter.
The ACLU also sent the paper to President Clinton and Vice President Gore,
and to industry leaders and policy makers involved in the White House
summit. In a separate letter to industry leaders, Steinhardt requested a
meeting to discuss the proposed plans for rating and blocking.
The principal authors of Is Cyberspace Burning? are Ann Beeson, Chris
Hansen and Barry Steinhardt. Hansen and Beeson are ACLU national staff
attorneys who were members of the Reno v. ACLU litigation team.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?
How Rating and Blocking Proposals May Torch
Free Speech on the Internet
Executive Summary
In the landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court overturned the
Communications Decency Act, declaring that the Internet deserves the same
high level of free speech protection afforded to books and other printed
matter.
But today, all that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright
flames of censorship then in the dense smoke of the many ratings and
blocking schemes promoted by some of the very people who fought
for freedom.
The ACLU and others in the cyber-liberties community were genuinely alarmed
by the tenor of a recent White House summit meeting on Internet censorship
at which industry leaders pledged to create a variety of
schemes to regulate and block controversial online speech.
But it was not any one proposal or announcement that caused our alarm;
rather, it was the failure to examine the longer-term implications for
the Internet of rating and blocking schemes.
The White House meeting was clearly the first step away from the
principle that protection of the electronic word is analogous to protection
of the printed word. Despite the Supreme Court's strong rejection of a
broadcast analogy for the Internet, government and industry leaders alike
are now inching toward the dangerous and incorrect position that the
Internet is like television, and should be rated and censored
accordingly.
Is Cyberspace burning? Not yet, perhaps. But where there's smoke,
there's fire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update Editor:
Lisa Kamm (kamml@aclu.org)
American Civil Liberties Union National Office
125 Broad Street
New York, New York 10004
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
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