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 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 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 signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or (3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network, email for details. To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the words "subscribe islands" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe islands" in the body of the message. Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and organizations. 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 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 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 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 From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. 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