Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/LEGAL/EFF105.TXT

Text File | 1994-07-17 | 46KB | 812 lines

########## |   Volume I                               Number 5   |
########## |                                                     |
###        |                   EFFECTOR ONLINE                   |
#######    |                                                     |
#######    |                    In this issue:                   |
###        |           NetNews: Prodigy's Stage.Dat              |
########## |       Crooks,Big Brother,Biden,and the F.B.I.       |
########## |          Privacy: The Real Vs. The Ideal            |
           |     Five (Common?) Misperceptions about the NREN    |
########## |         Macrotransformation: The 'Telecosm'         |
########## |        Crunch, Stoll, and Optick at the CFP         |
###        |              A Daytrip to Prodigy Land              |
#######    |            -==--==--==-<:>-==--==--==-              |
#######    |                      Editors:                       |
###        |         Gerard Van der Leun ([e-mail])       |
###        |             Mike Godwin ([e-mail])          |
###        |            Mitchell Kapor ([e-mail])          |
           |                                                     |
########## |   The general contents of Effector Online may be    |
########## |        freely reproduced throughout the Net.        |
###        |   To reproduce signed material herein outside the   |
#######    |    Net, please secure the express permission of     |
#######    |                     the author.                     |
###        |                                                     |
###        |             Published Fortnightly by                |
###        |    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)     |

effector n, Computer Sci. A device for producing a desired change.
                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-


                                FAST BREAKS:
                 Net News from throughout known Cyberspace

>>The Stage.Dat Flap:
     Prodigy took it on the chin yet again this month. A rumor began to
circulate around the nets, (followed by numerous assertions of the
"truth" of these rumors) that Prodigy, through a part of their program
known as Stage.Dat, was actively spying on and collecting information
from its users' hard disks.  Exactly why Prodigy would want to do this
went largely unasked. As did the question of what in the world Prodigy
would do with the shards, bits,odd bytes,code clusters and fragments of
information it collected. It was also unclear whether or not the
Stage.Dat program sucked user data off the hard disk in the first place.
None of this mattered to numerous online factions ready to believe
anything evil about Prodigy in the wake of the company's recent orgy of
user abuse.
     Ultimately, the Stage.Dat file was found to be harmless and the
users' suspicions without foundation. When the Prodigy software creates
Stage.Dat, it essentially "lays claim" to a chunk of the hard disk. Any
remnants and scraps of previously deleted material inside the new
boundries of Stage.Dat will naturally be contained in the file.  Nothing
malign can be laid at Prodigy's door.  It merely continues to pay the
price in user mistrust for its previous attempts to control its users by
seeing them as revenue sources rather than human beings.  Until Prodigy
recognizes that basic rights extend even to the private and corporate
realms of Cyberspace, it will continue to be plagued with incidents such
as Stage.Dat.

>>Tracking Steve Jackson
     Many people have asked what has happened since the EFF filed suit
against the U.S. Secret Service and others two weeks ago.  Other than a
spate of stories in the public and trade press, not a lot has happened.
The wheels of justice grind slow and fine.  The EFF will be in this for
the long haul, but lawsuits don't have dramatic new twists and turns on
a weekly basis, no matter what we see on L.A. Law.
     In the meantime, watch this space.

>>EFF Opposes Federal Restrictions on Encryption Use
     The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes Senate Bill.266 and any
other proposed federal statute that would limit the private use of
encryption technology.
     If the language in SB 266 had the force of law, it would require
commercial and noncommercial service providers and system operators to
produce plain-text versions of public or private messages on their
systems when presented with a proper warrant. This would, in effect,
prohibit users of these systems from using public key encryption
technology on these systems, since no service provider or system operator
who allowed such encryption would be able to comply with the law.
     We at the EFF believe that, in an era of increasing technological
encroachments upon everyone's privacy, public key encryption presents at
least a partial defense for individuals and organizations that are
concerned about privacy. We believe that making the use of such
encryption technology illegal, or creating strong legal disincentives for
its use, would deprive Americans of an important tool they can now use to
help preserve their privacy. At the same time, we believe, it would do
little to keep such technology, already well-documented and widely
available, out of the hands of the terrorist and criminal entities with
which the bill is concerned. We also believe this legislation flies in
the face of the government's own policies, since the Department of
Defense has long subsidized the development of commercial encryption
technology.
     Currently, it is legal for any citizen to encrypt a letter and send it
through the U.S. mail system. Because we believe that computer-network
communication will assume an increasingly important role in the lives of
all Americans, we oppose any statutory scheme that would grant less
privacy to  computer-based electronic communication than it grants to the
mails.
    In a late breaking development, the ACLU and the EFF have been in
contact with Senator Biden's staff. The staff has agreed to sit down with
us and hear our concerns.  Any people with information or concerns about
S.266 are invited to send email to Mitchell Kapor ([e-mail]).

>>EFF Assists Challenge of Computer-Use Prohibition In Atlanta Case
     The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sought amicus curiae status
to assist in challenging a condition of a computer-crime defendant's
supervised release that prohibits the defendant from owning or
personally using a coputer.
     Defendants Robert Riggs, Adam Grant, and Frank Darden, who pled
guilty last summer to offenses relating the unauthorized copying
of a memorandum concerning the E911 emergency telephone system,
received, in addition to prison terms and restitutionary requirements,
a prohibition on personal use and ownership of computers. Because
the EFF believes this prohibition was overbroad, infringing upon
the First Amendment rights of the defendants and extending far beyond
the scope of federal sentencing law, the Foundation has chosen to
assist defendant Robert Riggs in his challenge of the prohibition.
     It is EFF's position that the restriction on computer-use is not
sufficiently narrowly tailored to achieve the government's purposes
as set out in federal sentencing law. We believe that computer use
is so fundamentally related to First Amendment rights of expression
and association that restrictions on such use, even when imposed
on convicted defendants, must meet high standards of Constitutional
scrutiny.

>>Two Distinguished Professionals Join EFF Board
     Mitchell Kapor recently announced the election of Esther Dyson and
Jerry Berman to the Board of The Electronic Frontier Foundation. In
making the announcement, Kapor said, "These are two terrific people and
will bring an incredible amount of expertise and wisdom to the board.
Esther knows the industry and the issues as well as anyone on the planet.
And Jerry Berman's experience with the legal aspects of all the EFF
issues -- stemm