EFFector Online JULY 4, 1992

 ########## ########## ########## | LIBERTY, EQUALITY, CONNECTIVITY!  |

########## ########## ########## | THE DECLARATION & BILL OF RIGHTS  |

####       ####       ####       |                                   |

########   ########   ########   | HOUSE TO NSF:RELAX ACCEPTABLE USE |

########   ########   ########   |                                   |

####       ####       ####       |        Howard Rheingold on        |

########## ####       ####       |      VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES, 1992    |

########## ####       ####       |       (Third of three parts)      |

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EFFector Online             JULY 4, 1992                   Issue  3.0|

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation         |

                           ISSN 1062-9424                            |

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         ||       LIBERTY, EQUALITY, CONNECTIVITY!

         ||   A PEOPLE, UNITED, CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED!

         ||      216 FOURTHS AND STILL GOING STRONG!  

         || 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

                       In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

                                    

                             A DECLARATION

                                    

                     By the REPRESENTATIVES of the

                                    

                       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                                    

                     In GENERAL CONGRESS assembled.

_      _

\\    //HEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary

 \\/\// for one People to dissolve the Political bands which have

  \/\/  connected them with another, and to assume among the

Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the

Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect

to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the

causes which impel them to the Separation.

     We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created

equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of

Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among

Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is

the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new

Government, laying its foundation on such Principles and organizing its

Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their

Safety and Happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments

long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes;

and accordingly all Experience hath shown, that Mankind are more

disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves

by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long

train of Abuses and Ursurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object,

evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their

Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide

new Guards for their future Security.

                          * * * * * * * * * *

     WE, THEREFORE, The Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the

world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by

Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and

declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE

AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to

the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and

the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and

that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War,

conclude Peace, contract Alliance, establish commerce, and to do all

other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.  And for

the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection

of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our

Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

                           THE BILL OF RIGHTS

                             1st Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of

speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to

assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

                             2nd Amendment

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free

state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be

infringed.

                             3rd Amendment

No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without

the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to be

prescribed by law.

                             4th Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,

and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be

violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,

supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place

to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

                             5th Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous,

crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in

cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in

actual service, in time of war, or public danger; nor shall any person

be subject, for the same offence, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or

limb; nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness

against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without

due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use,

without just compensation.

                             6th Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a

speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district

wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have

been previously ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature and

cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against

him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor;

and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

                             7th Amendment

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed

twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no

fact, tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re- examined in any court of

the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

                             8th Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor

cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.

                             9th Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be

construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

                             10th Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States shall not be construed to

extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one

of the United States by citizens of another State or by citizens or

subjects of any foreign state.

 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

           HOUSE ALLOWS NSF TO RELAX ACCEPTABLE USE POLICIES

This Monday (6/29) the House passed by voice vote Rep. Boucher's (D-VA)

bill to allow the NSF to relax current Acceptable Use Policies that

limit NSFNet traffic to that which is "in support of research and

education."  This restriction prevent commercial traffic, such as the

offering of commercial information services, from passing over the

NSFNET backbone.

Boucher's bill amends the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 (42

USC 1862) to read:

"the Foundation is authorized to foster and support the development and

use of computer networks which may be used substantially for purposed

related to research and education in the sciences and engineering, if

the additional uses will tend to increase the overall capabilities of

the networks to support such research and education activities."

That is a long way of saying that commercial services may be offered for

sale over the NSFNET backbone provided those services would be

potentially valuable to the research and education community.

The identical provision is attached to the NASA Reauthorization bill now

pending before the Senate.  Senate staff indicate they are hoping that

the provision will move through without much fuss.  However, there is

some possible opposition from Department of Energy and other "mission

agencies'" who run large nets that interconnect with the NSF.  These

agencies don't like to trend toward commercialization because, a) it

puts pressure on them to do the same, and b) it puts them just one hop a

away from an increasingly public network.

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

[Note: Because of the length of this essay, this is the third of three

 parts. Our readers are asked to take careful note of the author's 

remarks at the end of this article.]

                A SLICE OF LIFE IN MY VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

                               (Part Two)

                     by Howard Rheingold  June 1992

                          (hlr@well.sf.ca.us)

[ Continued from EFFector Online 2.12 June 19, 1992. Available via

ftp.eff.org or by email from eff@eff.org]

    Who Is The WELL?

    One way to know what the WELL is like is to know something about the

kind of people who use it. It has roots in the San Francisco Bay Area,

and in two separate cultural revolutions that took place there in past

decades. The Whole Earth Catalog originally emerged from the

counterculture as Stewart Brand's way of providing access to tools and

ideas to all the communes who were exploring alternate ways of life in

the forests of Mendocino or the high deserts outside Santa Fe. The Whole

Earth Catalogs and the magazines they spawned, Co-Evolution Quarterly

and Whole Earth Review, have outlived the counterculture itself, since

they are still alive and raising hell after nearly 25 years. For many

years, the people who have been exploring alternatives and are open to

ideas that you don't find in the mass media have found themselves in

cities instead of rural communes, where their need for new tools and

ideas didn't go away.

    The Whole Earth Catalog crew received a large advance in the mid-

1980s to produce an updated version, a project involving many

geographically-separated authors and editors, many of whom were using

computers. They bought a minicomputer and the license to Picospan, a

computer conferencing program, leased an office next to the magazine's

office, leased incoming telephone lines, set up modems, and the WELL was

born in 1985. The idea from the beginning was that the founders weren't

sure what the WELL would become, but they would provide tools for people

to build it into something useful. It was consciously a cultural

experiment, and the business was designed to succeed or fail on the

basis of the results of the experiment. The person Stewart Brand chose

to be the WELL's first director -- technician, manager, innkeeper, and

bouncer -- was Matthew McClure, not-coincidentally a computer-savvy

veteran of The Farm, one of the most successful of the communes that

started in the sixties. Brand and McClure started a low- rules,

high-tone discussion, where savvy networkers, futurists, misfits who had

learned how to make our outsiderness work for us, could take the

technology of CMC to its cultural limits.

    The Whole Earth network -- the granola-eating utopians, the solar-

power enthusiasts, serious ecologists and the space-station crowd,

immortalists, Biospherians, environmentalists, social activists -- was

part of the core population from the beginning. But there were a couple

of other key elements. One was the subculture that happened ten years

after the counterculture era -- the personal computer revolution.

Personal computers and the PC industry were created by young iconoclasts

who wanted to have whizzy tools and change the world. Whole Earth had

honored them, including the outlaws among them, with the early Hacker's

Conferences. The young computer wizards, and the grizzled old hands who

were still messing with mainframes, showed up early at the WELL because

the guts of the system itself -- the UNIX operating system and "C"

language programming code -- were available for tinkering by responsible

craftsmen.

    A third cultural element that made up the initial mix of the WELL,

which has drifted from its counterculture origins in many ways, were the

deadheads. Books and theses have been written about the subculture that

have grown up around the band, the Grateful Dead. The deadheads have a

strong feeling of community, but they can only manifest it en masse when

the band has concerts. They were a community looking for a place to

happen when several technology-savvy deadheads started a "Grateful Dead

Conference" on the WELL. GD was so phenomenally successful that for the

first several years, deadheads were by far the single largest source of

income for the enterprise.

    Along with the other elements came the first marathon swimmers in

the new currents of the information streams, the futurists and writers

and journalists. The New York Times, Business Week, the San Francisco

Chronicle, Time, Rolling Stone, Byte, the Wall Street Journal all have

journalists that I know personally who drop into the WELL as a listening

post. People in Silicon Valley lurk to hear loose talk among the pros.

Journalists tend to attract other journalists, and the purpose of

journalists is to attract everybody else: most people have to use an old

medium to hear news about the arrival of a new medium.

    Things changed, both rapidly and slowly, in the WELL. There were

about 600 members of the WELL when I joined, in the summer of 1985. It

seemed that then, as now, the usual ten percent of the members did 80%

of the talking. Now there are about 6000 people, with a net gain of

about a hundred a month. There do seem to be more women than other parts

of cyberspace. Most of the people I meet seem to be white or Asian;

African-Americans aren't missing, but they aren't conspicuous or even

visible. If you can fake it, gender and age are invisible, too. I'd

guess the WELL consists of about 80% men, 20% women. I don't know

whether formal demographics would be the kind of thing that most WELL

users would want to contribute to. It's certainly something we'd

discuss, argue, debate, joke about.

    One important social rule was built into Picospan, the software that

the WELL lives inside: Nobody is anonymous. Everybody is required to

attach their real "userid" to their postings. It is possible to use

pseudonyms to create alternate identities, or to carry metamessages, but

the pseudonyms are always linked in every posting to the real userid. So

individual personae -- whether or not they correspond closely to the

real person who owns the account -- are responsible for the words they

post. In fact, the first several years, the screen that you saw when you

reached the WELL said "You own your own words."  Stewart Brand, the

WELL's co-founder likes epigrams: "Whole Earth," "Information wants to

be free." "You own your own words." Like the best epigrams, "You own

your own words" is open to multiple interpretations. The matter of

responsibility and ownership of words is one of the topics WELLbeings

argue about endlessly, so much that the phrase has been abbreviated to

"YOYOW," As in, "Oh no, another YOYOW debate."

    Who are the WELL members, and what do they talk about? I can tell

you about the individuals I have come to know over six years, but the

WELL has long since been something larger than the sum of everybody's

friends. The characteristics of the pool of people who tune into this

electronic listening post, whether or not they every post a word in

public, is a strong determinant of the flavor of the "place." There's a

cross-sectional feeling of "who are we?" that transcends the

intersecting and non-intersecting rings of friends and acquaintances

each individual develops.

    My Neighborhood On The WELL

    Every CMC system gives users tools for creating their own sense of

place, by customizing the way they navigate through the database of

conferences, topics, and responses. A conference or newsgroup is like a

place you go. If you go to several different places in a fixed order, it

seems to reinforce the feeling of place by creating a customized

neighborhood that is also shared by others. You see some of the same

users in different parts of the same neighborhood. Some faces, you see

only in one context -- the parents conference, the Grateful Dead tours

conference, the politics or sex conference.

    My home neighborhood on the WELL is reflected in my ".cflist," the

file that records my preferences about the order of conferences I visit.

It is always possible to go to any conference with a command, but with a

.cflist you structure your online time by going from conference to

specified conference at regular intervals, reading and perhaps

responding in several ongoing threads in several different places.

That's the part of the art of discourse where I have found that the

computer adds value to the intellectual activity of discussing formally

distinct subjects asynchronously, from different parts of the world,

over extending periods, by enabling groups to structure conversations by

topic, over time.

    My .cflist starts, for sentimental reasons, with the Mind

conference, the first one I hosted on the WELL, since 1985. I've changed

my .cflist hundreds of times over the years, to add or delete

conferences from my regular neighborhood, but I've always kept Mind in

the lede. The entry banner screen for the Mind conference used to

display to each user the exact phase of the moon in numbers and ASCII

graphics every time they logged in to the conference. But the volunteer

programmer who had created the "phoon" program had decided to withdraw

it, years later, in a dispute with WELL management. There is often a

technological fix to a social problem within this particular universe.

Because the WELL seems to be an intersection of many different cultures,

there have been many experiments with software tools to ameliorate

problems that seemed to crop up between people, whether because of the

nature of the medium or the nature of the people. A frighteningly

expensive pool of talent was donated by volunteer programmers to create

tools and even weapons for WELL users to deal with each other. People

keep giving things to the WELL, and taking them away. Offline readers

and online tools by volunteer programmers gave others increased power to

communicate.

    The News conference is what's next. This is the commons, the place

where the most people visit the most often, where the most outrageous

off-topic proliferation is least pernicious, where the important

announcements about the system or social events or major disputes or new

conferences are announced. When an earthquake or fire happens, News is

where you want to go. Immediately after the 1989 earthquake and during

the Oakland fire of 1991, the WELL was a place to check the damage to

the local geographic community, lend help to those who need it, and get

first-hand reports. During Tienamen square, the Gulf War, the Soviet

Coup, the WELL was a media-funnel, with snippets of email from Tel-Aviv

and entire newsgroups fed by fax machines in China, erupting in News

conference topics that grew into fast-moving conferences of their own.

During any major crisis in the real world, the routine at our house is

to turn on CNN and log into the WELL.

    After News is Hosts, where the hottest stuff usually happens. The

hosts community is a story in itself. The success of the WELL in its

first five years, all would agree, rested heavily on the efforts of the

conference hosts -- online characters who had created the character of

the first neighborhoods and kept the juice flowing between one another

all over the WELL, but most pointedly in the Hosts conference. Some

spicy reading in the Archives conference originated from old hosts'

disputes - and substantial arguments about the implications of CMC for

civil rights, intellectual property, censorship, by a lot of people who

know what they are talking about, mixed liberally with a lot of other

people who don't know what they are talking about, but love to talk

anyway, via keyboard and screen, for years on end.

    In this virtual place, the pillars of the community and the worst

offenders of public sensibilities are in the same group -- the hosts.

At their best and their worst, this ten percent of the online population

put out the words that the other ninety percent keep paying to read.

Like good hosts at any social gathering, they make newcomers welcome,

keep the conversation flowing, mediate disputes, clean up messes, and

throw out miscreants, if need be. A WELL host is part salon keeper, part

saloon keeper, part talk-show host, part publisher.  The only power to

censor or to ban a user is the hosts' power. Policy varies from host to

host, and that's the only policy. The only justice for those who misuse

that power is the forced participation in weeks of debilitating and

vituperative post-mortem.

    The hosts community is part long-running soap opera, part town

meeting, bar-room brawl, anarchic debating society, creative groupmind,

bloody arena, union hall, playpen, encounter group. The Hosts conference

is extremely general, from technical questions to personal attacks. The

Policy conference is supposed to be restricted to matters of what WELL

policy is, or ought to be. The part-delusion, part-accurate perception

that the hosts and other users have strong influence over WELL policy is

part of what feeds debate here, and a strong element in the libertarian

reputation of the stereotypical WELLite. After fighting my way through a

day's or hour's worth of the Hot New Dispute in News, Hosts, and Policy,

I check on the conferences I host -- Info, Virtual Communities, Virtual

Reality. After that my .cflist directs me, at the press of the return

key, to the first new topic or response in the Parenting, Writers',

Grateful Dead tours, Telecommunication, Macintosh, Weird, Electronic

Frontier Foundation, Whole Earth, Books, Media, Men on the WELL,

Miscellaneous, and Unclear conferences.

    Grabbing attention in the Commons is a powerful act. Some people

seem drawn to performing there; others burst out there in acts of

desperation, after one history of frustration or another. Dealing with

people who are so consistently off-topic or apparently deeply grooved

into incoherence, long-windedness, scatology, is one of the events that

challenges a community to decide what its values really are, or ought to

be.

    Something is happening here. I'm not sure anybody understands it

yet. I know that the WELL and the net is an important part of my life

and I have to decide for myself whether this is a new way to make

genuine commitments to other human beings, or a silicon-induced illusion

of community. I urge others to help pursue that question in a variety of

ways, while we have the time. The political dimensions of CMC might lead

to situations that would pre-empt questions of other social effects;

responses to the need for understanding the power- relationships

inherent in CMC are well represented by the Electronic Frontier

Foundation and others. We need to learn a lot more, very quickly, about

what kind of place our minds are homesteading.

    The future of virtual communities is connected to the future of

everything else, starting with the most precious thing people have to

gain or lose -- political freedom. The part played by communication

technologies in the disintegration of communism, the way broadcast

television pre-empted the American electoral process, the power of fax

and CMC networks during times of political repression like Tienamen

Square and the Soviet Coup attempt, the power of citizen electronic

journalism, the power-maneuvering of law enforcement and intelligence

agencies to restrict rights of citizen access and expression in

cyberspace, all point to the future of CMC as a close correlate of

future political scenarios. More important than civilizing cyberspace is

ensuring its freedom as a citizen-to-citizen communication and

publication medium; laws that infringe equity of access to and freedom

of expression in cyberspace could transform today's populist empowerment

into yet another instrument of manipulation. Will "electronic democracy"

be an accurate description of political empowerment that grows out of

the screen of a computer? Or will it become a brilliant piece of

disinfotainment, another means of manipulating emotions and

manufacturing public opinion in the service of power.

    Who controls what kinds of information is communicated in the

international networks where virtual communities live? Who censors, and

what is censored? Who safeguards the privacy of individuals in the face

of technologies that make it possible to amass and retrieve detailed

personal information about every member of a large population? The

answers to these political questions might make moot any more abstract

questions about cultures in cyberspace. Democracy itself depends on the

relatively free flow of communications. The following words by James

Madison are carved in marble at the United States Library of Congress:

"A popular government without popular information, or the means of

acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps

both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to

be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which

knowledge gives." It is time for people to arm themselves with power

about the future of CMC technology.

    Who controls the market for relationships? Will the world's

increasingly interlinked, increasingly powerful, decreasingly costly

communications infrastructure be controlled by a small number of very

large companies? Will cyberspace be privatized and parceled out to those

who can afford to buy into the auction? If political forces do not seize

the high ground and end today's freewheeling exchange of ideas, it is

still possible for a more benevolent form of economic control to stunt

the evolution of virtual communities, if a small number of companies

gain the power to put up toll-roads in the information networks, and

smaller companies are not able to compete with them.

    Or will there be an open market, in which newcomers like Apple or

Microsoft can become industry leaders? The playing field in the global

telecommunications industry will never be level, but the degree of

individual freedom available through telecommunication technologies in

the future may depend upon whether the market for goods and services in

cyberspace remains open for new companies to create new uses for CMC.

    I present these observations as a set of questions, not as answers.

I believe that we need to try to understand the nature of CMC,

cyberspace, and virtual communities in every important context --

politically, economically, socially , culturally, cognitively. Each

different perspective reveals something that the other perspectives do

not reveal. Each different discipline fails to see something that

another discipline sees very well. We need to think as teams here,

across boundaries of academic discipline, industrial affiliation,

nation, to understand, and thus perhaps regain control of, the way human

communities are being transformed by communication technologies.  We

can't do this solely as dispassionate observers, although there is

certainly a huge need for the detached assessment of social science.

But community is a matter of the heart and the gut as well as the head.

Some of the most important learning will always have to be done by

jumping into one corner or another of cyberspace, living there, and

getting up to your elbows in the problems that virtual communities face.

    References:

    Sara Kiesler, "The Hidden Messages in Computer Networks," Harvard

Business Review, January-February 1986.

    J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, and E. Herbert, "The Computer as a

Communication Device," International Science and Technology, April 1978.

    Ray Oldenburg, "The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community

Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They

Get You Through The Day," New York: Paragon House, 1991.

    M. Scott Peck, M.D., "The Different Drum: Community Making and

Peace," New York: Touchstone, 1987.

    Howard Rheingold, "Tools for Thought," Simon & Schuster 1986.

Note: In 1988, _Whole Earth Review_ published my article, "Virtual

Communities." Four years later, I reread it and realized that I had

learned a few things, and that the world I was observing had changed.

So I rewrote it. The original version is available on the WELL as

/uh/72/hlr/virtual_communities88.

Portions of this will appear in "Globalizing Networks: Computers and

International Communication," edited by Linda Harasim and Jan Walls for

MIT press. Portions of this will appear in "Virtual Communities," by

Howard Rheingold, Addison-Wesley. Portions of this may find their way

into Whole Earth Review.

This is a world-readable file, and I think these are important issues;

encourage distribution, but I do ask for fair use: Don't remove my name

from my words when you quote or reproduce them, don't change them, and

don't impair my ability to make a living with them.

                                            Howard Rheingold

                                            Editor, Whole Earth Review

                                            27 Gate Five Road

                                            Sausalito, CA 94965

                                            Tel: 415 332 1716

                                            Fax: 415 332 3110

                                            Internet: hlr@well.sf.ca.us

                   (This is the last of three parts.)

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

            MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by

becoming a member now. Members receive our quarterly newsletter,

EFFECTOR, our bi-weekly electronic newsletter, EFFector Online (if you

have an electronic address that can be reached through the Net), and

special releases and other notices on our activities.  But because we

believe that support should be freely given, you can receive these

things even if you do not elect to become a member.

Our memberships are $20.00 per year for students, $40.00 per year for

regular members.  You may, of course, donate more if you wish.

Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under

any circumstances, sell any part of its membership list.  We will, from

time to time, share this list with other non-profit organizations whose

work we determine to be in line with our goals. If you do not grant

explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership

disclosed to any group for any reason.

---------------- EFF MEMBERSHIP FORM ---------------

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         155 Second St. #30

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=====================================================================|

                   EFFector Online is published by                   |

                  The Electronic Frontier Foundation                 |

                 155 Second Street, Cambridge MA 02141               |

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=====================================================================|

           "LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF CONNECTIVITY."

########## ########## ########## |  RAPID GROWTH OF ONLINE SERVICES  

########## ########## ########## |  ONE BBSCON /EFF LIBRARY/ USENET  

####       ####       ####       |                                   

########   ########   ########   |       JOHN PERRY BARLOW ON        

########   ########   ########   |  THE NSA, THE FBI, ENCRYPTION,    

####       ####       ####       |         AND WIRE-TAPPING          

########## ####       ####       |                                   

########## ####       ####       |         THE TAO TE CHIP           

=====================================================================

EFFector Online             JULY 29, 1992         Issue  3.1 / Part 1

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation         

                           ISSN 1062-9424                            

=====================================================================

         ONLINE SERVICES EXPERIENCE SOLID GROWTH OVER PAST 5 YEARS

                  WITH MORE FORECAST FOR THE NEAR FUTURE

A new study released by SIMBA Information, a research group based in

Wilton, Connecticut, says sales by online services increased by 61.1

percent in the last five years. The trend will continue over the next five

years, says SIMBA, with a projected increase of 48%.

By 1996, the online information market should be worth about $14.2 billion

annually. Business uses will consume the lion's share of this market by a

factor of 24 to 1. Regardless of this, the services used by consumers were

the fastest growing segment of the market in the 1990-1991 period. This

growth in consumer use is expected to increase by 145 percent over the next

five years.

The report, "Online Services: 1992 Review, Trends, and Forecast" was

written for SIMBA by analyst Chris Elwell.

Other items in the report of interest: Subscribers to online services

numbered 5.4 million at the end of 1991, an increase of 18% over 1990.

Leading online services (CompuServe, Genie, Prodigy, etc.) reported an

aggregate sales growth of nearly 7% in 1991 from 1990 levels.

Some of the more notable conclusions of this report are:

        #North American-based online services account for 57% of 

         worldwide sales,with rapid growth in the near term. 

        #More than half of the growth in online subscribers in 1991

         was accounted for by Prodigy.

        #One out of every five home computers has a modem.

        #As the Regional Bell companies enter the online services

         arena, the initial focal point of their efforts will be

         online directory publishing.

        #Even though the report gives detailed profiles of 35 major

         players, it notes that most online services and database 

         publishers are relatively small operations.

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                        EFF to Crash The ONE BBSCON

         August 13-16, Stouffer Concourse Hotel, Denver Colorado.

The ONE BBSCON is the major BBS conference of the year, hosting seminars in

such topics as How to make your BBS profitable; What is Internet?; FidoNet,

RelayNet, INet, et. al.; Graphics over a Modem; Learn from the Winners; as

well hosting an exhibition attended by vendors of BBS-related products.

And EFF will be there with a booth as well.  We'll be doing the usual

booth-related activities such as handing out literature and selling

t-shirts; however, we're more interested in talking with the members of the

BBS community and learning what it needs from EFF.  Along with seminars on

BBSs and the Law, EFF staff counsel Shari Steele will be presenting a talk

on the EFF at which we will be looking for feedback.  If you'll be

attending, do stop by either the booth or the seminar and tell us what you

think.

For more information on ONE BBSCON, contact

                                       ONE, Inc.

                                       4255 S. Buckley Road

                                       Suite 308

                                       Aurora, Colorado  80013

                                       (303)693-5252

Note: There is no email address. Leaves room for improvement.

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                         UPDATE ON THE EFF LIBRARY

The EFF Library was set up over a year ago when it became clear that,

regardless of the digital revolution, we were being overwhelmed by a wave

of hard copy.  At that time, we had a backlog of around 1,000 documents,

books and magazines concerning issues relevant to the Electronic Frontier.

We engaged a professional librarian, Hae Young Wang, to bring order to

chaos, and to provide us with a method that would enable us to file and

retrieve material necessary to the work of the foundation.

Today, the EFF library in Cambridge houses over 2,300 items. The holdings

cover journal articles, newspaper articles, conference proceedings, court

documents, legislation, magazines, books, and brochures.  The subject areas

include such things as information infrastructure, computers and civil

liberties, intellectual property and copyrights, and EFF archives.

The Library also maintains over 130 subscriptions to magazines and

newsletters.

In addition, the EFF library maintains, classifies and indexes EFF's

anonymous ftp archive files.  These files, which are accessible to everyone

with Internet access, have recently been re-organized into what we hope is a

more user-friendly and informative manner. In the EFF ftp directory, you

can find documents about the EFF, back issues of its online newsletter,

notes on eff-issues, historical items, legal issues, current legislation,

local chapters, and a host of other material germane to the Electronic

Frontier.

While the ftp files are open to all, the EFF Library can now serve only the

staff here and in Washington.  We hope to be able to provide service to EFF

members and the general public in the future, as funding and staffing

allow.

In the meantime, we have recently acquired new scanning software which we

hope will reduce the work involved in moving hard-copy information into

digital form. With this in place we will be adding items to the anonymous

ftp archive at an increased rate throughout the rest of the summer.

Recent additions to the EFF ftp files are:

    The EFF Open Platform Proposal. This is the full text of the

    EFF's plan to create a national public network through the

    deployment of ISDN technology.

    (pub/EFF/papers/open-platform-proposal)

    Howard Rhinegold's "A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community".

    This meditation on what it means to be online in 1992 was

    first serialized in EFFector Online.

    (pub/EFF/papers/cyber/life-in-virtual-community)

    Senator Al Gore's High-Tech Bill (S.2937) as introduced on July

    1, 1992. This bill provides funding to both NSF and NASA to

    develop technology for "digital libraries", huge data bases

    that store text, imagery, video, and sound and are accessible

    over computer networks like NSFNET.  The bill also funds

    development of prototype "digital libraries" around the

    country. This is the full-text of this bill along with the

    press release from Gore's office announcing the bill.

    (pub/EFF/legislation/gore-bill-1992)

    An information packet on the GPO/WINDO legislation before congress

    as S.2813/H.R. 2772. This discusses the function of the proposed

    "gateway" for online public access to government databases. From

    the Taxpayers Assets Project.

    (pub/EFF/legislation/gpo-windo-info)

These files are also available through WAIS as eff-documents.src.  WAIS

clients are available for the Mac, PC, NeXT, X11, and GNU Emacs

environments via anonymous ftp from think.com.  A "guest" WAIS client is

available by telnetting to quake.think.com and logging in as 'wais'.

To retrieve these files via email, send mail to archive-server@eff.org,

containing (in the body of the message) the command

send eff <path from pub/EFF>

So to get the Gore bill, you would send

send eff legislation/gore-bill-1992

If you have any trouble obtaining these documents, send email to

ftphelp@eff.org.

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                        UNCLEAR ON USENET INTERNET?

Veteran members of the Internet know, through osmosis, the difference

between Internet and Usenet. Still, newcomers are often confused since the

two seem to be, at times, used interchangeably. To provide for an ultimate

answer, we turned to Chris Davis (ckd), star sysadmin at eff.org. He said:

   "The definitive answer is long and mostly uninteresting except to

pedants like me :).

   "The Internet is that collection of connected TCP/IP networks.  Roughly

speaking, if you can connect directly to 'nic.ddn.mil' with telnet, you're

on the Internet.  You may be able to get Internet mail without being on the

Internet proper (say, if you're on America Online).

   "USENET is that set of machines and people who interchange USENET

messages.  A large number of USENET sites are on the Internet, and many

Internet sites get USENET.  Many USENET sites are NOT on the Internet,

however, getting their news via dialup lines, satellite receivers, magnetic

tape shipments (no kidding), and the like.  Roughly speaking, you're on

USENET if you get the 'news.announce.important' newsgroup.

   "They are related in that they are partially congruent and often

confused with each other :) but they are not the same network."

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                       Decrypting the Puzzle Palace

                                    by

                             John Perry Barlow

                              barlow@eff.org

                                     

                       "A little sunlight is the best disinfectant."

                                            --Justice Louis Brandeis

Over a year ago, in a condition of giddier innocence than I enjoy today, I

wrote the following about the discovery of Cyberspace:

"Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no other side.

Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might

exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to

exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate which expands with

development."

One less felicitous feature of this terrain which I hadn't noticed then is

what seems to be a long-encamped and immense army of occupation.

This army represents interests which are difficult to define, guards the

area against unidentified enemies, meticulously observes almost every

activity undertaken there, and continuously prevents most who inhabit its

domain from drawing any blinds against such observation.

It marshals at least 40,000 troops, owns the most advanced computing

resources in the world, and uses funds the dispersal of which does not fall

under any democratic review.

Imagining this force won't require from you the inventive powers of a

William Gibson. The American Occupation Army of Cyberspace exists.  Its

name is the National Security Agency.

It may be argued that this peculiar institution inhibits free trade, has

directly damaged American competitiveness, and poses a threat to liberty

anywhere people communicate with electrons. It's principal function, as

miff colleague John Gilmore puts it, is "wire-tapping the world," which it

is free to do without a warrant from any judge.

It is legally constrained from domestic surveillance, but precious few

people are in a good position to watch what, how, or whom the NSA watches.

And those who are tend to be temperamentally sympathetic to its objectives

and methods. They like power, and power understands the importance of

keeping it own secrets and learning everyone else's.

Whether it is meticulously ignoring every American byte or not, the NSA is

certainly pursuing policies which will render our domestic affairs

transparent to anyone who can afford big digital hardware.  Such policies

could have profound consequences on our liberty and privacy.

 

More to point, the role of the NSA in the area of domestic privacy needs to

be assessed in the light of other recent federal initiatives which seem

directly aimed at permanently denying privacy to the inhabitants of

Cyberspace, whether foreign or American.

Finally it seems a highly opportune time, directly following our

disorienting victory in the Cold War, to ask if the threats from which the

NSA purportedly protects us from are as significant as the hazards its

activities present.

Like most Americans I'd never given much thought to the NSA until recently.

(Indeed its very existence was a secret for much of my life. Beltway types

used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency.")

I vaguely knew that it was another of the 12 or so shadowy federal spook

houses which were erected shortly after the Iron Curtain with the purpose

of stopping its further advance. It derives entirely from a memorandum sent

by Harry Truman on October 24, 1952 to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and

Defense Secretary Robert Lovatt. This memo, the official secrecy of which

remained unpenetrated for almost 40 years, created the NSA, placed it under

the authority of the Secretary of Defense, and charged it with monitoring

and decoding any signal transmission relevant to the security of the United

States.

Even after I started noticing the NSA, my natural immunity to paranoia

combined with a general belief in the incompetence of all bureaucracies...

especially those whose inefficiencies are unmolested by public scrutiny...

to mute any sense of alarm. But this was before I began to understand the

subterranean battles raging over data encryption and the NSA's role in

them. Lately, I'm less sanguine.

Encryption may be the only reliable method for conveying privacy to the

inherently public domain of Cyberspace. I certainly trust it more than

privacy protection laws. Relying on government to protect your privacy is

like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.

In fact, we already have a strong-sounding federal law protecting our

electronic privacy, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or ECPA. But

this law has not particular effective in those areas were electronic

eavesdropping is technically easy. This is especially true in the area of

cellular phone conversations, which, under the current analog transmission

standard, are easily accessible to anyone from the FBI to you.

The degree of law enforcement apprehension over secure cellular encryption

provides mute evidence of how seriously they've been taking ECPA. They are

moving on a variety of fronts to see that robust electronic privacy

protection systems don't become generally available to the public. Indeed,

the current administration may be so determined to achieve this end that

they may be willing to paralyze progress in America's most promising

technologies rather than yield on it.

Push is coming to shove in two areas of communications technology: digital

transmission of heretofore analog signals and the encryption of transmitted

data.

As the communications service providers move to packet switching, fiber

optic transmission lines, digital wireless, ISDN and other advanced

techniques, what have been discrete channels of continuous electrical

impulses, voices audible to anyone with alligator clips on the right wires,

are now becoming chaotic blasts of data packets, readily intelligible only

to the sender and receiver. This development effectively forecloses

traditional wire-tapping techniques, even as it provides new and different

opportunities for electronic surveillance.

It is in the latter area where the NSA knows its stuff. A fair percentage

of the digital signals dispatched on planet Earth must pass at some point

through the NSA's big sieve in Fort Meade, Maryland, 12 underground acres

of the heaviest hardware in the computing world. There, unless these

packets are also encrypted with a particularly knotty algorithm, sorting

them back into their original continuity is not so difficult.

Last spring, alarmed at a future in which it would have to sort through an

endless fruit salad of encrypted bits, the FBI persuaded Senator Joseph

Biden to include language in Senate Bill 266 which would have directed

providers of electronic communications services and devices (such as

digital cellular phone systems or other multiplexed communications

channels) to implement only such encryption methods as would assure

governmental ability to extract from the data stream the plain text of any

voice or data communications in which it took a legal interest. It was if

the government had responded to a technological leap in lock design by

requiring building contractors to supply it with skeleton keys to every

door in America.

The provision raised wide-spread concern in the computer community, which

was better equipped to understand its implications than the general public,

and in August of last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in

cooperation with Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and other

industry groups, successfully lobbied to have it removed from the bill.

Our celebration was restrained. We knew we hadn't seen the last of it. For

one thing, the movement to digital communications does create some serious

obstacles to traditional wire-tapping procedures. I fully expected that law

enforcement would be back with new proposals, which I hoped might be ones

we could support. But what I didn't understand then, and am only now

beginning to appreciate, was the extent to which this issue had already

been engaged by the NSA in the obscure area of export controls over data

encryption algorithms.

Encryption algorithms, despite their purely defensive characteristics, have

been regarded by the government of this country as weapons of war for many

years. If they are to be employed for privacy (as opposed to

authentication) and they are any good at all, their export is licensed

under State Department's International Traffic in Arms Regulations or ITAR.

The encryption watchdog is the NSA. It has been enforcing a policy, neither

debated nor even admitted to, which holds that if a device or program

contains an encryption scheme which the NSA can't break fairly easily, it

will not be licensed for international sale.

Aside for marveling at the silliness of trying to embargo algorithms, a

practice about as practicable as restricting the export of wind, I didn't

pay much attention to the implications of NSA encryption policies until

February of this year.  It was then that I learned about the deliberations

of an obscure group of cellular industry representatives called the Ad Hoc

Authentication Task Force, TR45.3 and of the influence which the NSA has

apparently exercised over their findings.

In the stately fashion characteristic of standard-setting bodies, this

group has been working for several years on a standard for digital cellular

transmission, authentication, and privacy protection to be known by the

characteristically whimsical telco moniker IS-54B.

In February they met near Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. At that

meeting, they recommended, and agreed not to publish, an encryption scheme

for American-made digital cellular systems which many sophisticated

observers believe to be intentionally vulnerable.  It was further thought

by many observers that this "dumbing down" had been done indirect

cooperation with the NSA.

Given the secret nature of the new algorithm, its actual merits were

difficult to assess. But many cryptologists believe there is enough in the

published portions of the standard to confirm that it isn't any good.

One cryptographic expert, one of two I spoke with who asked not to be

identified lest the NSA take reprisals against his company, said:

"The voice privacy scheme, as opposed to the authentication scheme, is

pitifully easy to break. It involves the generation of two "voice privacy

masks" each 260 bits long. They are generated as a byproduct of the

authentication algorithm and remain fixed for the duration of a call. The

voice privacy masks are exclusive_ORed with each frame of data from the

vocoder at the transmitter. The receiver XORs the same mask with the

incoming data frame to recover the original plain text.  Anyone familiar

with the fundamentals of cryptanalysis can easily see how weak this scheme

is."

And indeed, Whitfield Diffie, co-inventor of Public Key cryptography and

arguably the dean of this obscure field, told me this about the fixed

masks:

"Given that description of the encryption process, there is no need for the

opponents to know how the masks were generated. Routine cryptanalytic

operations will quickly determine the masks and remove them.''

Some on committee claimed that possible NSA refusal of export licensing had

no bearing on the algorithm they chose. But their decision not to publish

the entire method and expose it to cryptanalytical abuse (not to mention

ANSI certification) was accompanied by the following convoluted

justification:

"It is the belief of the majority of the Ad Hoc Group, based on our current

understanding of the export requirements, that a published algorithm would

facilitate the cracking of the algorithm to the extent that its fundamental

purpose is defeated or compromised."(Italics added.)

Now this is a weird paragraph any way you parse it, but its most singular

quality is the sudden, incongruous appearance of export requirements in a

paragraph otherwise devoted to algorithmic integrity. In fact, this

paragraph is itself code, the plain text of which goes something like this:

"We're adopting this algorithm because, if we don't, the NSA will slam an

export embargo on all domestically manufactured digital cellular phones."

Obviously, the cellular phone systems manufacturers and providers are not

going to produce one model for overseas sale and another for domestic

production. Thus, a primary effect of NSA-driven efforts to deny some

unnamed foreign enemy secure cellular communications is on domestic

security. The wireless channels available to private Americans will be

cloaked in a mathematical veil so thin that, as one crypto-expert put it,

"Any county sheriff with the right PC-based black box will be able to

monitor your cellular conversations."

When I heard him say that, it suddenly became clear to me that, whether

consciously undertaken with that goal or not, the most important result of

the NSA's encryption embargoes has been the future convenience of domestic

law enforcement. Thanks to NSA export policies, they will be assured that,

as more Americans protect their privacy with encryption, it will be of a

sort easily penetrated by authority.

I find it increasingly hard to imagine this is not their real objective as

well. Surely, they must be aware of how ineffectual their efforts have been

in keeping good encryption out of inimical military possession. An

algorithm is somewhat less easily stopped at the border than, say, a

nuclear reactor. As William Neukom, head of Microsoft Legal puts it, "The

notion that you can control this technology is comical."

I became further persuaded that this was the case upon hearing, from a

couple of sources, that the Russians have been using the possibly

uncrackable (and American) RSA algorithm in their missile launch codes for

the last ten years and that, for as little as five bucks, one can get a

software package called Crypto II on the streets of Saint Petersburg which

includes both RSA and DES encryption systems.

Nevertheless, the NSA has been willing to cost American business a lot of

revenue rather than allow domestic products with strong encryption into the

global market.

While it's impossible to set a credible figure on what that loss might add

up to, it's high. Jim Bidzos, whose RSA Data Security licenses RSA, points

to one major Swiss bid in which a hundred million dollar contract for

financial computer terminals went to a European vendor after American

companies were prohibited by the NSA from exporting a truly secure network.

The list of export software containing intentionally broken encryption is

also long. Lotus Notes ships in two versions. Don't count on much

protection from the encryption in the export version.  Both Microsoft and

Novell have been thwarted in their efforts to include RSA in their

international networking software, despite frequent publication of the

entire RSA algorithm in technical publications all over the world.

With hardware, the job has been easier. NSA levied against the inclusion of

a DES chip in the AS/390 series IBM mainframes in late 1990 despite the

fact that, by this time, DES was in widespread use around the world,

including semi-official adoption by our official enemy, the USSR.

I now realize that Soviets have not been the NSA's main concern at any time

lately. Naively hoping that, with the collapse of the Evil Empire, the NSA

might be out of work, I then learned that, given their own vigorous crypto

systems and their long use of some embargoed products, the Russians could

not have been the threat from whom this forbidden knowledge was to be kept.

Who has the enemy been then? I started to ask around.

Cited again and again as the real object of the embargoes were Third-World

countries. terrorists and... criminals. Criminals, most generally

drug-flavored, kept coming up, and nobody seemed terribly concerned that

some of their operations might be located in areas supposedly off-limits to

NSA scrutiny.

Presumably the NSA is restricted from conducting American surveillance by

both the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and a series

of presidential directives, beginning with one issued by President Ford

following Richard Nixon's bold misuse of the NSA, in which he explicitly

directed the NSA to conduct widespread domestic surveillance of political

dissidents and drug users.

But whether or not FISA has actually limited the NSA's abilities to conduct

domestic surveillance seemed less relevant the more I thought about it. A

better question to ask was, "Who is best served by the NSA's encryption

export policies?" The answer is clear: domestic law enforcement. Was this

the result of some spook plot between NSA and, say, the Department of

Justice? Not necessarily.

Certainly in the case of the digital cellular standard, cultural congruity

between foreign intelligence, domestic law enforcement, and what somebody

referred to as "spook wannabes on the TR45.3 committee" might have a lot

more to do with the its eventual flavor than any actual whisperings along

the Potomac.

                [continued in Effector Online 3.1  Part 2]

      EFFector Online     JULY 22, 1992    Issue  3.1 / end of Part 1

=====================================================================

EFFector Online             JULY 29, 1992         Issue  3.1 / Part 2

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation         

                           ISSN 1062-9424                            

=====================================================================

[Decrypting the Puzzle Palace by John Perry Barlow - continued - ]

Unable to get anyone presently employed by the NSA to comment on this or

any other matter and with little opportunity to assess the NSA's

congeniality toward domestic law enforcement from the inside, I

approached a couple of old hands for a highly distilled sample of

intelligence culture.

I called Admirals Stansfield Turner and Bobby Ray Inman. Not only had their

Carter administration positions as, respectively, CIA and NSA Directors,

endowed them with considerable experience in such matters, both are

generally regarded to be somewhat more sensitive to the limits of

democratic power than their successors. None of whom seemed likely to

return my calls anyway.

My phone conversations with Turner and Inman were amiable enough, but they

didn't ease my gathering sense that the NSA takes an active interest in

areas which are supposedly beyond its authorized field of scrutiny.

Turner started out by saying he was in no position to confirm or deny any

suspicions about direct NSA-FBI cooperation on encryption, but he didn't

think I was being exactly irrational in raising the question.  In fact, he

genially encouraged me to investigate the matter further.

He also said that while a sub rosa arrangement between the NSA and the

Department of Justice to compromise domestic encryption would be

"injudicious," he could think of no law, including FISA (which he helped

design), which would prevent it.

Most alarmingly, this gentleman who has written eloquently on the hazards

of surveillance in a democracy did not seem terribly concerned that our

digital shelters are being rendered permanently translucent by and to the

government.

He said, "A threat could develop...terrorism, narcotics, whatever...where

the public would be pleased that all electronic traffic was open to

decryption. You can't legislate something which forecloses the possibility

of meeting that kind of emergency."

Admiral Inman had even more enthusiasm for assertive governmental

supervision. Although he admitted no real knowledge of the events behind

the new cellular encryption standard, he wasn't the least disturbed to hear

that it might be flawed.

And, despite the fact that his responsibilities as NSA Director had been

restricted to foreign intelligence, he seemed a lot more comfortable

talking about threats on the home front.

"The Department of Justice," he began, "has a very legitimate worry.  The

major weapon against white collar crime has been the court-ordered wiretap.

If the criminal elements go to using a high quality cipher, the principal

defense against narcotics traffic is gone."  This didn't sound like a guy

who, were he still head of NSA, would rebuff FBI attempts to get a little

help from his agency.

He brushed off my concerns about the weakness of the cellular encryption

standard. "If all you're seeking is personal privacy, you can get that with

a very minimal amount of encipherment."

Well, I wondered, Privacy from whom?

And he seemed to regard real, virile encryption to be something rather like

a Saturday Night Special.  "My answer," he said, "would be legislation

which would make it a criminal offense to use encrypted communication to

conceal criminal activity."

Wouldn't that render all encrypted traffic automatically suspect? I asked.

"Well, he said, "you could have a registry of institutions which can

legally use ciphers. If you get somebody using one who isn't registered,

then you go after him."

You can have my encryption algorithm, I thought to myself, when you pry my

cold dead fingers from its private key.

It wasn't a big sample, but it was enough to gain a better appreciation of

the cultural climate of the intelligence community.  And these guys are the

liberals. What legal efficiencies might their Republican successors be

willing to employ to protect the American Way?

Without the comfortably familiar presence of the Soviets to hate and fear,

we can expect to see a sharp increase in over-rated bogeymen and virtual

states of emergency. This is already well under way. I think we can expect

our drifting and confused hardliners to burn the Reichstag repeatedly until

they have managed to extract from our induced alarm the sort of government

which makes them feel safe.

This process has been under way for some time. One sees it in the war on

terrorism, against which pursuit "no liberty is absolute," as Admiral

Turner put it. This, despite the fact that, during last year for which I

have a solid figure, 1987, only 7 Americans succumbed to terrorism.

You can also see it clearly under way in the War on Some Drugs. The Fourth

Amendment to the Constitution has largely disappeared in this civil war.

And among the people I spoke with, it seemed a common canon that drugs (by

which one does not mean Jim Beam, Marlboros, Folger's, or Halcion) were a

sufficient evil to merit the government's holding any more keys it felt the

need for.

One individual close to the committee said that at least some of the

aforementioned "spook wannabes" on the committee were "interested in weak

cellular encryption because they considered warrants not to be "practical"

when it came to pursuing drug dealers and other criminals using cellular

phones."

In a miscellaneously fearful America, where the people cry for shorter

chains and smaller cages, such privileges as secure personal communications

are increasingly regarded as expendable luxuries. As Whitfield Diffie put

it, "From the consistent way in which Americans seem to put security ahead

of freedom, I rather fear that most of them would prefer that all

electronic traffic was open to government decryption right now if they had

given it any thought."

In any event, while I found no proof of an NSA-FBI conspiracy to gut the

American cellular phone encryption standard, it seemed clear to me that

none was needed. The same results can be delivered by a cultural

"auto-conspiracy" between like-minded hardliners and cellular companies who

will care about privacy only when their customers do.

You don't have to be a hand-wringing libertarian like me to worry about the

domestic consequences of the NSA's encryption embargoes.  They are also, as

stated previously, bad for business, unless, of course, the business of

America is no longer business but, as sometimes seems the case these days,

crime control.

As Ron Rivest (the "R" in RSA) said to me, "We have the largest information

based economy in the world. We have lots of reasons for wanting to protect

information, and weakening our encryption systems for the convenience of

law enforcement doesn't serve the national interest."

But by early March, it had become clear that this supposedly business-

oriented administration had made a clear choice to favor cops over commerce

even if the costs to the American economy were to become extremely high.

A sense of White House seriousness in this regard could be taken from their

response to the first serious effort by Congress to bring the NSA to task

for its encryption embargoes. Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.)  proposed an

amendment to the Export Administration Act to transfer mass market software

controls to the Commerce Department, which would relax the rules. The

administration responded by saying that they would veto the entire bill if

the Levine amendment remained attached to it.

Even though it appeared the NSA had little to fear from Congress, the

Levine amendment may have been part of what placed the agency in a

bargaining mood for the first time. They entered into discussions with the

Software Publishers Association who, acting primarily on behalf of

Microsoft and Lotus, got to them to agree "in principle" to a streamlined

process for export licensing of encryption which might provide for more

robust standards than have been allowed previously.

But the negotiations between the NSA and the SPA were being conducted

behind closed doors, with the NSA-imposed understanding that any agreement

they reached would be set forth only in a "confidential" letter to

Congress. As in the case of the digital cellular standard, this would

eliminate the public scrutiny by cryptography researchers which anneals

genuinely hardened encryption.

Furthermore, some cryptographers worried that the encryption key lengths to

which the SPA appeared willing to restrict its member publishers might be

too short to provide much defense against the sorts of brute-force

decryption assaults which advances in processor technology will yield in

the fairly near future. And brute force has always been the NSA's strong

suit.

Whether accurate or not, the impression engendered by the style of the

NSA-SPA negotiations was not one of unassailable confidence. The lack of it

will operate to the continued advantage of foreign manufacturers in an era

when more and more institutions are going to be concerned about the privacy

of their digital communications.

But the economic damage which the NSA-SPA agreement might cause would be

minor compared to what would result from a startling new federal

initiative, the Department of Justice's proposed legislation on digital

telephony. If you're wondering what happened to the snooping provisions

which were in Senate Bill 266, look no further. They're back. And they're

bigger and bolder than ever.

They are contained in a sweeping proposal which have been made by the

Justice Department to the Senate Commerce Committee for legislation which

would "require providers of electronic communications services and private

branch exchanges to ensure that the Government's ability to lawfully

intercept communications is unimpeded by the introduction of advanced

digital telecommunications technology or any other telecommunications

technology."

Amazingly enough, this really means what it says: before any advance in

telecommunications technology can be deployed, the service providers and

manufacturers must assure the cops that they can tap into it. In other

words, development in digital communications technology must come to a

screeching halt until Justice can be assured that it will be able to grab

and examine data packets with the same facility they have long enjoyed with

analog wire-tapping.

It gets worse. The initiative also provides that, if requested by the

Attorney General, "any Commission proceeding concerning regulations,

standards or registrations issued or to be issued under authority of this

section shall be closed to the public." This essentially places the

Attorney General in a position to shut down any telecommunications advance

without benefit of public hearing.

When I first heard of the digital telephony proposal, I assumed it was a

kind of bargaining chip. I couldn't imagine it was serious. But it now

appears they are going to the mattresses on this one.

Taken together with NSA's continued assertion of its authority over

encryption, a pattern becomes clear. The government of the United States is

so determined to maintain law enforcement's traditional wire-tapping

abilities in the digital age that it is willing to fundamentally cripple

the American economy to do so. This may sound hyperbolic, but I believe it

is not.

The greatest technology advantage this country presently enjoys is in the

areas of software and telecommunications. Furthermore, thanks in large part

to the Internet, much of America is already wired for bytes, as significant

an economic edge in the Information Age as the existence of a railroad

system was for England one hundred fifty years ago.

If we continue to permit the NSA to cripple our software and further convey

to the Department of Justice the right to stop development the Net without

public input, we are sacrificing both our economic future and our

liberties. And all in the name of combating terrorism and drugs.

This has now gone far enough. I have always been inclined to view the

American government as pretty benign as such creatures go. I am generally

the least paranoid person I know, but there is something scary about a

government which cares more about putting its nose in your business than it

does about keeping that business healthy.

As I write this, a new ad hoc working group on digital privacy, coordinated

by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is scrambling to meet the challenge.

The group includes representatives from organizations like AT&T, the

Regional Bells, IBM, Microsoft, the Electronic Mail Association and about

thirty other companies and public interest groups.

Under the direction of Jerry Berman, EFF's Washington office director, and

John Podesta, a capable lobbyist and privacy specialist who helped draft

the ECPA, this group intends to stop the provisions in digital telephony

proposal from entering the statute books.

We also intend to work with federal law enforcement officials to address

their legitimate concerns. We don't dispute their need to conduct some

electronic surveillance, but we believe this can be assured by more

restrained methods than they're proposing.

We are also preparing a thorough examination of the NSA's encryption export

policies and looking into the constitutional implications of those

policies. Rather than negotiating behind closed doors, as the SPA has been

attempting to do, America's digital industries have a strong self-interest

in banding together to bring the NSA's procedures and objectives into the

sunlight of public discussion.

Finally, we are hoping to open a dialog with the NSA. We need to develop a

better understanding of their perception of the world and its threats. Who

are they guarding us against and how does encryption fit into that

endeavor? Despite our opposition to their policies on encryption export, we

assume that NSA operations have some merit. But we would like to be able to

rationally balance the merits against the costs.

We strongly encourage any organization which might have a stake in the

future of digital communication to become involved. Letters expressing your

concern may be addressed to: Sen. Ernest Hollings, Chairman, Senate

Commerce Committee, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC and to Don Edwards,

Chairman, Subcommitee on Constitutional Rights, House Judiciary Committee.

(I would appreciate hearing those concerns myself. Feel free to copy me

with those letters at my physical address, c/o P.O. Box 1009, Pinedale, WY

82941 or in Cyberspace, barlow@eff.org.)

If your organization is interested in becoming part of the digital privacy

working group, please contact EFF's Washington office at: 666 Pennsylvania

Avenue SE, Suite 303, Washington, DC 20003, 202/544- 9237, FAX:

202/547-5481. EFF also encourages individuals interested in these issues to

join the organization. Contact us at: Electronic Frontier Foundation, 155

Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02141,617/864- 0665, eff-request@eff.org.

The legal right to express oneself is meaningless if there is no secure

medium through which that expression may travel. By the same token, the

right to hold certain unpopular opinions is forfeit unless one can discuss

those opinions with others of like mind without the government listening in.

 

Even if you trust the current American government, as I am still largely

inclined to, there is a kind of corrupting power in the ability to create

public policy in secret while assuring that the public will have little

secrecy of its own.

In its secrecy and technological might, the NSA already occupies a very

powerful position. And conveying to the Department of Justice what amounts

to licensing authority for all communications technology would give it a

control of information distribution rarely asserted over English-speaking

people since Oliver Cromwell's Star Chamber Proceedings.

Are there threats, foreign or domestic, which are sufficiently grave to

merit the conveyance of such vast legal and technological might?  And even

if the NSA and FBI may be trusted with such power today, will they always

be trustworthy? Will we be able to do anything about it if they aren't?

Senator Frank Church said of NSA technology in 1975 words which are more

urgent today:

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people

and no American would have any privacy left. There would be no place to

hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, the technological capacity

that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to

impose total tyranny. There would be no way to fight back, because the most

careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no

matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to

know. Such is the capacity of this technology."

San Francisco, California

May, 1992

Reprinted from Communications of the ACM, June 1992 

by permission of the author

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                           from THE TAO TE CHIP

                           by Jeffrey Sorrenson

                           sorensen@ecse.rpi.edu

               (with help from Steven Mitchell and Lao Tzu)

               2

When users see one GUI as beautiful,

other user interfaces become ugly.

When users see some programs as winners,

other programs become lossage.

Pointers and NULLs reference each other.

High level and assembler depend on each other.

Double and float cast to each other.

High-endian and low-endian define each other.

While and until follow each other.

Therefore the Guru 

programs without doing anything

and teaches without saying anything.

Warnings arise and he lets them come;

processes are swapped and he lets them go.

He has but doesn't possess,

acts but doesn't expect.

When his work is done, he deletes it.

That is why it lasts forever.

               80

If a system is administered wisely,

its users will be content.

They enjoy hacking their code

and don't waste time implementing

labor-saving shell scripts.

Since they dearly love their accounts,

they aren't interested in other machines.

There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp,

but these don't access any hosts.

There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware,

but nobody ever uses them.

People enjoy reading their mail,

take pleasure in being with their newsgroups,

spend weekends working at their terminals,

delight in the doings at the site.

And even though the next system is so close

that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps,

they are content to die of old age

without ever having gone to see it.

                        -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

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EFFector Online             August 19, 1992                Issue  3.2

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation         

                           ISSN 1062-9424                            

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               GETTING A HANDLE ON THE FUTURE OF NSFNET

                    by Andrew Blau (blau@eff.org)

                  A Report on the July 23 Meeting 

                 of the Communications Policy Forum 

                          in Washington, D.C.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for the NSFNet. 

Originally a network created to link a handful of supercomputing 

centers serving the U.S. research and education community, NSFNet 

became the backbone of the Internet in this country, now serving 

millions of people and thousands of organizations.  Since 1987, the 

NSF has contracted with a partnership of Merit Network, Inc., IBM 

and MCI to provide and manage these "backbone network services.  

That contract will expire in November of this year.

In order to award a contract for the next phase of the NSFNet's 

growth and management, NSF staff is preparing a solicitation that 

will describe the network that the NSF wants and invite interested 

organizations to bid to become the provider of those services.  

However, before releasing the final solicitation that will be bid 

on, the NSF released a draft and asked for public comment on it. 

Comments were to be filed by August 3rd of this year.

In response to this, EFF, which administers the Communications 

Policy Forum in Washington, DC convened a roundtable on July 23 to 

bring together a wide cross-section of groups that would either be 

bidding on the new contract or would be affected by its outcome. 

Also attending the meeting were members of the NSF staff. The 

meeting itself, in order to stimulate an open exchange of views, was 

"off-the-record" in that while notes on the sense of the speakers 

were maintained, no speaker was directly quoted.

                 The Proposed New Shape of NSFNet

The Draft Solicitation describes a new architecture for the NSFNet. 

It specifies certain requirements for those who are interested in 

providing these services.  

Until now, the "backbone network services" that lie at the heart of 

the NSFNet worked as a single package. This package was a trunk for 

connecting regional or "mid-level" networks across the country. It 

was provided by an organization that also controlled access to the 

backbone and directed traffic on it.  In recent years, this 

arrangement created a sense of unfairness among competitors in the 

independent commercial sector who are eager to provide network 

services and Internet connections. 

In order to address these and other concerns, the Draft Solicitation 

proposes that the next generation will split this package into two 

distinct units. The first unit would be a "very high speed backbone" 

or "vBNS". The second unit would provide a number of "network access 

points" or "NAPs."  The entity responsible for providing the NAPs 

will also be the Routing Authority that oversees network traffic.

The draft also specifies some requirements for the new architecture. 

First the vBNS must operate at 155 mbps or higher. Second, it must 

connect to all NAPs. Third, it must provide high speed interregional 

connectivity. Fourth it must be restricted to research and education 

traffic only. Fifth, the NAPs must operate at speeds of at least 100 

mbps, may connect any number of networks to each other or the vBNS, 

and are open to any kind of traffic.  Finally, the vBNS provider and 

the NAP manager must be two different entities.

                        Reactions at the CPF

Two major themes emerged from the nearly six hours of discussion at 

the July 23rd CPF meeting.  

First, there has been substantial lack of shared understanding about 

some of the draft's key elements.  Among items mentioned were such 

basic questions as what is a NAP, what is the vBNS, how will they 

relate, are there ways of connecting to the vBNS without going 

through a NAP, how many NAPs will there be and where will they be 

located, what will it cost to connect to a NAP and how will charges 

be set?

Second, it became clear that there were many important issues about 

which the NSF remained "intentionally silent."  Most obviously, the 

draft has no guidelines to suggest how bids will be evaluated.  In 

addition, the draft is silent about how this generation of the 

NSFNet intersects with the development of the NREN. It does not 

suggest how prices for NAP attachment will be set, and when. The 

draft fails to address the procedure for starting a non-NSF 

sponsored NAP and connecting to the vBNS. The draft also fails to 

illuminate how the NSF determines when a technology is no longer 

"experimental" and can be provided commercially without further 

government funding.

Additional issues came from the various constituencies around the 

table who brought with them very different concerns.  For example, 

the research and education community appreciated that the draft 

seemed to make it easier to access commercial services through the 

Internet, yet expressed concern that the new architecture would 

disrupt the regional arrangements that allow costs to be shared.  

These cost sharing arrangements, they argue, foster more widespread 

connectivity, and disrupting them could reduce rather than increase 

the number of networked institutions.

Commercial network service providers expressed a range of opinions.  

Some supported the basic architecture, although suggested certain 

modifications, such as that the Routing Authority be separate from 

the entity that manages the NAPs.  Others argued that the draft 

continues to unfairly distort the marketplace for network services 

by subsidizing standard connections such as e-mail.

Local telephone companies, who have not previously been involved in 

the development of the NSFNet, pointed out that the NSF was 

proposing a new commercial network without taking into account the 

infrastructure and regulatory boundaries of the nation's local 

exchange telephone companies.  Since the breakup of the Bell System, 

for example, the Baby Bells cannot transport traffic across certain 

regional boundaries.  If the NSF's architecture does not put a NAP 

in every one of these regions, then these network providers are 

automatically excluded from full participation.

Following the meeting, the EFF staff prepared a summary of the major 

issues that arose during the course of the discussion and circulated 

it to all those in attendance. The EFF also submitted it to the NSF as 

a record of important concerns that the EFF believes should be 

considered in preparing the final solicitation.  In addition, the EFF 

asked the NSF to resubmit a draft solicitation for public comment 

before issuing a final version.

                       *      *      *      *      *

Want more information?

For more information about the NSFNet draft solicitation and bidding

process, contact our Washington office at eff.org.  DC staff members 

Danny Weitzner(djw@eff.org) and Andrew Blau (blau@eff.org), as well as 

Jerry Berman (jberman@eff.org), the Director of the Washington office, 

have all been working on this issue.

About the Communications Policy Forum

The Communications Policy Forum, a project administered by the EFF, 

provides consumer and public interest groups, telecommunications 

companies, computer industry groups and policy makers a common forum 

in which to discuss telecommunications issues and exchange views in 

a non-partisan setting.  The CPF also undertakes non-partisan 

research.  It is co-sponsored with the Consumer Federation of 

America and the ACLU.

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

             MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by

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Our memberships are $20.00 per year for students, $40.00 per year for

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Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under

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explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership

disclosed to any group for any reason.

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                   EFFector Online is published by

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########## ########## ########## |  THE EFF AND THE FBI: Two Letters 

########## ########## ########## |                                   

####       ####       ####       |                                   

########   ########   ########   |       ONE BBSCON REPORTS          

########   ########   ########   | At Play in the Field of the Boards

####       ####       ####       |        Dueling BBSCONS            

########## ####       ####       |                                   

########## ####       ####       |                                   

=====================================================================

EFFector Online             August 24, 1992                Issue  3.3

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation         

                           ISSN 1062-9424                            

=====================================================================

                THE EFF AND THE FBI: An exchange of views

This is an exchange of letters in the Wall Street Journal between

the Director of the FBI, William Sessions and EFF's Staff Counsel, Mike 

Godwin.

                                                     August 4,1992

FBI Must Keep Up With Wonks & Hackers

Re your July 9 article about a very successful "computer hackers" 

investigation conducted by the FBI and the Secret Service ("Wiretap 

Inquiry Spurs Computer Hacker Charges"):  The article mentions that 

court-ordered electronic surveillance was a critical part of the 

investigation and that the FBI is seeking laws to make it easier to tap 

computer systems.  Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Electronic 

Frontier Foundation, said that "the success in this case 'undercuts' the 

argument that new laws are needed."  I believe the opposite to be the 

case.  This investigation clearly demonstrates why legislation is 

absolutely necessary.

What Mr. Godwin is referring to is a legislative proposal on behalf of 

law enforcement to ensure that as telecommunications technology 

advances, the ability of law enforcement to conduct court-ordered 

electronic surveillance is not lost.  Without the legislation, it is 

almost certain that will occur.  The proposal is not directed at 

computer systems, but pertains to telephone service providers and 

equipment manufacturers.

In 1968, Congress carefully considered and passed legislation setting 

forth the exacting procedure by which court authorization to conduct 

electronic surveillance can be obtained.  Since that time it has become 

an invaluable investigative tool in combating serious and often life-

threatening crimes such as terrorism, kidnapping, drugs and organized 

crime.  The 1968 law contemplates cooperation by the telecommunications 

service providers in implementing these court orders.  The proposed 

legislation only clarifies that responsibility by making it clearly 

applicable regardless of the technology deployed.

Absent legislation, the ability to conduct successful investigations 

such as the one mentioned in your article will certainly be jeopardized.

The deployment of digital telecommunications equipment that is not 

designed to meet the need for law enforcement to investigate crime and 

enforce the laws will have that effect.  No new authority is needed or 

requested.  All the legislation would do if enacted is ensure that the 

status quo is maintained and the ability granted by Congress in 1968 

preserved.

William S. Sessions

Director, FBI, Department of Justice

Wall Street Journal, August 4, 1992

                                                  August 14, 1992

Letters to the Editor

The Wall Street Journal:

200 Liberty Street

New York, NY 10281

In his Aug. 4 letter to the editor, FBI Director William Sessions

disagrees with my quoted opinion that the FBI's success in a

computer-wiretap case "'undercuts' the argument that new laws are 

needed." His disagreement doesn't disturb me too much; it's the kind of 

thing over which reasonable people can disagree.

What does disturb me, however, is Sessions's claim about the FBI's

initiative to require the phone companies (and other

communications-service providers, like CompuServe) to build wiretapping

capabilities into their systems. Says Sessions, apparently without 

irony:

"No new authority is needed or requested. All the legislation would if

enacted is ensure that the status quo is maintained and the ability [of

law enforcement to implement wiretaps] is preserved." Earlier, Sessions

says the proposed legislation "only clarifies [the phone companies']

responsibility" to cooperate with properly authorized law enforcement

under the 1968 Wiretap Act.

What Sessions does not mention, however, is that his legislation would,

among other things, allow the government to impose upon those phone

companies and communications-service providers who do not build

wiretapping into their systems "a civil penalty of $10,000 per day for

each day in violation." By any standards other than those of Sessions 

and the FBI, this constitutes "new authority." If this proposal "only

clarifies" providers' obligations under the 1968 Act, one shudders to

imagine what Sessions would call an "expansion" of law-enforcement

authority.

MIKE GODWIN

Staff Counsel

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cambridge, Massachusetts

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

         At Play in the Field of the Boards: Report on ONE BBSCON

                         August 13-16, 1992. 

                   by Steve Cisler (sac@apple.com)

                   Validating the BBS Ticket

Our plane punched down through the low clouds a half hour late into 

Denver. A short shuttle ride and you're at the Stouffer Concourse Hotel 

the site of the Online Networking Exposition and BBS Convention ONE 

BBSCon. This was to be the first ecumenical gathering of bulletin board 

system operators (sysops), hardware and software vendors, and 

programmers that spanned the DOS, Unix, and Macintosh worlds. There had 

once been annual meetings of Fidonet sysops, but the parent organization 

had folded even as the number of BBS systems continued to explode.

Jack Rickard, President of ONE, Inc. and publisher of Boardwatch 

Magazine <jack.rickard@boardwatch.com> had partnered up with Phil 

Becker, author of TBBS software, to organize a trade show for BBS 

operators that would be inexpensive enough to attract those running 

their boards as hobbies but featured tutorials and panels with subjects 

attractive to entrepreneurs who have mounted and maintained successful 

business systems with four, eight, on up to 64 phone lines for their 

clients. 

Most of us in the online world are stratified in our interests when it 

comes to networking and communications. There are MIS shops depending on 

minis and mainframes; there are the academic and research networks where 

NREN and the Internet dominate; there are consumer services, a 

continuing, failure when promoted and maintained by the regional phone 

companies and successful in different ways at Prodigy, GEnie, 

CompuServe, and America Online. But then there are the BBS systems.

BBS systems, users, and sysops have never been validated by many of the 

mainstream opinion makers. Most of the operators and users have been 

outsiders, socially, politically, and even economically. Of these, a 

significant subset are proud of this status, but others yearn to make 

their "hobby" into a full-fledged industry. Indeed, if some of the 

reports of BBS size heard in the panels and in the halls are even 

remotely accurate, there are many "machete and loincloth BBSs that rival 

commercial services. ONE BBSCON brought nearly 1000 of these outsiders 

together for the first time. It also attracted mainstream users who have 

found BBSs to be cost effective, easy to maintain (compared to other 

sorts of electronic systems), and extremely useful. ONE BBSCON put the 

spotlight on the "Industry" as Rickard and Becker hope it will become. 

BBS System vendors were on the organizing board, and there were tracks 

for the major DOS/Intel systems: Wildcat!, TBBS, PCBoard, MAJOR, and 

Searchlight as well as other operating systems such as UNIX and 

Macintosh (the latter comprised less than 5% of the attendees). Other 

tracks were for legal and social issues, corporate and business 

applications, how to make money with a BBS, the Internet/NREN, Mail 

networks, and a technical track. 

                       Few Ties and Big Skies

The opening reception included a sprinkling of ties, making me feel 

over-dressed in a sport coat. With the dress code set for the rest of 

the days ahead, I thumbed through the program and spoke with BBS and 

networking folks whom I had met online or at other conferences. Dave 

Hughes of Old Colorado City Communications <dave@well.sf.ca.us> and 

Frank Odasz of Big Sky Telegraph <frank@bigsky.dillon.mt.us> noted the 

lack of education tracks in the program, but with their participation in 

the program it became an important sub-theme. 

The range of activities in the BBS world indicates the potential power 

and freedom to experiment that goes with cheap hardware, BBS software, 

and a reasonably priced public telephone network. A journalist from 

Albuquerque is running his newspaper's 16 line system, which provides 

news to callers at no charge. A BBS team had just returned from Russia 

where they were helping set up a country-wide system using low-orbiting 

satellites for data transmission. An entrepreneur who had been sued by 

Playboy enterprises for vending GIF images of Playmates (and using that 

trademarked name in his BBS menus) without much thought of copyright was 

present and seeking advice and solace. 

At the opening session it was immediately evident ONE BBSCON was going 

to be a successful conference. It was also clear how BBSs would become 

an industry that would overshadow but not eliminate hobby uses of such 

systems: cheap 9600 bps modems, inexpensive 486 servers, and telephone 

systems that are not charging by measured use (as is done in many other 

countries). Boardwatch estimates that there are 44,000 public systems 

(and many more private and corporate ones) in the U.S. The four vendors 

sitting on ONE, Inc. board claim to have an installed base of 50,000, 

and this excludes Fido, the most popular of all systems. Phil Becker 

made a strong pitch for the BBS as a business tool for mainstream 

activities and belittled what he called the 'stupid niches' like Keith 

Wade's THE ANARCHIST GUIDE TO BBS. Clearly, Becker wanted to encourage 

mainstream business uses of this technology. They were impressive and 

diverse. Others like Tom Jennings (author of the extremely cheap and 

popular Fido software) sees the technology benefiting the outsiders: the 

fat, the handicapped, the socially inept, the disenfranchised, the 

radical, the non-mainstream. And of course, BBS technology can fill both 

Becker's and Jennings' very different visions, but Becker's was the one 

in the ascendent at ONE BBSCon 

The keynote speech was given by John Dvorak, who writes for many 

computer magazines, has co-authored a successful book on telecomms, and 

is often on the public speaker circuit. His columns are entertaining, 

opinionated and as Art Kleiner said in an old S.F. Bay Guardian article, 

he is a "curmudgeon without a cause." 

People who like to rattle cages can be good speakers and warm the crowd 

up for the ensuing events. However, Dvorak devoted so much time to self 

advertisements and plugging his books that it seemed he must have spent 

about 10 minutes thinking about some of the issues that needed 

addressing with regards to BBSes. A sprinkling of Dvorak comments: "get 

a fan for your 486 machines... OS/2 is fun! (Windows is not)...the BBS 

community needs a lobbyist in each state; it's embarrassingly naive and 

should examine how it operates on different levels...Al Gore is the Dan 

Quayle of the Democratic Party...The porno boards are always under 

scrutiny by the government. one way or another... Playboy images on a 

BBS has to be called fair use... BBSes cannot continue to allow slander 

on the boards. You have to clean up your act by self-policing. 

Dvorak also called for a constitutional amendment to protect electronic 

rights, apparently unaware that constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe 

had proposed this in his keynote at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 1 

some eighteen months ago, a proposal that received national publicity. 

On the one hand Dvorak pandered to anti-Congress sentiments in the crowd 

and then urged involvement in politics; on the other hand he found the 

Perot candidacy a sham, including the electronic element. 

                Panels: Social and Technical

I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation program which filled up 

with an overflow from the Legal track where Lance Rose addressed many 

questions about the rights and responsibilities of sysops in an 

increasingly litigious and regulated environment. Shari Steele, a lawyer 

in the EFF Washington office, explained their activities and then 

answered questions. The questions revealed the strong anti-Washington, 

anti-lawyer, anti-regulation sentiments in the audience. It is evident 

that many sysops value the control they believe they have when they set 

up and run a bulletin board. Hearing about the FCC and Congressional 

efforts to change 'their' world made some people angry and others want 

to organize. 

Midway through the conference a group of software developers decided to 

organize to try and learn about existing standards before setting ones 

that would benefit their own developers and users. The three main areas 

include interface, messaging and document structure, and graphics. 

Surprisingly, some did not want to give up the diversity that is so 

evident in the many interfaces and message protocols, but most agreed to 

try and set an agenda via electronic mail and plan for other actions at 

the next conference. The Internet Engineering Task Force use of RFCs 

(Request for Comment) was held up as a model they would emulate. 

Jim Warren moderated the panel on electronic democracy where most 

members were excited about the power of the tools. Gary Stryker of 

Galacticom proposed a system called SuperDemocracy which would include 

continuous electronic voting on issues in a hierarchy by geographical 

region. Shari Steele reminded the group that many did not have computers 

or modems, and that electronic democracy would exclude many potential 

voters. Gary Nakarado, a PUC commissioner in Colorado recounted how he 

started a BBS to learn more about the medium and to be in touch with the 

interesting people in his community. Unfortunately, they have not been 

logging in. PUC activities attract very little attention and he has very 

few calls and questions from the general public. He is interested in 

having more input on issues such as ISDN service, BBSes, and other 

issues affecting Colorado utility users. 

Bernard Aboba, author of BBSes and Beyond , talked about the software 

for connecting Macs to the global mail networks (RIME, Fido, Internet, 

uucp) and it was evident that the Mac is a terrific front end for many 

systems, but as a server it needs more power and more tools from third 

parties. Developers from ResNova 714 840 6082 showed how their Mac BBS 

software could fill the gaps, as did a rep. from SoftArc 416 299 4723. 

SoftArc's FirstClass server and client software looked very powerful and 

full of features that would allow a FirstClass BBS to serve many 

concurrent users on LAN, dialup and TCP/IP access. 

All of the companies are quite small, and the wish lists of new features 

grows faster than the staff to work on them. Still I was amazed at the 

power and sophistication of the DOS and Mac BBS systems. Event Horizons, 

the BBS vending adult GIF images south of Portland, Oregon, has a 64 

line 80486 system running on TBBS! Other systems running multiple cpus 

have a hundred or more lines coming in. Clearly, these are not basement 

run, part time operations. 

                       The BBS Bulletin Board

One morning I went down to comb the literature tables and read the cork 

bulletin board where a variety of fascinating notes had been posted. 

They will give you a sense of the diversity in this community: 

    -Monterey Gaming System 408 655 5555 (free) 

    -Black Cat Information Service in Rochester NY 716 262 3680 (Visa/MC 

accepted!) Games, Society for Creative Anachronism files and Adult Info 

    -the Zoo...an electric safari. your tour guide: Chuck 2. 312 907 

1831 to 1839. 

    -The OU BBS, University of Oklahoma (telnet 

oubbs,telecom.uoknor.edu) 

    -Power Windows! BBS (also for OS/2 users) Huntsville, AL 205 881 

8619 

    -The Invention Factory, (NY, NY) 212 274 8110 

    -The Online Diver (Brooklyn Center, MN) 566 5267 No area code must 

indicate that it's for local Minnesota divers primarily. 

    -Nautilus Commercial Data System with 250,000 public domain files, 

200 incoming data lines (!), 28 gigabytes of storage, satellite weather 

images, hourly news updates, games, dBase templates, GIF images---all 

out of Iola, Kansas  316 365 7631. 

    -Infinity Complex "a wickedly addictive Science Fiction game for 

MAJOR BBS systems. Infinity Complex puts your users in a bizarre arena 

of the future, where they must battle for their very lives...and use up 

a lot of online hours in the process!" 403 476 8369 (voice) 

    -an ad for the first annual Puget Sound (WA) BBS convention (no 

phone contact) 

    -ads for serial port boards, new BBS software, consulting services, 

and calls for source code for data compression. 

    -BAWIT Bay Area Women in Telecom for working women in 

telecommunications in the San Francisco area. Contact 

bawitrequest@igc.apc.org. 

    -Make your own custom CD-ROM for $199. Up to 640 mb. ISO 9660. 800 

762. 

                     Internet and NREN 

There was a lot of interest in Internet/NREN issues, but only a few 

people knew much about them. The panels on Internet connectivity, 

legislation, and interfaces drew good sized crowds but needed more basic 

information in a standard presentation format before having Q&A. BBSes 

can be a good interface for people going on to the Internet. It provides 

a way of formatting and filtering the anarchy of the Internet, even as 

it offers occasion for excess control of what a caller can see and use. 

I spent more time showing resources using Mac-based interfaces than 

talking about the intricacies of the growth of NREN in my session which 

was included in the small Macintosh track rather than the larger 

Internet track. I also participated in a graphics discussion where the 

panelists discussed GIF (the CompuServe standard so popular on BBSes and 

the Internet), NAPLPS (which is good for multi-lingual communications 

and small vector-based images), JPEG (the compression du jour that may 

displace GIF and the one that the Smithsonian and Apple are touting for 

Project Chapman), and FIF (fractal image format which is a more 

efficient proprietary algorithm than JPEG but which takes a long time to 

compress). 

                          Summary 

The BBS world is changing, growing, exploding. Jack Rickard has provided 

good coverage in his magazine. His conference was a big success (and a 

very good value considering the amount of fine food that was included 

with the conference activities). If you are not in the BBS world, and 

even if you are, it's hard to be aware of the all activity because it is 

so distributed. This conference helped immensely. 

I think that Rickard will have to face a problem of success: will he 

continue to be the lively and opinionated journalist when his magazine 

and his conference become the focus of the whole industry and a possible 

industry association? He may have to defend actions when he should be 

exposing them, but that is looking a couple of years ahead. Right now, 

there is no way to go but up and out because of the growing interest in 

this medium of information dissemination and of personal communication. 

A BBS provides both sysops and users an enormous amount of leverage, and 

the library world should take notice more than it does. One prominent 

public librarian who is quite involved in electronic dissemination of 

information remarked to me a few years ago that it would be great if 

BBSes just went away. I have heard other dismissive or even snobbish 

comments about BBSes, but the four librarians whom I met at ONE BBSCON 

all realized this is foolish. It's not the only tool to use, but it can 

be a very important one. 

Contacts mentioned in the text: 

       Gary Nakarado, Colorado Public Utilities commissioner 

<nakarado@well.sf.ca.us> 303 526 5505 is his BBS number. 

       NAPLPS: North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax. 

       Dave Hughes <dave@oldcolo.com or dave@well.sf.ca.us> 

       Fractal compression: Fracterm, Inc. in Richmond, BC 

800-676-3111 

       GIF: CompuServe Art Gallery and various browsers at ftp sites 

       JPEG: mail jpeg-info@uunet.uu.net or contact sac@apple.com 

       Boardwatch : 303 973 6038 or jack.rickard@boardwatch.com 

       TBBS software: eSoft 303 699 6565 

       SuperDemocracy Foundation: 305 583 5990 

       Bernard Aboba: BMUG, Inc., 510 547 0345  

       Jim Warren (electronic democracy): jwarren@well.sf.ca.us 

       Electronic Frontier Foundation: eff@eff.org 

       Lance Rose (legal issues):  author of Syslaw a legal guide to the 

rights and responsibilities of sysops. 

       Laurence H. Tribe, "The Constitution in Cyberspace" anonymous ftp 

from ftp.apple.com in the /ftp/alug/rights directory 49 kb. 

====================================================================

Copyright 1992 by Steve Cisler, Apple Library. All or part of this 

document may be redistributed free of charge in electronic format (disk, 

CD-ROM, online) by any party. Print re-distribution is allowed for 

personal use as well as  non-profit. educational and government 

newsletters and journals. Please send email to the author when you do 

reprint or repost or quote from this report. Internet: sac@apple.com 

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

  

                             Dueling BBScons:

                          The View From The Booth

                       by Rita Rouvalis (rita@eff.org)

Last week, Denver was the host of not one, but two BBS conferences.  

Most people didn't know that -- especially those attending ONE BBSCON.

At some point, last year's FidoCon split -- spinning off into The ONE 

BBScon and IBECC (International BBSing and Electronic Commuications 

Conference). Who split first is hotly debated. Why they split in 

the first place was never addressed.  Neither conference benefitted.

IBECC, focused primarily upon hobbyist and other non-profit boards, took 

the worse hit.  Hampered by the absence of an adequate publicity 

machine, attendance was extremely low.  On the afternoon I spent at that 

conference, the EFF's panel was the best attended class -- with 

around ten people in the audience.  These individuals were 

intensely interested in the social implications of the growth 

of BBS networks, questioning EFF staff attorney Shari Steele and myself 

about everything from the Open Platform proposal to what the EFF plans 

to do about the harassment of pagan BBS'ers in heavy fundamentalist 

territory.  

Although the hit didn't come in the pocketbook for ONE BBScon, it did 

suffer from the split. Without the presence of the educational and non-

profit interests of IBECC, much of the conference came off as crass 

commercialism at its worst.  I found it odd that a conference professing 

to be "it" for the BBS world would intentionally excluded such a large

faction  of the BBS community. The emphasis was placed squarely on 

making money from your BBS.  Phil Becker even went so far as to ridicule 

a book entitled The Anarchist's Guide to the BBS -- summarily dismissing 

one of the most valuable functions of BBS's -- the distribution of 

information not easily had in other places. 

Just previous and during the conference rumors and accusations were 

flying about unfair methods on the behalf of ONE to lure IBECC attendees 

to ONE BBSCon.  Some individuals claimed that when they called the 

Stouffer Concourse, where ONE BBSCon was being held, hotel staff told 

them that it was the hotel for IBECC (IBECC was held in the Sheraton on 

the other side of Denver).  Another claimed that ONE intentionally 

designed a sign in the lobby on the first day to look like IBECC.  Some 

ONE attendees, unaware that IBECC was happening across town, recalled 

hearing about it and assumed that ONE was the same conference.

ONE BBSCon was a far better publicized and organized conference than 

IBECC, which goes a lot farther in accounting for its success than any 

alleged underhanded practices. What I fail to understand, however,

is why these two conferences split off in the first place, and why their

organizers are wasting our time with petty politics when it is obvious 

that the BBS community needs and wants to become more unified.

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

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                   EFFector Online is published by

                 The Electronic Frontier Foundation

                155 Second Street, Cambridge MA 02141

             Phone: +1 617 864 0665 FAX: +1 617 864 0866

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########## ########## ########## |    FIGALLO DIRECTS EFF/CAMBRIDGE  

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####       ####       ####       |        CLINTON ON HIGH TECH       

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########   ########   ########   |         ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY      

####       ####       ####       |          The Implications         

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EFFector Online           September 11, 1992              Issue  3.04

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                           ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

                      FIGALLO ONLINE AT EFF.ORG

Cliff Figallo became the new director of EFF-Cambridge at the beginning 

of the month.  Former director of The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the 

EFF's birthplace), Fig is charged with developing and coordinating the 

Cambridge office's outreach activities, increasing active EFF membership, 

and expanding overall awareness of the EFF's programs in the computer-

conferencing community and the world at large.

Commenting on his new task, Figallo said, "EFF came upon the online scene 

a couple years ago with a big splash.  I'd like for us to continue 

splashing.  EFF is uniquely engaged in many useful and important 

activities in the areas of online civil liberties, sane lawmaking and 

advocacy of improved electronic highways for the future.  I want news of 

these activities to get out to the people for whom we are making a 

difference.  I also want us to develop better channels for these same 

people to communicate their wants and needs to those of us with access to 

the legal, informational and technical resources.  Our purpose is to 

serve those wants and needs for the betterment of the world. 

    "More specifically, I will encourage  people to become members of EFF 

by demonstrating to them the value of a membership.  One should expect 

noticeable benefits from paying membership dues and I intend to make it 

plain that those benefits exist and will only increase as more people 

become involved in telecommunications.  I will also be working with 

regional groups who may be interested in forming local EFF chapters so 

that we can learn together how such affiliations can enhance our mutual 

effectiveness. 

    "I'm excited about working here.  I believe in what EFF is all about."

Cliff can be reached as fig@eff.org.

                          -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

       STATEMENT OF BILL CLINTON FOR THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL

                    AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERS (IEEE)

Bill Clinton for President Committee * 1317 F Street, NW, Suite 902 *

    Washington DC 20004  Telephone 202-393-3323  FAX 202-393-3329

                 e-mail correspondence@dc.Clinton-Gore.org

    "We face a fundamental economic challenge today:  to create a

high-wage, high-growth national economy that will carry America into

the 21st century.  We need a long-term national strategy to meet this

challenge and win.

    "Our productivity and income have been growing so slowly

because we've stopped investing in the economic infrastructure that

binds our markets and businesses together, in the education and

training necessary to give our workers world-class skills, and in the

research and development that can restore America to the cutting

edge of the world economy.  As a nation, we're spending more on the

present and the past and building less for the future.  We need a

President who will turn the country around and refocus on the long

view.  As President, I will divide the budget into three parts, creating

a separate 'future budget' for the federal government to make

investments that will enrich our country over the long term.  Today

the federal government spends only 9 per cent of the budget on

investments for the future; a Clinton Administration will double that.

We will pay for it by diverting resources no longer needed for

defense, but we will ensure that every dollar we take out of military

R&D goes into R&D for civilian technologies until civilian R&D can

match and eventually surpass our Cold War military R&D commitment.

    "As President, I will create an investment tax credit and a new

enterprise tax cut that rewards those who invest in new businesses

that create new jobs.  I will also make the research and development

tax credit permanent.

    "My administration will create a civilian research and

development agency to support research in the technologies that

scientists have already identified as the basis for launching new

growth industries and revitalizing traditional ones over the next two

decades.   This civilian DARPA will coordinate R&D to help companies

develop innovative technologies and bring new products to market.

And without inhibiting the competition that drives innovation, we will

encourage and promote collaborative efforts among firms and with

research institutes for commercial development just as we have done

with defense technologies for 40 years.

    "A Clinton Administration will create a high-speed rail network

between out nation's major cities.  And in the new economy,

infrastructure means information as well as transportation.  More than

half the U.S. workforce is employed in information-intensive

industries,  yet we have no national strategy to create a national

information network.  Just as the interstate highway system in the

1950s spurred two decades of economic growth, we need a door-to-

door fiber optics system by the year 2015; a link to every home, lab,

classroom and business in America.

    "For small defense manufacturers hit by cuts in defense

spending, the Small Business Administration will provide small

conversion loans to help finance their transition, and launch a

Technology Assistance Service -- modeled on the Agricultural

Extension Service -- to provide easy access to the technical expertise

it takes to convert to commercial production.

    "To enjoy the full benefit of these investments, we must do

everything possible to open up markets now closed to American

products.  My administration will provide the leadership for Japan and

the European countries to join us in coordinating our macroeconomic

policies and in reaching multilateral trade negotiations.  But we will

also provide the muscle to open up Japan's markets to competitive U.S.

products using a stronger and more carefully targeted "Super 301"

approach.  We favor a free and open trading system, but if our

competitors won't play by those rules, we will play by theirs.

    "All the investments in the world won't mean much if our

workers don't have the education or the skills to take advantage of the

opportunities they create.  My administration will fully fund Head

Start, increase funding for Chapter 1, and provide seed money for

innovative education projects.  However, we will also raise standards

by establishing a national testing system in elementary and secondary

schools and instituting report cards for ever state, school district, 

and school in the nation, to measure their progress.  We will also

create a nationwide apprenticeship program for those young people who

choose not to go to college, and a national trust fund for college loans

for those who do.  These loans will be repaid either as a small 

percentage of income over time or with a couple of years of national 

service.

    "With the strategy I have outlined, we can restore the American

Dream by enabling every citizen and every business to become more

productive, and in so doing, restore our nation to the front lines of

high technology.

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

         ON ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY AND ITS PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS

                        by Marilyn Davis, Ph.D.

                           madavis@igc.org

               Principal Software Engineer and Founder

            The Electronic Democracy Project on EcoNet

     President and Principal Software Engineer, Frontier Systems

One vision of Electronic Democracy is the television show, where we are

presented with some options and we vote, using either phone lines or new

gadgets attached to our television cables.

Experiments in this type of ED (the QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio, 1977-

1984; Canada's Talking Back, 1978-9; the New Zealand Televote, 1981; the

Prime Time Electronic Town Meeting in the SF Bay Area, 1987) can all be

characterized as the "big-vote" type of Electronic Democracy.  We are

presented with a set of predetermined options and we press a button to

indicate our choice, and it's over.  The articles written about these

systems state that participation runs high, and that participants came

from all walks of life, but that, in the Canadian experiment, at least,

the results were largely ignored by lawmakers.

Getting our lawmakers to listen to us is one problem with this style of

Electronic Democracy.  Another problem is that it requires us to all

watch television at some specific times.  Still another is the

technological inefficiency involved in building a system that is huge

enough to record everyone's nearly simultaneous vote, but, that is only

used for a half-hour per week.

The worst complaint about this style of Electronic Democracy is that it

is not "democracy" from a political theory point of view.  The big-vote

type of Electronic Democracy was criticized in 1982 by Jean Betheke

Elshtain, a political scientist, as being an "interactive shell game

[that] cons us into believing that we are participating when we are

really simply performing as the responding "end" of a prefabricated

system of external stimuli." Elshtain complains that these systems are

not "democracies", but "plebiscites".  "In a plebiscitary system, the

views of the majority, ..., swamp minority or unpopular views.

Plebiscitism is compatible with authoritarian politics

carried out under the guise of, or with the connivance of, majority

views. That opinion can be registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic

plebiscites, so there is no need for debate on substantive questions."

Another political theorist, Brian Fay, has said about democracy that

what "is most significant is the involvement of the citizens in the

process of determining their own collective identity." Thus, the primary

activity of a real democracy is discussion, not voting.  In a real

democracy, there is facility to bring up issues, exchange opinions, poll

ourselves, re-discuss, and re-poll, until consensus is reached.  Here I

suggest two tenets of an ideal democracy:

1.  Equal power:  In an ideal democracy, every participant has equal

opportunity to bring up new issues, equal opportunity to participate in

every discussion, equal opportunity to vote in every decision, and equal

weight in each vote.  Because, until now, we haven't had the technology

for Electronic Democracy, we have been trapped away from this ideal by

the necessity for a representative democracy, i.e., a democracy where we

elect representatives who make our decisions, rather than make our

decisions ourselves.

2.  Consensus: In an ideal democracy, group action only results from

a consensus agreement.

Here (and everywhere), by "consensus", I prefer Webster's New Twentieth

Century Dictionary, unabridged, definition that says, "unanimity;

agreement, especially in opinion; hence, general opinion." Random House

has a much longer discussion of the word but has no interpretation that

implies "unanimity".

More practically, by "consensus", I mean the style of consensus

decision-making practiced by Quakers, by many peace groups, and by some

groups of people who live together.  These groups don't act until all

agree - or, at least, no one disagrees.  You may "stand-out" of the vote

if you still disagree with an action, but don't wish to block the group.

Our computer networks offer the only means to implement a method of

organization and decision-making where these ideals can be efficiently

achieved.

Although the number of on-line participants is growing fast, still there

are only an elite few of us.  The first tenet of an ideal democracy

demands equal access; we don't have that yet.  But, if providing tenet

#1 becomes a national priority, it would also provide an economic

alternative for some of our dependence on technical weapon-making.

Each of us, who is a member of a BBS community, has equal opportunity to

introduce and discuss issues, but very limited decision-making tools.

Even so, these systems are proving themselves to be powerful political

tools.  In Santa Monica, where there is a city-provided computer network

with a public BBS, the on-line citizens have been able to coerce their

lawmakers into opening the public beach showers in the early morning so

that the homeless can clean up and possibly find work.  On the

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) networks, EcoNet,

PeaceNet, and others, 10,000 peace and environmental activists world-

wide participate in discussions and organize for actions with the goal

of saving the planet.

In October of this year, these networks, and all C/Unix-based

conferencing systems, can add voting to their list of features.

"eVote", vote-keeping software from Frontier Systems, will be available

for integration into these systems.  This software will enable the on-

line communities to take votes and polls, to spend budgets

democratically, and to develop consensus opinions.

IMPORTANT TECHNICAL DETAILS

Most C/Unix-based conferencing systems maintain a number of conferences;

each conference is a discussion about one narrow (or broad) subject.  To

organize the discussion, each conference has a list of "topics",

relevant to the conference, that are posted there by users as the

conference grows. Each topic has a number of "messages", also posted by

users, that carry the thread of the conversation on the topic.

When eVote comes on line, votes will be taken at the "topic" level only,

not on messages.  This means that you will always be able to add a

message when you vote, to qualify or explain it.

The list of topic titles for a particular conference appears on the

"index screen".  When eVote is in place, the index screen will also list

statistics indicating the number of readers, and, if a vote is being

collected on the topic, the number of voters and average vote.

The user who originates the topic dictates the format for the vote: 

whether the vote will be from "0 to 9", "Yes or No", or "Vote for 3 of

the following 10".  The voting can be configured so that users can

change their votes and see how others voted.  These are essential

features for enabling consensus and/or for emulating an in-person

meeting.

The "Vote for 3 of the following 10" feature can be used to

democratically spend a budget.  In this case the instructions will be

"Distribute your 100ED-bucks among the following 20 proposals".  The

group can decide (probably by consensus) to spend the real budget

according to the group's average distribution.  This then, is a

mechanism for determining and carrying out group decisions without

depending on a representative.

A group can decide to spend money on a political campaign.  The

Electronic Democracy candidate would be a figure-head who, if elected,

makes all the decisions of the office according to the decisions of the

on-line group.

This computer-networked, discussion-dominated, type of Electronic

Democracy provides both tenets of an ideal democracy:  equal power, and

consensus facilitation.  In addition, we can democratically direct funds,

thereby facilitating an ideally democratic process from the first

expression of a new idea, all the way through discussion and decision-

making, to implementation by spending the money.

In face to face meetings, the consensus process works. It is easy to

imagine that it will work in small on-line groups of similar mind (like

the EcoNet community).  Mathematics and computer science will provide

algorithms to insure that each group deals fairly with other groups

Indeed, special cases and special privileges are very difficult to build

into software.  Because we will be starting with small groups, we won't

confront big decisions until we've built the software to coalesce our

small-group decisions into larger and larger circles of consensus. 

There can be no danger in it.

WHAT WILL THIS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE?

A seminal difficulty of our species, is the struggle we each face with

two distinct, universal, and somewhat opposing human drives.  The first

is our need, or at least our expectation, that we should have "self-

determination". It is this expectation that has compelled us to rebel

against despots throughout history.  Our struggles with the "terrible

two's" and "troubled teens" can be interpreted as our struggle to

reconcile our expectations of self-determination with our other,

apparently opposing need:  the need to belong to groups.

To survive, we must conform to the expectations of our parents and of

our cultures, and compromise our sense of self-determination for a sense

of security, and for the love of others.  We must organize ourselves

into groups; there must be some method of decision-making, and of

carrying out those decisions.

Electronic Democracy offers a path of reconciliation for these two

powerful forces in each of us.  Using this technology, we can experiment

with decision-making by consensus, the only method of organization that

can fully materialize our dreams of self-determination.

But, how can we know if we should take this path?  How can we know if we

can trust our collective human nature?  The concept is so radical, how

can we know if it is right?

Luckily, living on islands, and deep in the rain forests of Panama, are

the Cuna Indians, who can serve as a model of a consensus-run culture.

ABOUT THE CUNA

These amazing Indians, 40,000 in number, have been making decisions, by

consensus, since before Columbus discovered them on his fourth voyage.

Because the Cuna have been living for centuries in the only truly

democratic culture, we look to the Cuna to answer, "What happens to

people who live democratically"?

There is very little literature about the Cuna.  However, from ALL

accounts, they are well-organized, harmonious, wise, resourceful,

energetic, playful, gentle, astute, even enlightened.

But how do such innocents fair in dealings with the rest of the world? 

The Cuna are possibly the only unconquered native Americans, still

living on, and in control of, their homeland.  They won a short war with

Panama in 1925 when it tried to usurp their autonomy.  When, in this

decade, Catholics came as missionaries, the National Catholic Reporter

reported, "Panamanian Indians Evangelize Evangelizers".

Although non-Cuna Panamanians may not participate in the affairs of the 

Cuna, some Cuna work and study in Panama City, and have been elected to 

offices in the Panamanian government.

While preserving their own culture, which they value more than money,

the Cunas capitalize on the world market for their "molas", the colorful 

fabric art pieces that the women sew.

A connection between the Cunas' consensus-run politics and their obvious

enlightenment, their unity, their individuality, and their strength is

evident here.  As we, through Electronic Democracy, claim our earth and

our rights, we will become like the Cunas:  free.  As Electronic

Democracy replaces our old political systems, and our strengths as

individuals and as communities grow, we will experience a profound, even

miraculous, change in human attitudes in most cultures.

Of course, it's a big leap from our current reality to imagining

ourselves, like the Cuna, loving our system of organization for its

fairness and responsiveness, and for making us feel heard, and for

making us feel powerful.

In addition, we will love our system for being efficient and for not

tempting us to be influenced by clothes, or speech impediments, or age,

or a thousand other irrelevancies.  We'll base our decisions only on the

content of what is written.  We'll make excellent decisions.

Like the Cuna, WE will BE our system.

This tool has been waiting for us, in our future; like speech once

waited for us to discover it; and writing.  When we, as evolving humans,

were given the dexterity for speech; it must have been, somehow, left

for us to discover our ability and invent language.  Given our manual

dexterity and our speech, inventing writing naturally followed.  Given

writing, accumulation of knowledge follows.  Given knowledge, technology

results.  Given technology and our innate and inalienable rights,

Electronic Democracy is inevitable.

Indeed, when you consider the mountain of mathematical, scientific and

technological advances that this system is being built upon, we are a

hair from finished; and just in the nick of time.  Our old structures

for civic organization are buckling under the pressures of bad

decisions.  Our old structures breed bad decisions.  There is, and there

has been, much suffering.  We can make it better now.

Electronic Democracy is an answer.  There is no other. Electronic

Democracy is inevitable. Our deepest natures hunger for it.  The

quicker we adopt Electronic Democracy as our system of civic

organization, the less total suffering there will be.

--------

Becker, Ted, "Teledemocracy - Bringing Power Back to People", The

Futurist, December, 1981, p.6.

Elgin, Duane, "Conscious Democracy Through Electronic Town Meetings",

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1991, p.28.

Elshtain, Jean Betheke, "Interactive TV - Democracy and the QUBE Tube",

The Nation, August 7-14, 1982, p.108.

Hallowell, Christopher, "A World of Difference", Americas, Jan.-Feb,

1985.

Mazlow, Jonathan, "A Tramp in the Darien", a B.B.C. Adventure Series 

Documentary, 1990.

Moran, Julio, "Computers Forge PEN Pal Link", Los Angeles Times, Feb 25,

1990, p.56.

Myers, Norman, "Kuna Indians, Building a Bright Future", International 

Wildlife, July-Aug., 1987, p.17

Wirpasa, Leslie, "Panamanian Indians Evangelize Evangelizers", National 

Catholic Reporter, Mar 8, 1991, p.8.

Wittig, Michele, Ph.D., "Using a City-Owned Public Electronic Network

for Community Organizing", American Psychological Association, Division

9 Newsletter, July, 1990.

Wittig, Michele, "Electronic City Hall",Whole Earth Review, Summer 1991,

p.24.

                        -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-

             MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by

becoming a member now. Members receive our magazine, EFFECTOR; our bi-

weekly electronic newsletter, EFFector Online; the @eff.org newsletter;

and special releases and other notices on our activities.  But because

we believe that support should be freely given, you can receive these

things even if you do not elect to become a member.

Our memberships are $20.00 per year for students, $40.00 per year for

regular members.  You may, of course, donate more if you wish.

Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under

any circumstances, sell any part of its membership list.  We will, from

time to time, share this list with other non-profit organizations whose

work we determine to be in line with our goals. If you do not grant

explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership

disclosed to any group for any reason.

---------------- EFF MEMBERSHIP FORM ---------------

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                    This allows any organization to

                    become a member of EFF. It allows

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=====================================================================

                   EFFector Online is published by

                 The Electronic Frontier Foundation

                155 Second Street, Cambridge MA 02141

             Phone: +1 617 864 0665 FAX: +1 617 864 0866

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 Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged

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=====================================================================

       This newsletter is printed on 100% recycled electrons.

########## ########## ########## |    A GUIDE TO EFF LEGAL SERVICES  

########## ########## ########## |

####       ####       ####       |    

########   ########   ########   |   EFF TESTIMONY ON DIGITAL PRIVACY

########   ########   ########   |       AS GIVEN BY DAVID FARBER 

####       ####       ####       |    

########## ####       ####       | WHAT EFF DID ON YOUR SUMMER VACTION

########## ####       ####       |

=====================================================================

EFFector Online           September 18, 1992              Issue  3.05

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                           ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

                           EFF LEGAL SERVICES

                             by Mike Godwin

                      EFF Staff Counsel, Cambridge

   Because the EFF has spent the last year developing and publicizing

our policy-focused efforts at our new Washington office, many of our

constituents have wondered whether EFF is still active on the

civil-liberties front. The answer to that question is an unqualified

"Yes!" This activity has been less well-publicized, however, often

because of the privacy interests of most of the people who seek EFF help

with their individual cases. I want to take this opportunity to let our

members and constituents know what kind of legal services we offer, and

what kind of casework we do.

   The primary legal services I provide are basic counselling and

referrals. EFF does not charge for this, and you do not have to be an

EFF member to call or write and ask for help. I answer general questions

about computer law and telecommunications law at the federal level as

well as in the jurisdictions in which I am admitted to the bar

(currently Texas and Washington, D.C.). When appropriate, I instruct

people to seek further consultation with lawyers in their respective

jurisdictions, giving them referrals to specific lawyers when possible.

(EFF maintains a database of attorneys who've volunteered to do some

kinds of work on these kinds of cases.) I often mail out source

materials to individuals and organizations. (One of the most frequently

requested materials is the original complaint filed by Steve Jackson

Games in its lawsuit against the U.S. government--many lawyers find that

the complaint is a good primer on civil-liberties issues raised by the

search and seizure of a computer bulletin-board system.) More

frequently, I talk to people on the telephone. The kinds of questions I

deal with tend to fall into the following four general areas:

GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LEGAL ISSUES 

A caller may be a sysop who's been told by someone that it's against the

law to read users' e-mail, and she wants to know whether this is true.

Or it may be a user who wants to know if it's legal to upload a scanned

image of a copyrighted photograph to a BBS for downloading by other

users.  Or it may be a hobbyist programmer who wonders if he may be held

liable if a computer virus he writes somehow "escapes" and infects and

damages other systems. Usually these questions are aimed at

*anticipated* legal risks (the caller wants to know ahead of time if her

actions will lead to legal trouble), but a significant number of the

calls are from people who wonder if their *current* activities are

illegal or create risks of legal liability.  For example, a lot of

sysops of "pirate" BBSs have acquired the notion that they can't be held

liable for providing access to unauthorized copies of commercial

software because it's "the guy downloading the stuff who's doing the

copying"--I tell them they are mistaken and point out the legal risks of

providing such access. A small but consistent fraction of callers prefer

to remain anonymous. I respect their wishes, and try to give just as

much help to anonymous callers as to those who identify themselves.

REQUESTS FOR HELP IN CRIMINAL CASES

Basically, these types of requests fall into two categories, which I

call "target cases" and "non-target cases":

        A "target case" is one in which the request is from some one

(the "target") who is very likely to become, or who has already become,

a defendant in a state or federal case. I may get the request from the

target personally, or I may get a call from the target's lawyer. (If the

target doesn't have a lawyer, my first priority is to do what I can to

help him get one. Although EFF does not normally provide funds for legal

representation in criminal cases, I can tell a caller how to go about

contacting a private defense lawyer or a public defender.) I'll ask the

caller for basic facts about the case, and, once I'm in contact with his

lawyer, I'll do what I can to help the lawyer learn the relevant law and

gather the necessary facts to prepare the case. Even the very best

defense lawyers are likely to be unfamiliar with the legal and

evidentiary issues raised by computer-crime investigations--I'm often

able to give them a running start on their case preparation. On a few

occasions, a case may raise a particularly unusual and important

civil-liberties issue, and I'll make a recommendation to EFF management

as to whether EFF should formally support the case in some way.

        A "non-target case" is one in which the person asking for

assistance or advice is not an actual or prospective defendant, but her

rights or interests have somehow been affected by a criminal

investigation or by the actions of law-enforcement officials. (The

classic example is one in which a non-target sysop's BBS or networked

computer has been seized as part of an investigation of one the system's

users.) As in target cases, I may advise her lawyer, but I often can

resolve things quickly by acting directly as a representative for the

person asking for help. For example, in a recent Washington State case,

I helped a non-target negotiate a quick return of his equipment, which

federal agents had seized and searched as part of a multi-state criminal

investigation.

REQUESTS FOR HELP IN CIVIL CASES. Normally, EFF won't take sides in a

civil case unless it clearly raises an important civil-liberties issue.

One such case involved the manufacturers of a VCR-programming device who

threatened to sue individuals participating in a discussion of their

coding algorithms on the Usenet newsgroup sci.crypt. The company's

lawyer insisted that the Usenetters' efforts at figuring out the

algorithms by deducing them from the codes published in TV Guide

listings and elsewhere was a violation of their copyright, patent, and

trade-secret interests.

       I researched their claim and confirmed the Usenet posters' belief

that their research did not violate any intellectual-property

protections of the manufacturers' products, and I represented their

position to the manufacturer, telling the company that the posters were

engaged in Constitutionally protected speech and inquiry. After several

convesations between me and the company's lawyer, the company dropped

its claims. (The sci.crypt posters' research was eventually published as

a paper in the journal CRYPTOLOGIA--Vol. XVI, Number 3, July 1992--in

which the authors thanked EFF for their legal assistance.)

REQUESTS FOR HELP IN SITUATIONS WHERE THERE'S NO CRIMINAL OR CIVIL CASE

This category includes situations in which, for example, a college

student has his computer-access privileges suspended because a "hacker

newsletter" is discovered by a system administrator rummaging through

the student's directory. (I've explained to more than one system

administrator that mere possession of such information does not make one

a computer intruder, and that their rummaging may have violated the

students' rights.) Or a university computer center may decide to suspend

some kinds of Usenet newsgroups, justifying their actions by saying

they're afraid the sexually oriented newsgroups are illegal. (I've

written and spoken to university administrators to explain that

virtually none of the discussions in the sexually oriented newsgroups on

Usenet qualify legally as "obscenity"--instead, they're protected

expression under established American Constitutional law.) Or a group of

sysops may be concerned about their local phone company's efforts to

impose business rates on nonprofit BBS phone lines. (I now refer most

such calls to Shari Steele, ssteele@eff.org, the staff counsel of EFF's

Washington office, who has given special study to these issues.)

   In addition to individual casework: I have represented EFF's legal

services primarily on three forums--the WELL, Usenet, and CompuServe.

As a result of my presence there, I have been receiving an increasing

amount of casework, requests for legal advice, and invitations to speak.

The number of these cases has increased in response to my presence

online--it also has increased in response to my public appearances.

After the Second Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, for

example, I had three or four cases referred to me by people who met me

in Washington.

   It is important that EFF members and constituents recognize we are

here to help you solve individual problems as well as promote your

interests on general policy issues. If you are running into a legal

problem, or if you simply have a general legal question, or even if

you're having a problem on the Electronic Frontier and you're not sure

whether or not it's a legal problem, you should call me, Mike Godwin, at

617-864-0665, or send me electronic mail at mnemonic@eff.org or at

76711,317 on CompuServe. I won't always be able to help, but I'm always

willing to listen. And I may be able to help more often than you'd

think.

                                    

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

 From the Univ of Wisconsin Microelectronics bulletin, Prof. F Cerrina 

as the author:

 "After the Microlithography '92 conference in Japan, we toured some

  of the leading electronics laboratories.  Our visit to Hitachi's

  Central Research Lab included an amusing demonstration of the

  resolution of current lithography.  On a four-inch wafer, they 

  printed a map of the world that included the streets of London down to the

  smallest alleys.  It's now possible to put a fully detailed map of

  the world on a six-inch wafer."

 Food for thought...

(Submitted by Gary Delp <gdelp+@rchland.ibm.com> )

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

Following are excerpts from the testimony of Professor David Farber, a

member of the EFF Board of Directors, before the Computer Systems

Security and Privacy Advisory Board of the National Institute of

Standards and Technology (NIST) on September 16, 1992.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Advisory Board:

    My name is David Farber. I am Professor of Computer Science at the

University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Board of Directors of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I am here today representing only

the views of EFF. I want to thank you for inviting us to testify today

as part of your investigation.

    We are pleased to be included at this early phase of the Advisory

Board's inquiry and offer a brief set of principles for proceeding with

this inquiry. First, it is essential that in examining discrete issues

such as the desirability of various cryptography standards, the Board

take a comprehensive view of what we call "digital privacy" policy as a

whole. Such a comprehensive view requires a clear vision of the

underlying civil liberties issues at stake: privacy and free speech. It

also requires looking beyond the cryptography questions raised by many

to include some of law enforcement's recent concerns about the pace of

digital infrastructure innovation. Second, for the sake of promoting

innovation and protecting civil liberties, the Board should bear in mind

the principle that computer security policy is fundamentally a concern

for domestic, civilian agencies. This principle, as articulated in the

Computer Security Act of 1987, can serve as an important guide to the

work of this Board.

A. THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL PRIVACY TECHNOLOGY

    With dramatic increases in reliance on digital media for

communications on the part of private individuals, government, and

corporations, the need for comprehensive protection of privacy in these

media grows. For most in this room, the point seems trite, but the

digital communications revolution (which we stand at only the very

beginning of), is the key event of which the Advisory Board should take

note. As an example, a communication which is carried on paper through

the mail system, or over the wire-based public telephone network is

relatively secure from random intrusion by others. But the same

communication carried over a cellular or other wireless communication

system, is vulnerable to being overheard by anyone who has very

inexpensive, easy-to-obtain scanning technology.

    For the individual who relies on digital communications media,

reliable privacy protection cannot be achieved without the protection of

robust encryption technology. While legal restrictions on the use of

scanners or other technology which might facilitate such invasions of

privacy seem to be attractive preventative measures, these are not

lasting or comprehensive solutions. We should have a guarantee -- with

physics and mathematics, not only with laws -- that we can give

ourselves real privacy of personal communications through technical

means. Encryption strong enough that even the NSA can't break it. We

already know how to do this, but we have not made encryption technology

widely available for public use because of public policy barriers.

        

B. THE BOARD SHOULD UNDERTAKE A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF DIGITAL PRIVACY 

ISSUES    

    Inasmuch as digital privacy policy has broad implications for

constitutional rights of free speech and privacy, and for international

competitiveness and economic vitality in the information age, these

issues must be explored and resolved in an open, civilian policy

context. These questions are simply too important to be decided by the

national security establishment alone. This principle is central to the

Computer Security Act of 1987.1 The structure of the Act, which is the

basis for the authority of this Advisory Board, arose, in significant

part, from the concern that the national security establishment was

exercising undue control over the flow of public information and the use

of information technology.2

    When considering the law in 1986, the committee asked the question,

"whether it is proper for a super-secret agency [the NSA] that operates

without public scrutiny to involve itself in domestic activities...?"

The answer was a clear no, and the authority for establish computer

security policy was vested in NIST (the NBS).

    In this context, we need a robust public debate over our

government's continuing heavy-handed efforts to control commercially

developed cryptography. It is no secret that throughout the cold war

era, the Defense and State Departments and the National Security Agency

have used any and all means, including threats of prosecution, control

over research, and denial of export licenses to prevent advanced secret

coding capabilities from getting into the hands of our adversaries. NSA

does this to maximize its ability to intercept and crack all

international communications of national security interest.

    Now the Cold War is over but the practice continues. In recent

years, Lotus, Microsoft, and others have developed or tried to

incorporate powerful encryption means into mass market software to

enhance the security and privacy of business, financial, and personal

communications. In an era of computer crime, sophisticated surveillance

technologies, and industrial espionage it is a laudable goal.

    Although NSA does not have the authority to interfere with domestic

distribution of DSA, RSA, and other encryption packages, its licensing

stranglehold over foreign distribution has unfortunate consequences.

Domestic firms have been unable to sell competitive security and privacy

products in international markets.  More important, because the cost of

producing two different products is often prohibitive, NSA policy

encourages firms to produce a single product for both domestic and

worldwide use, resulting in minimal privacy and security for users both

here and abroad.

    While we all recognize that NSA has legitimate national security

concerns in the post cold war era, this is a seriously flawed process.

Foreign countries or entities who want to obtain advanced encryption

technology can purchase it through intermediaries in the United States

or from companies in a host of foreign countries who are not subject to

US export restrictions.  There is a big, big hole in the national

security dike. By taking a page out of the Emperor's New Clothes, NSA

opts to act as if the process works by continuing to block export.

    In order to get some improvement in mass market encryption, the

Software Publishers Association, representing Microsoft, Lotus, and

others, had to use the threat of legislation to get NSA to engage in the

negotiations that finally led NSA to agree to expedited clearance for

the export of RSA encrypting software of limited key lengths. Still, all

concede that the agreement does not go far enough and that far more

powerful third-party products are commonly available in the US,

including the fifteen-year-old US Data Encryption Standard.  SPA knows

that specifying maximum key lengths offers little long-term security

given advances in computer processing power, but was willing to

compromise because of NSA's refusal to budge.

    Does this kind of policy make any sense in the post Cold War era?

Mass market products offer limited security for our citizens and

businesses. Determined adversaries can obtain much more powerful

products from foreign countries or by purchasing it here in the US. Is

the NSA policy of slowing down the pace of encryption use by foreigners

and adversaries --even if demonstrable--any longer worth the significant

price we pay in terms of failing to meet our own communications privacy

and security needs?  That is the policy challenge for this Board to

address by a frank, open, and inclusive public debate.

C. THE BOARD MUST ADDRESS THE DIGITAL PRIVACY ISSUE IN A COMPREHENSIVE

MANNER WHICH REQUIRES CONSIDERING THE FBI'S DIGITAL TELEPHONY PROPOSAL

AND ITS IMPLICATIONS.

    The public policy debate on electronic privacy issues over the last

few years has demonstrated that a comprehensive approach to digital

privacy policy cannot be complete without examining both questions

regarding the availability of encryption technology, and the

corresponding infrastructure issues, such as those raised by the FBI's

Digital Telephony Proposal. Attempts to solve one issue without

addressing the other is an exercise in irrational policy-making and

should be avoided by this Advisory Board.

    Last year, the FBI first proposed a "Sense of the Congress"

resolution stating that communications firms and computer and

communications equipment manufacturers were obligated to provide law

enforcement access to the "plain" text of all voice, data, and video

communications, including communications using software encryption. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) played an active and leading role

both in opposing such a law and in seeking to find more acceptable means

for meeting legitimate law enforcement needs. Because of our advocacy

and coalition-building efforts with communications and privacy groups,

we were successful in persuading Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph Biden

to remove the Sense of the Congress Resolution from active consideration

as part of Omnibus crime legislation last year.

    Putting aside its attempt to control the use of encryption systems,

this year the FBI has come forward with proposed legislation that would

require telephone companies, electronic information providers, and

computer and communications equipment manufacturers to seek an FCC

"license" or Attorney General "certification" that their technologies

are susceptible to electronic surveillance. We are in danger of creating

a domestic version of the export control laws for computer and

communications technology.

    While the FBI claims that neither of this year's proposals address

encryption issues, the Bureau has made it clear it plans to return to

this issue in the future. The Board needs to hear from the broad

coalition made up of telephone companies such as AT&T, computer firms

such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Lotus Development Corporation, and

public interest groups such as the EFF. The EFF will shortly release a

white paper representing coalition views on the need for the FBI to

explore more realistic, less vague, and potentially onerous policy

options for meeting legitimate law enforcement needs.

    The resulting multi-front battle being waged about digital privacy

creates formidable roadblocks to a final resolution of the policy

disputes at issue. Those who seek greater privacy and security cannot

trust a settlement on one front, because their victory is likely to be

undermined by action on the other issue. And law enforcement and

national security concerns cannot be adequately addressed without a

sense of the overall solution being proposed on both the encryption and

infrastructure fronts. This Advisory Board can play a valuable role for

the policy process by conducting a comprehensive review of digital

privacy and security policy, with a consideration of both of these sets

of issues.

1 Pub.L.No. 100-235.

2 House Committee On Government Operations, H.R. Rep. No. 99-753,

 Pt. 2, at 5.

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

   From "Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological Literacy

for the 1990's"

Describing the difference between computer hardware and software:

     "Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer

(not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that

you can only curse at are called software."

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                  WHAT EFF DID WHILE YOU WERE TANNING

You can't fool us. We saw your I'm-on-vacation bounce notices after

shipping each EFFector Online. And while you were out prematurely aging

your skin, the EFF had a busy summer.

   Both Danny Weitzner of the D.C. office and Mike Godwin of the

Cambridge office took bar exams in July: Danny in New York and Mike in

Massachusetts (Mike is already a member of the Texas and D.C. bars).

Both have recovered and are waiting for their results.

CAMBRIDGE:

# Mitchell Kapor was a keynote speaker for EFF at the International

Networking Conference, 1992, in Kobe, Japan where he spoke on global

networking and the EFF's role in the creation of online communities

around the world. He also appeared before the National Association of

Regional Utility Commissions as a means of opening EFF's state by state

drive to make ISDN happen nationwide. In addition, he has, as usual,

been active in fundraising efforts for EFF within the computer industry.

# In addition to his bar exam, Mike flew to San Francisco several times

as part of the planning committee for Computers, Freedom, and Privacy

III; chaired two meetings of the Massachusetts Computer Crime Council;

assisted counsel for several federal computer crime cases under

indictment; and fielded many, many legal questions on the phone and

online.

# The publications department (Gerard Van der Leun and Rita Rouvalis)

produced a full line of pamphlets, white papers, bumper stickers, and

information disks in addition to several issues of EFFector Online and

@eff.org; staffed booths at ONE BBSCon and IBECC '92 in Denver, Colorado

in August; and laid the groundwork on such projects as The EFF Guide to

Cyberspace and the upcoming EFFECTOR3 magazine.

# EFF Tech (Chris Davis and Helen Rose) upgraded the Washington, D.C.

office's connection to the Internet from a dialup SLIP connection to a

56K leased line; reorganized the anonymous FTP archives for faster and

easier access to the EFF's online documents; began a series of

Postscript versions of EFF documents with about-eff; and made

arrangements to appear on a panel discussing the Internet and the

National Public Network in New York City in late September.

WASHINGTON D.C.:

# Jerry Berman appeared before American Bar Association Conference in

San Francisco on the Panel on Virtual Reality and Future Network Policy;

appeared before Computer Systems Policy Project in Massachusetts to

discuss Open Platform Initiative of the EFF; was on a panel that briefed

the City Council and Mayor of Seattle. He arranged for many computer and

communications firms to sign the EFF-drafted White Paper opposing FBI

digital Telephony proposal to be released September 16 in D.C. He also,

with the aid of the Washington staff, pulled together the second meeting

of the Communications Policy Forum under EFF auspices to discuss the

NSF's draft solicitation on the Internet and NREN.

# Danny Weitzner drafted Open Platform amendments, making narrowband

ISDN deployment a national policy, for Rep. Ed Markey's latest

telecommunications regulation bill; was elected Chair of the Public

Policy and Strategy committee of the North American ISDN Users' Forum;

and initiated a plan to take the Open Platform initiative to state

public utility commissions in order to ensure reasonably priced ISDN

service in the states.

# Andrew Blau testified at Colorado PUC on making ISDN available to

residential subscribers; met with Executive Leadership of NCSL's Task

Force on Info Policy; spoke at National Federation of Local Cable

Programmers' Annual Convention on Video Dialtone, "Electronic

Frontiers", and Community Communications Coalitions; was a panelist on

"Government Initiatives to Promote Public Data Networks"; met with

disability rights activists, seniors, and others about meeting their

future telecommunications needs; and documented uses/application of ISDN

technology in small business, education, health and other settings.

# Shari Steele made presentations on the EFF, our National Public

Network proposal, electronic democracy and BBSs being charged business

telephone rates at ONE BBSCon and IBECC; began writing a monthly legal

column for BBS Callers Digest; and made presentations on the EFF to the

Capital Area SysOps Association (CASA) and a course on Computers,

Freedom and Privacy at the George Washington University.

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

            MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by

becoming a member now. Members receive our magazine, EFFECTOR, our bi-

weekly electronic newsletter, EFFector Online, the @eff.org newsletter

and special releases and other notices on our activities.  But because

we believe that support should be freely given, you can receive these

things even if you do not elect to become a member.

Our memberships are $20.00 per year for students, $40.00 per year for

regular members.  You may, of course, donate more if you wish.

Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under

any circumstances, sell any part of its membership list.  We will, from

time to time, share this list with other non-profit organizations whose

work we determine to be in line with our goals. If you do not grant

explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership

disclosed to any group for any reason.

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########## ########## ########## |     

########## ########## ########## | 

####       ####       ####       |         BRUCE STERLING ON

########   ########   ########   |  PRINCIPLES, ETHICS, AND MORALITY  

########   ########   ########   |           IN CYBERSPACE 

####       ####       ####       |    

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=====================================================================

EFFector Online           September 30, 1992              Issue  3.06

         A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                            ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

                                    

                       A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLE

                                  by

                            Bruce Sterling

                         bruces@well.sf.ca.us

                Reprinted from SCIENCE FICTION EYE #10

                    with permission of the author.

I just wrote my first nonfiction book. It's called THE HACKER CRACKDOWN:

LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER. Writing this book has

required me to spend much of the past year and a half in the company of

hackers, cops, and civil libertarians.

I've spent much time listening to arguments over what's legal, what's

illegal, what's right and wrong, what's decent and what's despicable,

what's moral and immoral, in the world of computers and civil liberties.

My various informants were knowledgeable people who cared passionately

about these issues, and most of them seemed well- intentioned.

Considered as a whole, however, their opinions were a baffling mess of

contradictions.

When I started this project, my ignorance of the issues involved was

genuine and profound. I'd never knowingly met anyone from the computer

underground. I'd never logged-on to an underground bulletin-board or

read a semi-legal hacker magazine. Although I did care a great deal

about the issue of freedom of expression, I knew sadly little about the

history of civil rights in America or the legal doctrines that surround

freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. My

relations with the police were firmly based on the stratagem of avoiding

personal contact with police to the greatest extent possible.

I didn't go looking for this project. This project came looking for me.

I became inextricably involved when agents of the United States Secret

Service, acting under the guidance of federal attorneys from Chicago,

came to my home town of Austin on March 1, 1990, and confiscated the

computers of a local science fiction gaming publisher.  Steve Jackson

Games, Inc., of Austin, was about to publish a gaming- book called GURPS

Cyberpunk.

When the federal law-enforcement agents discovered the electronic

manuscript of CYBERPUNK on the computers they had seized from Mr.

Jackson's offices, they expressed grave shock and alarm. They declared

that CYBERPUNK was "a manual for computer crime."

It's not my intention to reprise the story of the Jackson case in this

column. I've done that to the best of my ability in THE HACKER

CRACKDOWN; and in any case the ramifications of March 1 are far from

over. Mr. Jackson was never charged with any crime. His civil suit

against the raiders is still in federal court as I write this.

I don't want to repeat here what some cops believe, what some hackers

believe, or what some civil libertarians believe. Instead, I want to

discuss my own moral beliefs as a science fiction writer -- such as they

are. As an SF writer, I want to attempt a personal statement of

principle.

It has not escaped my attention that there are many people who believe

that anyone called a "cyberpunk" must be, almost by definition, entirely

devoid of principle. I offer as evidence an excerpt from Buck

BloomBecker's 1990 book, SPECTACULAR COMPUTER CRIMES. On page 53, in a

chapter titled "Who Are The Computer Criminals?", Mr. BloomBecker

introduces the formal classification of "cyberpunk" criminality.

"In the last few years, a new genre of science fiction has arisen under

the evocative name of 'cyberpunk.' Introduced in the work of William

Gibson, particularly in his prize-winning novel NEUROMANCER, cyberpunk

takes an apocalyptic view of the technological future. In NEUROMANCER,

the protagonist is a futuristic hacker who must use the most

sophisticated computer strategies to commit crimes for people who offer

him enough money to buy the biological creations he needs to survive.

His life is one of cynical despair, fueled by the desire to avoid death.

Though none of the virus cases actually seen so far have been so

devastating, this book certainly represents an attitude that should be

watched for when we find new cases of computer virus and try to

understand the motivations behind them.

"The New York Times's John Markoff, one of the more perceptive and

accomplished writers in the field, has written than a number of computer

criminals demonstrate new levels of meanness. He characterizes them, as

do I, as cyberpunks."

Those of us who have read Gibson's NEUROMANCER closely will be aware of

certain factual inaccuracies in Mr. BloomBecker's brief review.

NEUROMANCER is not "apocalyptic." The chief conspirator in NEUROMANCER

forces Case's loyalty, not by buying his services, but by planting

poison-sacs in his brain. Case is "fueled" not by his greed for money or

"biological creations," or even by the cynical "desire to avoid death,"

but rather by his burning desire to hack cyberspace. And so forth.

However, I don't think this misreading of NEUROMANCER is based on

carelessness or malice. The rest of Mr. BloomBecker's book generally is

informative, well-organized, and thoughtful. Instead, I feel that Mr.

BloomBecker manfully absorbed as much of NEUROMANCER as he could without

suffering a mental toxic reaction. This report of his is what he

actually *saw* when reading the novel.

NEUROMANCER has won quite a following in the world of computer crime

investigation. A prominent law enforcement official once told me that

police unfailingly conclude the worst when they find a teenager with a

computer and a copy of NEUROMANCER. When I declared that I too was a

"cyberpunk" writer, she asked me if I would print the recipe for a

pipe-bomb in my works. I was astonished by this question, which struck

me as bizarre rhetorical excess at the time. That was before I had

actually examined bulletin-boards in the computer underground, which I

found to be chock-a-block with recipes for pipe-bombs, and worse. (I

didn't have the heart to tell her that my friend and colleague Walter

Jon Williams had once written and published an SF story closely

describing explosives derived from simple household chemicals.)

Cyberpunk SF (along with SF in general) has, in fact, permeated the

computer underground. I have met young underground hackers who use the

aliases "Neuromancer," "Wintermute" and "Count Zero." The Legion of

Doom, the absolute bete noire of computer law-enforcement, used to

congregate on a bulletin-board called "Black Ice."

In the past, I didn't know much about anyone in the underground, but

they certainly knew about me. Since that time, I've had people express

sincere admiration for my novels, and then, in almost the same breath,

brag to me about breaking into hospital computers to chortle over

confidential medical reports about herpes victims.

The single most stinging example of this syndrome is "Pengo," a member

of the German hacker-group that broke into Internet computers while in

the pay of the KGB. He told German police, and the judge at the trial of

his co-conspirators, that he was inspired by NEUROMANCER and John

Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER.

I didn't write NEUROMANCER. I did, however, read it in manuscript and

offered many purportedly helpful comments. I praised the book publicly

and repeatedly and at length. I've done everything I can to get people

to read this book.

I don't recall cautioning Gibson that his novel might lead to anarchist

hackers selling their expertise to the ferocious and repulsive apparat

that gave the world the Lubyanka and the Gulag Archipelago. I don't

think I could have issued any such caution, even if I'd felt the danger

of such a possibility, which I didn't. I still don't know in what

fashion Gibson might have changed his book to avoid inciting evildoers,

while still retaining the integrity of his vision -- the very quality

about the book that makes it compelling and worthwhile.

This leads me to my first statements of moral principle. 

As a "cyberpunk" SF writer, I am not responsible for every act committed

by a Bohemian with a computer. I don't own the word "cyberpunk" and

cannot help where it is bestowed, or who uses it, or to what ends.

As a science fiction writer, it is not my business to make people

behave. It is my business to make people imagine. I cannot control other

people's imaginations -- any more than I would allow them to control

mine.

I am, however, morally obliged to speak out when acts of evil are

committed that use my ideas or my rhetoric, however distantly, as a

justification.

Pengo and his friends committed a grave crime that was worthy of

condemnation and punishment. They were clever, but treacherously clever.

They were imaginative, but it was imagination in a bad cause.  They were

technically accomplished, but they abused their expertise for illicit

profit and to feed their egos. They may be "cyberpunks" -- according to

many, they may deserve that title far more than I do -- but they're no

friends of mine.

What is "crime"? What is a moral offense? What actions are evil and

dishonorable? I find these extraordinarily difficult questions. I have

no special status that should allow me to speak with authority on such

subjects. Quite the contrary. As a writer in a scorned popular

literature and a self-professed eccentric Bohemian, I have next to no

authority of any kind. I'm not a moralist, philosopher, or prophet.

I've always considered my "moral role," such as it is, to be that of a

court jester -- a person sometimes allowed to speak the unspeakable, to

explore ideas and issues in a format where they can be treated as games,

thought-experiments, or metaphors, not as prescriptions, laws, or

sermons.

I have no religion, no sacred scripture to guide my actions and provide

an infallible moral bedrock. I'm not seeking political responsibilities

or the power of public office. I habitually question any pronouncement

of authority, and entertain the liveliest skepticism about the processes

of law and justice. I feel no urge to conform to the behavior of the

majority of my fellow citizens. I'm a pain in the neck.

My behavior is far from flawless. I lived and thrived in Austin, Texas

in the 1970s and 1980s, in a festering milieu of arty crypto-

intellectual hippies. I've committed countless "crimes," like millions

of other people in my generation. These crimes were of the glamorous

"victimless" variety, but they would surely have served to put me in

prison had I done them, say, in front of the State Legislature.

Had I lived a hundred years ago as I live today, I would probably have

been lynched by outraged fellow Texans as a moral abomination. If I

lived in Iran today and wrote and thought as I do, I would probably be

tried and executed.

As far as I can tell, moral relativism is a fact of life. I think it

might be possible to outwardly conform to every jot and tittle of the

taboos of one's society, while feeling no emotional or intellectual

commitment to them. I understand that certain philosophers have argued

that this is morally proper behavior for a good citizen. But I can't

live that life. I feel, sincerely, that my society is engaged in many

actions which are foolish and shortsighted and likely to lead to our

destruction. I feel that our society must change, and change radically,

in a process that will cause great damage to our present system of

values. This doesn't excuse my own failings, which I regret, but it does

explain, I hope, why my lifestyle and my actions are not likely to make

authority feel entirely comfortable.

Knowledge is power. The rise of computer networking, of the Information

Society, is doing strange and disruptive things to the processes by

which power and knowledge are currently distributed.  Knowledge and

information, supplied through these new conduits, are highly corrosive

to the status quo. People living in the midst of technological

revolution are living outside the law: not necessarily because they mean

to break laws, but because the laws are vague, obsolete, overbroad,

draconian, or unenforceable. Hackers break laws as a matter of course,

and some have been punished unduly for relatively minor infractions not

motivated by malice. Even computer police, seeking earnestly to

apprehend and punish wrongdoers, have been accused of abuse of their

offices, and of violation of the Constitution and the civil statutes.

These police may indeed have committed these "crimes." Some officials

have already suffered grave damage to their reputations and careers --

all the time convinced that they were morally in the right; and, like

the hackers they pursued, never feeling any genuine sense of shame,

remorse, or guilt.

I have lived, and still live, in a counterculture, with its own system

of values. Counterculture -- Bohemia -- is never far from criminality.

"To live outside the law you must be honest" was Bob Dylan's classic

hippie motto. A Bohemian finds romance in the notion that "his clothes

are dirty but his hands are clean." But there's danger in setting aside

the strictures of the law to linchpin one's honor on one's personal

integrity. If you throw away the rulebook to rely on your individual

conscience you will be put in the way of temptation.

And temptation is a burden. It hurts. It is grotesquely easy to justify,

to rationalize, an action of which one should properly be ashamed. In

investigating the milieu of computer-crime I have come into contact with

a world of temptation formerly closed to me.  Nowadays, it would take no

great effort on my part to break into computers, to steal long-distance

telephone service, to ingratiate myself with people who would merrily

supply me with huge amounts of illicitly copied software. I could even

build pipe-bombs. I haven't done these things, and disapprove of them;

in fact, having come to know these practices better than I cared to, I

feel sincere revulsion for them now. But this knowledge is a kind of

power, and power is tempting. Journalistic objectivity, or the urge to

play with ideas, cannot entirely protect you. Temptation clings to the

mind like a series of small but nagging weights. Carrying these weights

may make you stronger. Or they may drag you down.

"His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean." It's a fine ideal, when

you can live up to it. Like a lot of Bohemians, I've gazed with a fine

disdain on certain people in power whose clothes were clean but their

hands conspicuously dirty. But I've also met a few people eager to pat

me on the back, whose clothes were dirty and their hands as well.

They're not pleasant company.

Somehow one must draw a line. I'm not very good at drawing lines. When

other people have drawn me a line, I've generally been quite anxious to

have a good long contemplative look at the other side. I don't feel much

confidence in my ability to draw these lines. But I feel that I should.

The world won't wait. It only took a few guys with pool cues and

switchblades to turn Woodstock Nation into Altamont. Haight-Ashbury was

once full of people who could trust anyone they'd smoked grass with and

love anyone they'd dropped acid with -- for about six months. Soon the

place was aswarm with speed-freaks and junkies, and heaven help us if

they didn't look just like the love-bead dudes from the League of

Spiritual Discovery. Corruption exists, temptation exists. Some people

fall. And the temptation is there for all of us, all the time.

I've come to draw a line at money. It's not a good line, but it's

something. There are certain activities that are unorthodox, dubious,

illegal or quasi-legal, but they might perhaps be justified by an honest

person with unconventional standards. But in my opinion, when you're

making a commercial living from breaking the law, you're beyond the

pale. I find it hard to accept your countercultural sincerity when

you're grinning and pocketing the cash, compadre.

I can understand a kid swiping phone service when he's broke, powerless,

and dying to explore the new world of the networks. I don't approve of

this, but I can understand it. I scorn to do this myself, and I never

have; but I don't find it so heinous that it deserves pitiless

repression. But if you're stealing phone service and selling it -- if

you've made yourself a miniature phone company and you're pimping off

the energy of others just to line your own pockets -- you're a thief.

When the heat comes to put you away, don't come crying "brother" to me.

If you're creating software and giving it away, you're a fine human

being. If you're writing software and letting other people copy it and

try it out as shareware, I appreciate your sense of trust, and if I like

your work, I'll pay you. If you're copying other people's software and

giving it away, you're damaging other people's interests, and should be

ashamed, even if you're posing as a glamorous info- liberating

subversive. But if you're copying other people's software and selling

it, you're a crook and I despise you.

Writing and spreading viruses is a vile, hurtful, and shameful activity

that I unreservedly condemn.

There's something wrong with the Information Society. There's something

wrong with the idea that "information" is a commodity like a desk or a

chair. There's something wrong with patenting software algorithms.

There's something direly mean spirited and ungenerous about inventing a

language and then renting it out to other people to speak. There's

something unprecedented and sinister in this process of creeping

commodification of data and knowledge. A computer is something too close

to the human brain for me to rest entirely content with someone

patenting or copyrighting the process of its thought.  There's something

sick and unworkable about an economic system which has already spewed

forth such a vast black market. I don't think democracy will thrive in a

milieu where vast empires of data are encrypted, restricted,

proprietary, confidential, top secret, and sensitive. I fear for the

stability of a society that builds sand castles out of databits and

tries to stop a real-world tide with royal commands.

Whole societies can fall. In Eastern Europe we have seen whole nations

collapse in a slough of corruption. In pursuit of their unworkable

economic doctrine, the Marxists doubled and redoubled their efforts at

social control, while losing all sight of the values that make life

worth living. At last the entire power structure was so discredited that

the last remaining shred of moral integrity could only be found in

Bohemia: in dissidents and dramatists and their illegal samizdat

underground fanzines. Their clothes were dirty but their hands were

clean. The only agitprop poster Vaclav Havel needed was a sign saying

*Vaclav Havel Guarantees Free Elections.* He'd never held power, but

people believed him, and they believed his Velvet Revolution friends.

I wish there were people in the Computer Revolution who could inspire,

and deserved to inspire, that level of trust. I wish there were people

in the Electronic Frontier whose moral integrity unquestionably matched

the unleashed power of those digital machines. A society is in dire

straits when it puts its Bohemia in power. I tremble for my country when

I contemplate this prospect. And yet it's possible. If dire straits

come, it can even be the last best hope.

The issues that enmeshed me in 1990 are not going to go away. I became

involved as a writer and journalist, because I felt it was right.

Having made that decision, I intend to stand by my commitment. I expect

to stay involved in these issues, in this debate, for the rest of my

life. These are timeless issues: civil rights, knowledge, power, freedom

and privacy, the necessary steps that a civilized society must take to

protect itself from criminals. There is no finality in politics; it

creates itself anew, it must be dealt with every day.

The future is a dark road and our speed is headlong. I didn't ask for

power or responsibility. I'm a science fiction writer, I only wanted to

play with Big Ideas in my cheerfully lunatic sandbox. What little

benefit I myself can contribute to society would likely be best employed

in writing better SF novels. I intend to write those better novels, if I

can. But in the meantime I seem to have accumulated a few odd shreds of

influence. It's a very minor kind of power, and doubtless more than I

deserve; but power without responsibility is a monstrous thing.

In writing HACKER CRACKDOWN, I tried to describe the truth as other

people saw it. I see it too, with my own eyes, but I can't yet pretend

to understand what I'm seeing. The best I can do, it seems to me, is to

try to approach the situation as an open-minded person of goodwill.  I

therefore offer the following final set of principles, which I hope will

guide me in the days to come.

I'll listen to anybody, and I'll try to imagine myself in their

situation.

I'll assume goodwill on the part of others until they fully earn my

distrust.

I won't cherish grudges. I'll forgive those who change their minds and

actions, just as I reserve the right to change my own mind and actions.

I'll look hard for the disadvantages to others, in the things that give

me advantage. I won't assume that the way I live today is the natural

order of the universe, just because I happen to be benefiting from it at

the moment.

And while I don't plan to give up making money from my ethically dubious

cyberpunk activities, I hope to temper my impropriety by giving more

work away for no money at all.

                       -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

            MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by

becoming a member now. Members receive our magazine, EFFECTOR, our bi-

weekly electronic newsletter, EFFector Online, the @eff.org newsletter

and special releases and other notices on our activities.  But because

we believe that support should be freely given, you can receive these

things even if you do not elect to become a member.

Our memberships are $20.00 per year for students, $40.00 per year for

regular members.  You may, of course, donate more if you wish.

Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under

any circumstances, sell any part of its membership list.  We will, from

time to time, share this list with other non-profit organizations whose

work we determine to be in line with our goals. If you do not grant

explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership

disclosed to any group for any reason.

---------------- EFF MEMBERSHIP FORM ---------------

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         155 Second St. #36

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=====================================================================

                   EFFector Online is published by

                 The Electronic Frontier Foundation

                155 Second Street, Cambridge MA 02141

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=====================================================================

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########## ########## ########## |         PIONEER AWARDS 2.0        

########## ########## ########## |        Call for Nominations       

####       ####       ####       |  

########   ########   ########   |    EFF/AUSTIN: The First Chapter  

########   ########   ########   | 

####       ####       ####       |    THE SETTLING OF THE INTERNET   

########## ####       ####       |  

########## ####       ####       |    FTP.EFF.ORG:The Users' Site    

=====================================================================

EFFector Online           October 22, 1992                Issue  3.07

           A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                            ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

         THE SECOND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL EFF PIONEER AWARDS:

                       CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

                     Deadline: December 31,1992

In every field of human endeavor,there are those dedicated to expanding

knowledge,freedom,efficiency and utility. Along the electronic frontier,

this is especially true. To recognize this,the Electronic Frontier

Foundation has established the Pioneer Awards for deserving individuals

and organizations.

The Pioneer Awards are international and nominations are open to all.

In March of 1992, the first EFF Pioneer Awards were given in Washington

D.C. The winners were: Douglas C. Engelbart of Fremont, California;

Robert Kahn of Reston, Virginia; Jim Warren of Woodside, California; Tom

Jennings of San Francisco, California; and Andrzej Smereczynski of

Warsaw, Poland.

The Second Annual Pioneer Awards will be given in San Francisco,

California at the 3rd Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy

in March of 1993.

All valid nominations will be reviewed by a panel of impartial judges

chosen for their knowledge of computer-based communications and the

technical, legal, and social issues involved in networking.

There are no specific categories for the Pioneer Awards, but the

following guidelines apply:

   1) The nominees must have made a substantial contribution to the

      health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based

      communications.

   2) The contribution may be technical, social, economic or cultural.

   3) Nominations may be of individuals, systems, or organizations in

      the private or public sectors.

   4) Nominations are open to all, and you may nominate more than one

      recipient. You may nominate yourself or your organization.

   5) All nominations, to be valid, must contain your reasons, however

      brief, on why you are nominating the individual or organization,

      along with a means of contacting the nominee, and your own contact

      number. No anonymous nominations will be allowed.

   6) Every person or organization, with the single exception of EFF

      staff members, are eligible for Pioneer Awards.

   7) Persons or representatives of organizations receiving a Pioneer

      Award will be invited to attend the ceremony at the Foundation's

      expense.

You may nominate as many as you wish, but please use one form per

nomination. You may return the forms to us via email to

             pioneer@eff.org

You may mail them to us at:

             Pioneer Awards, EFF,

             155 Second Street

             Cambridge MA 02141.

You may FAX them to us at:

             +1 617 864 0866

Just tell us the name of the nominee, the phone number or email address

at which the nominee can be reached, and, most important, why you feel

the nominee deserves the award.  You may attach supporting

documentation.  Please include your own name, address, and phone number.

We're looking for the Pioneers of the Electronic Frontier that have made

and are making a difference. Thanks for helping us find them,

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

        -------EFF Pioneer Awards Nomination Form------

Please return to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

via email to:       pioneer@eff.org

via surface mail to EFF 155 Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02141 USA;

via FAX to +1 617 864 0866

Nominee:

Title:

Company/Organization:

Contact number or email address:

Reason for nomination:

Your name and contact information:

Extra documentation attached:

DEADLINE: ALL NOMINATIONS MUST BE RECEIVE BY THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER

FOUNDATION BY MIDNIGHT, EASTERN STANDARD TIME U.S., DECEMBER 31,1992.

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                        THE EFF/AUSTIN CHAPTER

               A Progress Report by John S. Quarterman

                      President of Autsin EFF.

As of July 1992, the official name of our group is EFF-Austin,

and we are a Texas nonprofit corporation. Our goals, adapted from

those of EFF-National, are given in our Articles of Incorporation:

      (a) to engage in and support educational activities that

      increase understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed

      by computing and telecommunications, and related civil liberties

      issues.

      (b) to foster a clearer social understanding of the issues

      underlying free and open telecommunications; and

      (c) to facilitate and encourage communication between

      individuals interested in computer and telecommunication

      technology and related social and legal issues.

Among other activities in pursuit of these goals, we hold three

distinct types of public meetings: member meetings; Public Forums; and

Cyberdawgs.

Member meetings consist of presentations by EFF-Austin directors and

others on what EFF-Austin is doing, and questions and suggestions

from the attendees.

Our first general public meeting was held in May, at the Austin

Technology Incubator. Close to sixty people attended to listen to

what we had to say and to offer ideas. We are planning another member

meeting for November.

Public Forums have specific agendas and speakers, and both present

information of interest to our members and the public, and invite

discussion.

Our most recent public forum was "The Net: What is It, Where is it,

Who Uses It, and for What?", presented by John Quarterman and Smoot

Carl-Mitchell of Texas Internet Consulting and Matrix Information

and Directory Services, and Anna Couey, an art networker from

San Francisco. This was held at MCC and included online demonstrations

of Internet applications such as anonymous FTP, archie, and gopher,

as well as TELNET to locations such as Moscow and the WELL.

The next scheduled Public Forum is on October 29. Noted science

fiction author Bruce Sterling will speak and sign copies concerning his

latest work, the nonfiction book, The Hacker Crackdown, just published

by Bantam. This meeting will be held at the University of Texas. We

are inviting local law enforcement officers to attend, considering

the subject matter of the book. Cliff Figallo, Director of the Cambridge

Office of the Electronic Frontier Foundation will also attend.

Ed Cavazos is currently organizing a panel discussion on Sysop Liability

that will be given in January of next year.

In contrast to the formal presentation of a Public Forum is a

"Cyberdawg". These are informal networking mixers. (The name comes

from a hot dog picnic held last year at the Steve Jackson Games office

in Austin.) We have held two Cyberdawgs so far , in June and August,

at the High Times Tea Bar and Brain Gym (a local establishment

that serves intellectual games instead of alcohol), and at Europa Books.

They were well-attended by a diverse mix of the Austin electronic

community. All types of computer users met to talk, exchange

information, make contacts, and simply have fun. We have scheduled the

next Cyberdawg for November, and plan to have Tracy LaQuey Parker

present to sign copies of her latest book, The Internet Companion,

just published by Addison-Wesley.

Another method of information distribution that we have employed is

staffing tables at conventions. For example, we held a table at the

Government and Technology Convention in February of 1992, and have

plans to be present at the 1993 show as well. We had a meeting at

the Armadillocon Science Fiction Convention 9-11 October.

Since several of our members are frequent travelers to SF conventions,

we have presented panels and distributed literature at many such events.

We consider this worthwhile, since science fiction readers are likely

to be interested in the way society evolves to handle evolving 

technology.

At all of these events we have been passing out EFF literature that we

possess at the time. We have created information of our own, as well.

There is the Info Disk, which contains text files that serve as a

primer to relevant issues in the use of computers and networks.

September saw the first issue of our online newsletter, Word, which we

plan to distribute monthly. EFF-Austin also sponsors a moderated

newsgroup, austin.eff, linked bidirectionally with a mailing list,

eff-austin@tic.com. That newsgroup and mailing list are about

EFF-Austin and local concerns, but they are already widely

distributed outside of Austin and on BBSes as well as through

USENET, UUCP, and the Internet.

This is all in addition to the meetings of the Board of Directors

(fifteen in the last twelve months). We currently hold these meetings

on the second Tuesday of each month.

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                        CURRENT SITE @eff.org

                       Where Users Come First.

                         by Rita Rouvalis

                         (rita@eff.org)

Carefully assemble four Sparcstation II's, nine gigs of disk storage,

a T1 and what do you get?  One hopping Internet site and the Heart and

Soul of the EFF. Traditionally, netiquette has required that most ftp

transfers be done druing non-business or off-peak hours.  The reason for

the request is that most ftp machines are also used for other tasks by

the local users.  ftp.eff.org, however, is a dedicated ftp, gopher, and

WAIS machine.  This means that it is not at the staff's disposal, but

yours. So pound away on it at any time of the day or night. That's the

reason we built it.

Services like WAIS, and GOPHER underscore our enthusiasm for better,

easier-to-use technology for accessing the information stored on the

Net.  The wide variety of subject matter found in our anonymous FTP

archives is a working testimony to our belief in the free and open flow

of all kinds of information, not simply the official EFF positions and

publications (these are found only in the EFF directory).

And not only is our hardware the key distribution point for official EFF

documents like EFFector Online and NewsNotes, but we're also the virtual

home for other, similar-minded organizations like Carl Kadie's Computers

and Academic Freedom, the Index on Censorship, the Boston Computer

Society, the Massachusetts branch of Computer Professionals for Social

Responsibility (CPSR), Beyond Dreams, and the Commercial Internet

Exchange (CIX).

Last month, an average of 1371 files *a day* were sucked down from our

archives. Some of your favorites, according to our statistics, are

File                                             Downloads in September

/pub/cud/phrack/phrack-40                                           454

/pub/EFF/legal-issues/eff-fbi-analysis                              230

/pub/EFF/about-eff                                                  197

/pub/cud/cud/cud4.41                                                173

/pub/internet-info/ftp.sites                                        101

/pub/journals/CORE/core1.08                                          53

/etc/passwd                                                          39

/pub/EFF/legal-issues/against-look-and-feel                          39

/pub/EFF/papers/crime-and-puzzlement                                 33

/pub/journals/InterText/ITv2n4-ascii                                 29

One of the best-kept secrets on ftp.eff.org is the relatively quiet

little corner occupied by the /journals directory.  One of the most

selective news stands in Cyberspace, it contains a small number of

excellent and widely varied electronic publications.  Our two newest

additions to the magazine rack are CurrentCites, which presents selected

articles on information transfer, electronic publishing, expert systems

and artificial intelligence, and more; and ScreamBaby, a tense, neurotic

'zine that asks the all-consuming question "What the hell did *YOU* do

today?"

Other recent additions include a document on electronic communications

from Human Right Watch (/pub/EFF/papers/electrifying-speech); the first

edition of Word, the EFF-Austin chapter's newsletter (/pub/EFF/local-

chapters/Austin_TX/Word1); and the EJournal Directory, an extensive list

of electronic publications (/pub/journals/EJournal.Directory2.1).

We are always looking for new files of interest to add to our ftp

collection.  If you know of anything appropriate, please drop us a note

at eff@eff.org.

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

 From the Univ of Wisconsin Microelectronics bulletin, Prof. F Cerrina

 as the author:

  "After the Microlithography '92 conference in Japan, we toured some

 of the leading electronics laboratories.  Our visit to Hitachi's

 Central Research Lab included an amusing demonstration of the

 resolution of current lithography.  On a four-inch wafer, they printed

 a map of the world that included the streets of London down to the

 smallest alleys.  It's now possible to put a fully detailed map of

 the world on a six-inch wafer."

 Food for thought...

 (Submitted by Gary Delp <gdelp+@rchland.ibm.com> )

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                    The Settling of the Internet

                         by David Tyckson

                     (DT673@ALBNYVMS.BITNET )

     It has been nearly three months since I sent my original "What's 

Going On Here?" message to PACS-L, which dealt with the migration from 

electronic to print format of some of my favorite network publications.  

While I expected some responses to this message, I did not expect the 

flood of material that came to me both privately and over the network.  

I am finally clearing my mailbox of old messages and would like to 

report to PACS-L on this topic. 

     The vast majority of responses disagreed with me and indicated that 

print is an appropriate, if not preferred, publication medium.  Many 

replies stressed the rights of authors to receive royalty payments for 

print publications, the fact that print gets wider distribution than 

electronic media, and that the author has every right to select the 

publication format.  One particularly thoughtful response (sent on 

PACS-L by Czeslaw Jan Grycz) discussed the role of electronic 

publication in the scholarly communications process.  Other responses 

moved into a variety of related topics, including copyright, the cost of 

the network, and even the global environment.  It is clear that my 

original message struck a nerve among many network users. 

     Some responses were predictable (the editors of PACS Review were 

not pleased with my attack on the print version of their publication), 

some were enlightening (Brendan Kehoe gave an excellent review of the 

evolution of Zen and the Art of the Internet), and some were surprising 

(I did not realize that Zen had been written by an undergraduate 

student).  Perhaps the most surprising response of all was finding 

myself quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a fact which I 

became aware of only when the Office of the President of my university 

called to find out more about my "article" in the Chronicle! 

     After all of this discussion and publicity, what exactly is going 

on here?  The Internet is not dying, as my initial message may have led 

some to believe, but is alive and very, very well. In fact, network 

resources comprise the biggest growth area in the information world at 

the moment.  All of the training sessions, publications, and new network 

position advertisements clearly show that the Internet will be around 

for a long time to come.  It is not death that we must worry about, but 

rapid growth. 

     Because of this growth, something DID happen to the Internet last 

summer.  The issues that I raised originally were not indicators of the 

end of the network, but were signs of its maturation.  Whereas in the 

past the networks were the playthings (and workthings) of a few network 

elite, they have grown to encompass a much broader clientele.  It is 

this volume of users that has resulted in the changes.  Last summer, the 

number of network users passed the critical mass required to attract 

interest from commercial publishers and the press.  While this attention 

will help the Internet to grow even further, it takes something away 

from the communal aspects of the early users. 

     Like the telephone user who was required to move from a party line 

to a private line when he/she realized who else could be monitoring the 

calls, the presence of journalistic and commercial entities on the 

networks may change the nature of the information communicated over 

these networks.  Information that has been given away freely in the past 

may now require some type of payment to a publisher.  While the creators 

of information deserve credit (both intellectual and monetary) for their 

work, the formalization of this process will tend to discourage 

"skywriting" as we have known it in the past.  In addition, authors who 

may formerly have spontaneously responded to other messages may now be 

cautious in what they say and how they say it.  The numerous disclaimer 

statements at the end of author signatures are already a step in this 

direction. 

     Last summer saw the passing of an era in networked resources.  

Before the summer, the network was populated primarily by pioneers, who 

explored its resources out of enthusiasm, interest, and a sense of 

exploration.  Now it is being populated by settlers, who wish to mine 

the networks in some sort of production mode.  The early users 

(pioneers) were able to explore and search in a somewhat unrestricted 

manner, creating their own rules as they went along.  Some did it for 

the challenge, some in search of specific types of resources, and others 

just for the fun of seeing what was out there. 

     The success of those pioneer efforts brought many more users onto 

the networks.  However, these new users did not usually have the same 

motives for utilizing networked resources.  Rather than exploring the 

network wilderness, the new users (settlers) want resources that they 

can use in their everyday lives.  They also want guides to these 

resources and rules for their use.  The commercial and journalistic 

presence in issues related to the network is a clear indication that we 

have evolved into the settler stage. 

     Unfortunately, the cultures of pioneers and settlers do not always 

conform.  Pioneers want freedom, while settlers want order.  While some 

pioneers stake out an area and become leading settlers in an aspect of 

networked resources, others move on and continue to explore new areas.  

The pioneers laid the groundwork for the rest of us (I consider myself a 

very early settler) and we owe them our gratitude for making us aware of 

the capabilities of networked information.  While we may lament the 

passing of the good old days of freewheeling information flow, we have 

moved on into an era in which more networked information will be 

available to more people than ever. 

     Last summer saw the passing of the era of the wild, wild Internet.  

It is now up to those of us who have settled these new territories to 

develop rules, regulations, and guidebooks that will make information 

available equitably for everyone.  I have faith that we, as information 

organizers, will be able to develop a culture that preserves democratic 

access to information resources.  If not, we will have settled a land 

not worth inhabiting.

                                                 David Tyckoson

                                    Head, Reference Department

                                          University Libraries

                                   University at Albany - SUNY

                                                (518) 442-3559

                                                DT673@ALBNYVMS 

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                         FROM THE MBOX

From: "Thomas Leedy, Admin A-402, Ext 2410" <LEEDY@MICF.NIST.GOV>

To: Electronic Frontier Foundation <eff@eff.org>

Subject:    Where Can I Get One of Those Bumper Stickers?

Date:    Thu, 15 Oct 92  09:46:31 EDT

I saw a *great* bumper sticker on the Washington DC Beltway this morning

and almost ran the poor guy off the road trying to read the Internet

address ...so I hope that I have this right. It said "I'd rather be

telecommuting. " Do you people make these available? If so how can I get

one? (The only other way I know is to steal the fellow's bumper!) Would

be interested in other material/positions that the Electronic Frontier

Foundation makes available.

Thanks!

Best ... Tom

leedy@micf.nist.gov

[Editors note:  Card-carrying members of the EFF can get one bumper

sticker for free.  Non-members can buy them for $2 each, pre-paid. 

Please include a self-addressed stamped business-sized envelope and

specify whether you want:

                    "I'd rather be telecommuting."

                              "CYBERNAUT"

                 "Highways in Cyberspace: 'Make it so.'"

                     "My other car is a computer."

  Gifs of these can be viewed by ftp'ing to ftp.eff.org and cd'ing to

/pub/EFF/eff-issues thanks to the generous volunteer work of Mark

Sheenan (sheehan@indiana.edu).]

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

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########## ########## ########## |          

####       ####       ####       |  A TECHNOLOGY POLICY FOR AMERICA

########   ########   ########   |  by President-Elect Bill Clinton

########   ########   ########   |   

####       ####       ####       |     

########## ####       ####       |

########## ####       ####       |        

=====================================================================

EFFector Online           November 4, 1992                Issue  3.08

           A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                            ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

          A TECHNOLOGY POLICY FOR AMERICA Six Broad Initiatives

                          by Bill Clinton

                        (September, 1992)

The Clinton-Gore technology policy consists of six broad initiatives 

that together will restore America's technological leadership: 

1. Building a 21st Century Technology Infrastructure.  

Infrastructure has traditionally been the responsibility of federal and 

state governments. Investing in infrastructure means more than repairing 

bridges, harbors and highways. Today, the United States faces a new 

series of communications, transportation and environmental needs for the 

21st century. The creation of a 21st century infrastructure program 

would serve as a critical technology driver for the nation. It would 

stimulate major new national R&D efforts; create large, predictable 

markets that would prompt significant private sector investments; and 

create millions of new jobs.

A 21st century infrastructure would address many practical problems. For 

example, the government can serve as a catalyst for the private sector 

development of an advanced national communications network, which would 

help companies collaborate on research and design for advanced 

manufacturing; allow doctors across the country to access leading 

medical expertise; put immense educational resources at the fingertips 

of American teachers and students; open new avenues for disabled people 

to do things they can't do today; provide technical information to small 

businesses; and make telecommuting much easier. Such a network could do 

for the productivity of individuals at their places of work and learning 

what the interstate highway of the 1950s did for the productivity of the 

nation's travel and distribution system.

Each year, I plan to devote a significant portion of my four year, $80 

billion Rebuild America fund to laying the groundwork for the nation's 

infrastructure needs in the 21st century. Federal funding for the 

National Research and Education Network is one example of how the 

federal government can serve as a catalyst for private sector 

infrastructure investment. We will also provide additional funding to 

network our schools, hospitals and libraries.

As part of the effort to assess U.S. needs and develop appropriate 

programs, the federal government must monitor, or "benchmark", what 

foreign governments are doing. For example, the Japanese government has 

committed to invest over $120 billion by 1995 to develop a digital 

broadband communication infrastructure called the Information Network 

System, and plans to invest another $150 billion to establish model 

programs for business and residential users.

A comprehensive infrastructure program must also include effective 

standards and regulations. By establishing reasonable standards and a 

constructive regulatory environment, the government can send clear 

signals to industry about important, emerging markets and spur private 

sector investment. For example, the digital standard that the Federal 

Communications Commission (FCC), in cooperation with industry, 

established for high resolution television provides an excellent 

indication of the future technical direction of the industry and will do 

much to facilitate private sector R&D.

A 21st century infrastructure program should consist of the following 

five elements:

     Funding the establishment of key networks and demonstration 

     projects;

     Benchmarking U.S. programs against those of other major industrial 

     nations;

     Establishing standards and a regulatory climate that fosters 

     private sector investment;

     Involving the federal labs, companies, and universities in 

     conducting R&D on key technical issues; and

     Providing training for users of networks and databases.

2.  Establishing Education and Training Programs for a High-Skill 

Workforce. 

The U.S. education system must make sure that American workers have the 

requisite skills. The focus should be not only on the top American 

students who measure up to world-class standards, but also on average 

and disadvantaged students. It must also take into account the need to 

upgrade workers' skills and help people make the difficult transition 

from repetitive, low-skill jobs to the demands of a flexible, high-skill 

workplace. Unlike Germany, the United States does not have a 

sophisticated vocational education program, and unlike Japan, U.S. firms 

do not have a strong incentive to invest in the training and retraining 

of their workers. We need more of both, geared to meet the needs of the 

mobile U.S. workforce.

I will implement the following programs to strengthen the skills of 

America's workforce:

     Establish tough standards and a national examination system in 

     core subjects like writing, communication, math and science; 

     level the playing field for disadvantaged students; 

     reduce class sizes;and give parents the right to chose the public 

     schools their child attends.

     Establish a national apprenticeship program that offers non-

     college bound students training in a marketable skill.

     Give every American the right to borrow money for college by 

     establishing a National Service Trust Fund. Students can repay 

     their borrowing as a percent of their earnings over time, or by 

     serving their communities for one or two years doing work their 

     country needs.  

     Stimulate industry to provide continuing, high skills training to 

     its front-line workers.

For small manufacturers to compete today, it is not good enough simply 

to have access to new equipment and new technologies if their workers do 

not have the skills and know-how to operate them efficiently, and engage 

in truly flexible production. Yet, too much of our training is for only 

top executives or workers after they have lost their jobs. 

My plan calls for companies with over 50 employees to ensure that 1.5 

percent of their payroll goes to training throughout the workforce -- 

not just for the top executives. But we must do more for smaller 

companies who cannot afford to set up the training programs. These 

companies need to adapt to new technologies and new equipment and the 

constantly new demands. 

New production technology should be worker-centered and skill-based, not 

skill-eliminating. In the high-performance workplace, workers have more 

control over production and worker responsibility is increased. Some 

companies that have invested billions in new capital equipment have 

found that genuine employee involvement and good labor-management 

relations are ultimately more important. Therefore we need to undertake 

the following: 

     Manufacturing training centers:

     We need to promote private sector-led efforts to set up training 

     for small companies. These can be done by building off community 

     colleges training and should be an integral part of the network of 

     Manufacturing Extension provisions. These would also be integrated 

     with my Apprenticeship initiative so that young people will have 

     the opportunity to learn specific skills needed for specific 

     manufacturing jobs or industries. Councils including private 

     sector and academic leaders as well as workers would help decide 

     generic areas for training. 

     Certificate of training guarantees:

     In order to be eligible for federal funds for manufacturing 

     training centers, such centers would have to provide all future 

     employers with a Certificate of Guarantee. This would ensure that, 

     when workers do not pick up the necessary skills the first time, 

     these centers would provide additional training -- at no 

     additional cost to the employer.  

     Best Practices on Worker Participation:

     An integral function of the Manufacturing Extension Centers will 

     be to collect and disseminate information on "best practices" with 

     regards to worker participation. Increasing worker productivity is 

     one of the keys to increasing overall manufacturing productivity.

3.  Investing in Technology Programs that Empower America's Small 

Businesses.

A healthy and growing small-business sector is essential to America's 

economic well-being. America's 20 million small businesses account for 

40 percent of our GNP, half of all employment, and more than half of the 

job creation. My technology policy will recognize the importance of 

small and medium-sized business to America's economic growth with:

     Market-driven extension centers:

     Creating 170 manufacturing centers will put the best tools in the 

     hands of those companies that are creating the new jobs on which 

     the American economy depends by helping small- and medium- sized 

     manufacturers choose the right equipment, adopt the top business 

     practices, and learn cutting-edge production techniques. In order 

     to enhance U.S. industrial competitiveness, public policy must 

     promote the diffusion and absorption of technology across the U.S. 

     industrial base. Some state and local governments are already 

     involved in technology diffusion using manufacturing centers. They 

     are helping small businesses improve the productivity of their 

     existing machinery and equipment, adopt computer-integrated or 

     flexible manufacturing techniques, and identify training needs.

The Commerce Department has five Manufacturing Technology Centers across 

the country and has plans for two more. Unfortunately, these efforts are 

only a drop in the bucket compared to those of our major competitors. 

Germany has over 40 contract R&D centers (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft) and a 

broad network of industry associations and research cooperatives that 

effectively diffuse technology across industry. In Japan, major 

government-sponsored research projects, 170 kohsetsushi technology 

support centers for small businesses, and tight links between companies 

and their suppliers serve much the same function. There is no comparable 

system in the United States.

A Clinton-Gore Administration will build on the efforts of state and 

local governments to create a national technology extension program, 

designed to meet the needs of the millions of small businesses that have 

difficulty tracking new technology and adapting it to their needs.

The involvement of workers is critical to developing and executing 

successful industrial extension programs. In technology, as in other 

area, we must put people first. New production technology should be 

worker-centered and skill-based, not skill-eliminating. In the high-

performance workplace, workers have more control over production and 

worker responsibility is increased. Some companies that have invested 

billions in new capital equipment have found that genuine employee 

involvement and good labor-management relations are ultimately more 

important.

No less than 25 of these new manufacturing centers will be regional 

technology alliances devoted to regions hit hard by defense cut-backs. 

These alliances could promote the development of dual-use technologies 

and manufacturing processes on a regional basis. Extending the Small 

Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR)

In addition to creating a national technology extension service for 

small and medium-sized businesses, I will also expand the Small Business 

Innovation Research Program. By requiring that federal agencies set-

aside 1.25 percent of their R&D budget for small businesses, this 

program has helped create billions of dollars of new commercial activity 

while improving the research programs of the federal government. Given 

this track record, the SBIR program should be doubled over a period of 

four years to 2.5% to accelerate the development of new products by 

innovative small businesses. 

Funding private sector-led training centers:

We also need a fundamental change in the way we deal with R&D and 

technology if we are to lead a new era of American manufacturing. 

Currently, our R&D budget reflects neither the realities of the post-

Cold War era nor the demands for a new national security. At present, 

60% of the federal R&D budget is devoted to defense programs and 40% 

percent to non-defense programs. The federal government should aim to 

restore a 50-50 balance between defense and non-defense R&D. That is why 

I have called for a new civilian research and development program to 

support research in the technologies that will launch new growth 

industries and revitalize traditional ones.

This civilian technology program will:  

     Invest in Private-Sector Led Consortia: When the private sector 

     creates consortia to share risks, pool resources, avoid 

     duplication and make investments that they would not make without 

     such agreements, government should be willing to do its part. 

     Support for consortia such as the SEMATECH, National Center for 

     Manufacturing Sciences and the Advanced Battery is appropriate. By 

     requiring firms to match federal contributions on at least a 50:50 

     basis, the government can insure that we are leveraging public 

     dollars and that they are market-led and market-oriented. Often 

     major companies are reluctant to invest in their suppliers and 

     assist them in quality management techniques, because they fear 

     they will go to another company. Private-sector-led consortia 

     allow the major companies to cure that problem by coming together 

     and agreeing on industry-wide efforts to invest in smaller 

     suppliers. Some of these consortia will be funded by the Advanced 

     Technology Program.   

     Inward Technology Transfer: While we must strengthen the links 

     between American R&D and American jobs, we must also develop a 

     strategy for acquiring, disseminating, and utilizing foreign 

     technologies. Our Government must increase the collection, 

     translation and dissemination of foreign scientific and technical 

     information.

4. Increasing Dramatically the Percentage of Federal R&D for Critical 

Technologies. 

I will view the support of generic industrial technologies as a priority 

mission. The government already spends $76 billion annually on R&D. This 

funding should be refocused so that more resources are devoted to 

critical technologies, such as advanced materials, information 

technology and new manufacturing processes that boost industrial 

performance.

At present, 60% of the federal R&D budget is devoted to defense programs 

and 40% percent to non-defense programs. This level of support for 

defense R&D is a holdover from the massive arms build-up of the 1980s. 

At the very least, in the next three years the federal government should 

shift the balance between defense and non-defense programs back to a 50-

50 balance, which would free-up over $7 billion for non-defense R&D. 

Having achieved this balance, the government should examine whether 

national security considerations and economic conditions warrant further 

shifts.

I will also create a civilian research and development program to 

support research in the technologies that will launch new growth 

industries and revitalize traditional ones. 

This civilian technology program will: 

     Help companies develop innovative technologies and bring new 

     products to market;

     Take the lead in coordinating the R&D investments of federal 

     agencies; 

     and Cooperate and consult with industry, academia and labor in the 

     formulation and implementation of technology policy and R&D 

     programs. 

Advanced Manufacturing R&D:

The United States is currently underinvesting in advanced manufacturing 

R&D. The federal government should work with the private sector -- with 

the private sector taking the lead -- to develop an investment strategy 

for those technologies critical to 21st century manufacturing. 

Following the lead of my running mate, Al Gore, and several of his 

colleagues, we must do more to support industry's efforts to develop the 

advanced computer-controlled equipment ("intelligent machines") and the 

electronic networks that will enable American factories to work as 

quickly and efficiently as their Japanese counterparts. These 

technologies also include flexible micro- and nanofabrication, 

simulation and modeling of manufacturing processes, tools for concurrent 

engineering, electronic networks that allow firms to share business and 

product data within and between firms, and environmentally-conscious 

manufacturing. According to industry experts, the United States has an 

opportunity to capitalize on the emerging shift from mass production to 

flexible or "agile" manufacturing.

5. Leveraging the Existing Federal Investment in Technology to Maximize 

its Contribution to Industrial Performance. 

R&D conducted at the federal labs and consortia should be carefully 

evaluated to assure that it has a maximum impact on industrial 

performance. Furthermore, cooperation between universities and industry 

should be encouraged.

America's 726 federal laboratories collectively have a budget of $23 

billion, but their missions and funding reflect the priorities that 

guided the United States during the Cold War. Approximately one-half of 

their budget is directed toward military R&D. By contract, the budget 

for the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) - the 

only federal agency whose principal mission is to assist industry - 

accounts for less than one percent of the total federal lab budget. 

Despite several years of legislative reform and many new directives, the 

labs still do not have the autonomy or funding to pursue joint ventures 

and industry aggressively.

These labs and other private non-profit research centers are national 

treasures because they house large, multi-disciplinary teams of 

researchers who have honed the skills of balancing basic and applied 

research for long-term, mission-oriented projects. It would take years 

to match these special capabilities elsewhere. Today, the labs and 

industry cooperate on defense needs; we need to change regulations and 

orientation to get this cooperation on technology development for 

commercial usage.

To remedy these problems, I propose the following: 

     The budget of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 

     should be doubled. Federal labs which can make a significant 

     contribution to U.S. competitiveness should have ten to twenty 

     percent of their existing budget assigned to establish joint 

     ventures with industry.

     Private corporations should compete for this funding through 

     review by panels managed by the labs and made up of corporate and 

     academic experts. Lab directors should have full authority to 

     sign, fund and implement cooperative R&D agreements with industry. 

     Some labs, such as NIST, already have this authority, but others 

     do not.

     Industry and the labs should jointly develop measures to determine 

     how well the technology transfer process is working and review 

     progress after 3 years. If these goals have not been met, industry 

     and the labs should reevaluate their involvement, and funds should 

     be redirected to consortia, universities and other organizations 

     that can work more effectively with industry for results.

     University research accounts for a large part of the federal basic 

     research budget. Funding for basic university research should 

     continue to be provided for a broad range of disciplines, since it 

     is impossible to predict where the next breakthrough may come. 

     While maintaining America's leadership in basic research, 

     government, universities and industry must all work together to 

     take advantage of these new breakthroughs to enhance U.S. 

     competitiveness.

Cooperative R&D programs represent another opportunity. Consortia can 

help firms share risks, pool resources, avoid duplication, and make 

investments that they would not undertake individually. By requiring 

that firms match federal contributions on at least a 50:50 basis, the 

government can leverage its investments and ensure that they are market-

oriented. 

Many industries are demonstrating a new found willingness to cooperate 

to meet the challenge of international competition: SEMATECH has proven 

to be an important investment for the industry and the Nation. It has 

helped improve U.S. semiconductor manufacturing technology, helped 

reversed the decline in world-wide market share of U.S. semiconductor 

manufacturing equipment companies, and improved communications between 

users and suppliers. U.S. automakers have recently formed the United 

States Council for Automotive Research to develop batteries for electric 

cars, reduce emissions, improve safety, and enhance computer-aided 

design. The Michigan-based National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, 

which now has 130 members, is helping to develop and deploy the 

technologies necessary for world-class manufacturing.  The 

Microelectronics Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) is developing an 

information infrastructure which will enable businesses to develop, 

manufacture, deliver and support products and services with superior 

speed, flexibility, and quality. U.S. steel-makers are cooperating to 

develop manufacturing processes which would use less energy, create 

fewer pollutants, and slash the time required to turn iron ore and coal 

into steel.

A Clinton-Gore Administration will work to build a productive 

partnership between government, research labs, universities, and 

business.

6. Creating a World-Class Business Environment for Private Sector 

Investment and Innovation.

Changes in America's tax, trade and regulatory policies are also needed 

to help restore America's industrial and technological leadership. In a 

global economy in which capital and technology are increasingly mobile, 

we must make sure that the United States has the best business 

environment for private sector investment. Tax incentives can spur 

investment in plant and equipment, R&D and new businesses. Trade policy 

can ensure that U.S. firms have the same access to foreign markets that 

our competitors enjoy in the U.S. market. Antitrust reform will enable 

U.S. firms to share risks and pool resources. Strengthening commercial 

sections of our embassies will increase our ability to promote U.S. 

goods abroad. Streamlining export controls will reduce the bureaucratic 

red tape which can undermine competitiveness. And an overhaul of 

cumbersome defense procurement regulations will strengthen both our 

civilian and defense industrial bases. Permanent incentives for private 

sector investment:

Too many federal incentives meant to spur innovation are on-again-off-

again programs that industry views as unreliable. As a result, they have 

not realized their full impact. Several permanent tax measures should be 

put in place immediately to stimulate commercial activity. They include 

the following: 

     Make the R&D tax credit permanent to provide incentives for U.S. 

     companies that invest in developing new technology. 

     Place a permanent moratorium on Treasury Regulation 1.861-8: This 

     regulation increases the effective rate of U.S. taxation of R&D 

     and creates a disincentive for companies to conduct R&D in the 

     United States. 

     Provide a targeted investment tax credit to encourage investment 

     in the new equipment that we need to compete in the global 

     economy, and ensure that depreciation schedules reflect the rapid 

     rate of technological obsolescence of today's high-tech equipment. 

     Help small businesses and entrepreneurs by offering a 50% tax 

     exclusion to those who take risks by making long-term investments 

     in new businesses. 

An effective trade policy:

The Bush-Quayle Administration has failed to stand up for U.S. workers 

and firms. We need a President who will open foreign markets and respond 

forcefully to unfair trade practices. I will:

     - Enact a stronger, sharper Super 301 to ensure that U.S. 

     companies enjoy the same access to foreign markets that foreign 

     companies enjoy to our market. 

     - Successfully complete the Uruguay Round. This will help U.S. 

     manufacturers and high-tech companies by reducing foreign tariffs, 

     putting an end to the rampant theft of U.S. intellectual property, 

     and maintaining strong disciplines against unfair trade practices.

     - Insist on results from our trade agreements. Although the U.S. 

     has negotiated many trade agreements, particularly with Japan, 

     results have been disappointing. I will ensure that all trade 

     agreements are lived up to, including agreements in sectors such 

     as telecommunications, computers and semiconductors. Countries 

     that fail to comply with trade agreements will face sanctions. 

     - Promote manufactured goods exports by small and medium 

     companies: To promote exports of manufactured goods, I will 

     strengthen the commercial sections of our embassies abroad so that 

     they can promote U.S goods, participate in foreign standards-

     setting organizations, and support the sales efforts of small and 

     medium-sized businesses. We should also provide matching funds to 

     trade associations or other organizations who establish overseas 

     centers to promote U.S. manufactured goods exports. 

Streamline Exports Controls:

Export controls are necessary to protect U.S. national security 

interests and prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological and 

chemical weapons. Nonetheless, these controls are often overly 

restrictive and bureaucratic, creating a mountain of red tape and 

costing the U.S. tens of billions of dollars in exports -- while 

undermining the competitiveness of the high-tech industries on which our 

national security depends. The United States should: 

     - Further liberalize East-West export controls that are 

     unnecessary given the end of the Cold War. 

     - Avoid unilateral export controls and controls on technology 

     widely available in world markets. Unilateral controls penalize 

     U.S. exporters without advancing U.S. national security or foreign 

     policy interests. 

     - Streamline the current decision-making process for export 

     controls. While our competitors use a single agency to administer 

     export controls, the United States system is often characterized 

     by lengthy bureaucratic turf wars between the State Department, 

     the Commerce Department, the Pentagon's Defense Technology 

     Security Agency, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the 

     Department of Energy, and the National Security Agency. 

Antitrust Reform: 

Increasingly, the escalating cost of state-of-the-art manufacturing 

facilities will require firms to share costs and pool risks. To permit 

this cooperation, the United States should extend the National 

Cooperative Research Act of 1984 to cover joint production ventures. 

Civil-military integration: 

Department of Defense procurement regulations are so cumbersome that 

they have resulted in an unnecessary and wasteful segregation of our 

civilian and defense industrial bases. The military specification for 

sugar cookies is 10 pages long. Government procurement is so different 

from private sector practices that companies now set up separate 

divisions and manufacturing facilities to avoid distorting the 

commercial part of their business. The U.S. must review and eliminate 

barriers to the integration of our defense and civilian industrial base. 

These barriers include cost and price accounting, unnecessary military 

specifications, procurement regulations, inflexibility on technical data 

rights, and a failure to develop technologies in a dual-use context.

Taken together, the six initiatives discussed above comprise a 

technology policy that will restore economic growth at home, help U.S. 

firms succeed in world markets, and help American workers earn a good 

standard of living in the international economy.

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########## ########## ########## |          COMPUTER SPIES

########## ########## ########## |         by Mitchell Kapor

####       ####       ####       | 

########   ########   ########   |BUILDING BLOCKS AS STUMBLING BLOCKS

########   ########   ########   |   A Commentary on the 15th NCSC

####       ####       ####       |        by Rebecca Mercuri 

########## ####       ####       |

########## ####       ####       |           THIS OLD DOS

=====================================================================

EFFector Online           November 9, 1992                Issue  3.09

           A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

                            ISSN 1062-9424

=====================================================================

                             Computer Spies

                           by Mitchell Kapor

Can a company lawfully eavesdrop on its employees' telephone calls? Not 

if they have an expectation of privacy. But, at least in most states, 

the employer can monitor conversations if it tells the workers that that 

is what it is going to do.  

That old legal issue surfaces in a new technological context in Silicon 

Valley, with disturbing consequences for your ability to defend key 

information assets. Take a look at how Borland International, a company 

that should know better after almost a decade on the leading edge of 

technology, may have hurt itself in a case involving an apparent theft of 

trade secrets.  

The allegations in the tangled legal affair are by now well known. On 

Sept. 1 Eugene Wang, a vice president of Borland's computer languages 

division, abruptly jumped ship to join competitor Symantec Corp. A 

pattern of suspicious behavior in Wang's final days suggested that 

perhaps he had traded Borland secrets along with his job. Borland had no 

proof, but it knew where to look. Borland executives opened Wang's MCI 

Mail account, where they found, they said, a number of messages that 

they believe prove Wang delivered Borland product plans, memos and other 

sensitive documents to Symantec. The evidence thus uncovered led to 

police searches of Wang's and Symantec Chief Executive Gordon Eubanks' 

homes and Symantec offices, to a pending criminal investigation of Wang 

and Eubanks and to a civil suit by Borland against Symantec.  

What has been scarcely addressed in newspaper coverage of these events 

is what this case means to the rapidly growing business of electronic 

mail.  

Let's back up and consider the law that protects electronic mail users, 

the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. The privacy 

act protects messages while in transmission on a public mail service 

such as MCI, as well as after messages are received and stored on that 

service.  

Borland and its attorneys, in a hurry to prove their suspicions about 

Wang, justified their intrusion into the mailbox as a property right: 

Borland was paying the bills for Wang's MCI account. "E-mail is like an 

in-box on someone's desk,' says Borland spokesman Steven Grady in 

defense of the search. "When they leave, it reverts to the corporation."  

Case closed? Not quite. Borland's metaphors fall apart when tested 

against the realities of electronic mail. Unlike in-boxes on an 

abandoned desk, E-mail requires a password, and it can be administered 

by a wholly separate communications company, like MCI. As it stands, in 

a criminal case Wang could challenge the legality of all the evidence 

collected on the basis of the messages found in his MCI account. He may 

also have grounds for a countersuit under the electronic privacy act and 

California law, which goes further in protecting individual privacy.  

It's easy to understand the anger Borland executives felt in discovering 

an apparent information hemorrhage. But the methods employed by Borland, 

which likes to flaunt its "barbarian" ways, may have been a little too 

barbarian by the standards of the federal statute. The one thing for 

sure is that all parties will be involved in a lengthy and expensive 

court battle to sort this out. The final result may be a draw between 

Borland and Symantec, and a new definition of privacy for the rest of 

corporate America.  

Borland could have strengthened its case against Wang if it had followed 

the recommendation of the Electronic Mail Association to announce its 

policies on electronic mail. As it was, a source says the Santa Cruz 

County District Attorney staff took potential violations of the 

electronic privacy act so seriously that they used a top computer-crime 

prosecutor from the San Francisco area to help write the search 

warrants.  

Despite Borland's hard-learned lessons, it continues to refuse to 

implement a formal E-mail privacy policy that declares just when 

electronic messages sent from company equipment are company property. 

Perhaps Borland is afraid that announcing such a policy would simply 

remind miscreants to erase incriminating E-mail files before they are 

found. If so, that's naive and shortsighted.  

Some companies may be reluctant to announce in advance that they are 

constantly snooping. So be it, but then they should refrain from 

scanning MCI in-boxes. Whatever they do, they have to confront the 

reality of the enormous power of digital media. In an age when a 

company's most valuable property  may be intangible the source code for 

a software package, for example an E-mail account may amount to an 

unlocked door on a warehouse.  

The electronic privacy act's procedures may need streamlining, and the 

Borland case may be the ratchet that makes the adjustments. By the time 

Borland could have obtained court authorization to examine Wang's 

electronic mail, some of the messages might have been deleted by MCI's 

automated five-day cleanup function. New legislation requires fine-

tuning in the light of the complexities of real world situations in 

order to be effective for the purposes for which it was originally 

designed. But the lesson here is that corporations must begin to adjust 

their own policies to fit the technologies they use.  

from Forbes Magazine November 9 1992  

Mitch Ratcliffe, editor-at-large for MacWEEK, provided research assistance

for this column.  

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                     BUILDING BLOCKS TO SYSTEM SECURITY

                            By Rebecca Mercuri

                      (mercuri@gradient.cis.upenn.edu)

         A Report from the 15th National Computer Security Conference 

                    October 13 -16, Baltimore, Maryland.

I attended the 15th National Computer Security Conference with the hope 

of coming away with some solutions for the security problems I had 

encountered over the past few years. I left with a longer list of

problems, and the vague feeling that our industry has become remiss in

providing us with answers that we can use, or has answers and is either

incapable or unwilling to yield them publicly. 

Let me state clearly here that this comment does not reflect negatively

on the conference organizers. They performed their task well, creating a 

superbly orchestrated event that covered a broad spectrum of

topics. Indeed, "rookies" were liberally mixed on panels with esteemed

"greybeards" and many women (sans beards) were in evidence as session

chairs and presenters (although I was somewhat dismayed to note that

females appeared to constitute less than 10% of the attendees, lower

than in the computing community in general). The breadth and extent of

the conference does not allow one reporter to describe it fully, so I

offer these remarks merely as comment and commentary, perhaps to 

stimulate discussion. 

The conference had an international flavor. The keynote was by Roland

Hueber (Directorate General of the Commission of the European

Communities) and the closing plenary on International Harmonization

serving as bookends. There were repeated calls for cooperation in

developing global security standards, with the primary advantages of

such appearing to be in commerce. In the wake of the cold war, there

seems to be a spirit of openness in this regard.  I offer the

speculation that it may be foolhardy to enter into conformity of thought

and solutions.  Diversity, particularly in commerce, inspires

creativity. Monopoly, or single-mindedness, often leaves one at risk of

exploitation by a strong central power, or of attack by those who are

close enough or who understand the system well enough to side-track it

We may need "fault-tolerant" and "diversified" answers.

It is useful to juxtapose thoughts about covert channels with those

about encryption systems. For the uninitiated, covert channels are

created when  internal intermittent polling is performed in an effort to

conceal illicit data collection activities. Bob Morris provided the

statistic that 1/10 of a bit per second is enough to expose a key in

approximately 1 month. This is at current processing rates, but one can

extrapolate out the Silicon Valley curve and surmise that our current

key encryption systems will be inadequate within the end of the century

(if not now, perhaps).

In the quest for security tools one encounters the debate on provability 

and formal top level specification. With respect to covert channels, 

Virgil Gligor referred to "formal top level specification as an

unmitigated waste of time," saying that data structures and source may

not map to the top level, there may not be enough relevant details

provided, and excessive false illegal flows may occur. Earl Boebert

stated that formal proving methods have worth in analysis of

specifications, but have failed utterly in spec/code, code/object, and

code/behavior correspondence. Still, formal methods have their

supporters, most notably SRI, as indicated by John Rushby, 

one of their directors (who also publicly revealed that there had been a 

major successful break-in at the lab last month). Interestingly, the

panel on Intrusion Detection was chaired by SRI's Teresa Lunt, who

discussed the use of expert systems to encode vulnerabilities, attack

methods and known suspicious behaviors.  Steve Snapp expressed the

divide and conquer approach, saying that there may be no single

generalizable model of intrusion, and that static, incidence/existence,

and data driven methods should all be used.

The matter of viruses was explored throughout various sessions. The

general consensus of opinion seemed to be that rigorous procedures and

policies need to be implemented so that recovery is possible to some

level following contamination or invasion. 

In the talks I attended, no clear method for handling the recovery from

a "new" virus (that can not be eradicated with existing software) was

offered. This was not consoling to someone who had just last week left a

client's law office with the admonishment "don't use any of the text

files that you've created in the last 6 months until I can find out what

the new virus strain is that appears to have adhered to some unknown

quantity of them."  Here too, the standardization on certain operating

systems and environments (such as Microsoft Windows(TM)), and uniform

acceptance of specific tools (such as the legal community's reliance on

Word Perfect(TM)) encourages the proliferation of attacks that could

potentially disable large sectors of the user base.

Losses seem to be tied heavily to the bottom line. In banking, it may

not be advantageous to implement a $10M or more security system that

still does not assure total impenetrability when insurance coverage can

be obtained at a cost of $1M (even if this price only remains low until

there is a hit). 

In health care, as described in Deborah Hamilton's award-winning paper, 

the bottom line may indeed be one or more people's lives. As true with

drug approvals, it is easy to see that holding back an inadequately

tested computer system may cost more lives than providing it while

make improvements and corrections. How does one weigh security,

reliability and verifiability issues when there is a crying need for

access to the developing technology? We are faced with a moral dilemma

without a governing body to set policies.

The area of privacy was eloquently addressed by Attorney Christine

Axsmith who said that our reasonable expectations of privacy, as

expressed by the 4th Amendment, protect people, not just places. But she

went on to say that with regard to the computer industry, the Privacy

Act and other legislation efforts still suffer from a lack of court

rulings necessary to define their interpretations. Will our efforts to

improve security undermine privacy?  

Curt Symes (from IBM) stated that "we'll all be using smart cards in the 

future, for a higher level of authentication." Does this mean that I

will eventually be required to be bioidentified (DNA, fingerprint,

retinal scan, voiceprint) in order to obtain access to my own data and

research?  A chilling thought.

In conclusion, to paraphrase Peter Neumann, perhaps the conference theme 

"Information Systems Security: Building Blocks to the Future" should be 

read not as "building-blocks" (the small bricks), but as "building

BLOCKS" or obstacles to our future as security professionals. There is a

sense of urgency now -- many of us need more than a foundation of toy

blocks, requiring true solutions which appear to not be forthcoming.

What we don't want are systems and design structures that are so

cumbersome as to impede computational progress.  Discussion may be

fruitful, but let us put our noses to the grindstone and provide

functional tools and answers, rather than guidelines and assertions.

While some are working in this direction, many others are needed.

NCSC '92 -- Comment and Commentary

Copyright (c) 1992 by Rebecca Mercuri. All Rights Reserved.

Reposting and/or reprint not granted without prior written permission

from the author. Address questions, response and corrections to:

mercuri@gradient.cis.upenn.edu

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

                         THIS OLD DOS

Hi, I'm Bob Wheeler Dealer, and welcome to This Old DOS.  Last week you 

may remember we renovated the Charles Babbage Family computer.  We 

upgraded their antique CPM to the IBM operating system known as MS DOS.  

And this week on This Old DOS, we're continuing our renovation by 

installing a brand new operating system, supposed to be real easy to 

use, called Windows.  And boy am I excited.  So let's go around back and 

see how Norm is doing with it.

Bob:  Hi Norm; how's it going?

Norm: Oh, hi Bob.  Well as you can see I'm about to install Windows on 

our old machine.

Bob: No glass in these Windows, huh Norm? Ha ha.

Norm: Ha ha. That's right, just a handful of floppy disks.  This is an 

attempt at making an IBM PC work *a little bit more* like an Apple 

Macintosh.  Instead of typing commands, you just move a lot of little 

pictures around on a screen.

Bob: I can't wait.  Sounds simple enough; let's take a whack at it.

Norm: Well, ok, the first thing we do is install these disks.  Pop them 

in the computer and follow the uh directions on the screen.  Here you 

try (sound of hard drive grinding).  That's it.

Bob: Simple enough.

Norm: Ok, Bob, now the machine wants to know if you want to modify your 

config.sys or change your autoexec.bat to automatically load when the 

machines boots up.  What do you want to do?

Bob: What's a config.sys? I don't anything about this stuff.

Norm: Never mind, it's ok Bob, I'll take care of it.  There.  Now to be 

really state of the art, we've got to upgrade our microprocessor (sound 

of sawing).  That's the computer chip inside inside so that these 

Windows will work fast enough.  Otherwise, you know, you might as well 

go out and get a cup of coffee while the screen draws pretty pictures, 

heh heh.  So let me get one of these uh 486 chips.  We've got a crane 

here.  Hey fellas.. fellas!  You wanna load that puppy here inta place?  

Careful!  (sound of machinery) Don't bend the pins!  There, all snapped 

in.

Bob: All right, now we're ready to open Windows, right?

Norm: Not on your life, Bob.  While we're at it we're building an 

extention onto the memory board for those fat, greedy programs that 

gobble the stuff up.  I'll just hammer a few of these 4 megabyte chips 

into place (bang bang). There, now we've got 16 megabytes on board.  

Narly, man!

Bob: All right, let her rip, Norm.

Norm: Not so fast, Bob!  Those big Windows programs need lots and lots 

of storage space. Charles talked to his banker and decided to spring for 

that 200 megabyte beauty there.  Hand me that..uh

Bob: You mean this thing here? (groaning and grunting)

Norm: Yeah, that's the hard drive.  Ah, thanks.  And they want to do 

multimedia.. you know sound, graphics, computer games... the latest -- 

so we'll add on a new super VGA monitor..

Bob: Something else?

Norm: A CD ROM drive..

Bob: Something else? More stuff?

Norm: Yeah, we have a sound board and special speakers if you want that 

great sound.

Bob: This .. this isn't so simple anymore!

Norm: Well,  we're just about ready to go.  That's about it.

Bob: All right now, with all this preparation Norm, this had better be 

great.

Norm: Well, I hope so, let's (sound of drive grinding) load up Word 

Perfect, Lotus 1.-2-3, Excel, and FileMaker Pro and watch her rip!  

(beep.. crash).  Oh-oh.

Bob: What happened?  What happened?

Norm: Well, it looks like a system crash.

Bob: Oh no!

Norm: Don't worry! We can fix this thing.  We can fix it.

Bob: What do we do now, give up?

Norm: No, Never! We drop everything and start over.  That's the American 

Way.  You keep changing stuff until you find what's wrong.

Bob: Now, how long is this gonna take?  I haven't got all weeks to..?

Norm:  Don't worry! We'll I'll have this thing running like top, Bob.  

In the mean time you can go back in my shop there and use my Mac.

Bob: All right, you keep working at it Norm.  We're out of time folks.  

Join us tomorrow  for the start of our new 50-part series:  "How to 

install and maintain a Local Area Network."  Until then, bye bye for 

This Old DOS!

(c) Copyright National Public Radio (R) 1992. The segment by NPR's Ira 

Plato was originally broadcast on National Public Radio's "Talk of the 

Nation" on September 11, 1992 and is used with permission of National 

Public Radio.  Any unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

                   -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

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