Hacker 2/HACKER2.mdf/cud/cud530d.txt

Text File | 1995-01-03 | 17KB | 417 lines

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 93 12:02:29 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Russell Webb)
Subject: File 4--Sysop jailed in Georgia (article by Lance Rose)

((MODERATOR'S NOTE: The following article comes from BOARDWATCH
Magazine, a monthly hardcopy summary of news and features devoted
to
the BBS world.  Subs are $36 for one year or $59 for two.
Information
about BOARDWATCH can be obtained from Jack Rickard (editor) at
[e-mail] or by writing: BOARDWATCH; 7586 West Jewell
Ave.,
Suite 200; Lakewood CO (80232)).

I ran into this article on a local NYC BBS.  Lance Rose, the
author,
has kindly granted permission for the article to be posted to
comp.org.eff.talk.

I haven't seen any discussions about this event on this newsgroup.
If I've missed any sort of prior discussion on this in
comp.org.eff.talk,
then I offer my apologizes in advance for the use of bandwidth.

-Russell Webb
[e-mail]

+++++++

 LEGALLY ONLINE
 ==============

 SYSOP JAILED IN GEORGIA
+++++++++++++++++++++++
 by Lance Rose

Adult BBS' continue to spread across the country. Many of them
openly
carry industrial-strength hardcore materials, without much apparent
concern for legal reprisals. One might wonder if the sysops of
these
BBS' are fools to proceed so fearlessly, or perhaps the vanguard of
a
new era of online sexual liberation. More likely, they simply
assume
the coast is clear. There is virtually no hard news about adult
BBS'
or their operators getting into trouble. Murky rumors abound
(including some retold in this column several months ago), but
they're
easy to shrug off in their vagueness.

The suspense is over. A man named Robert Houston is currently doing
time in a jail in Jackson, Georgia, based on the presence of
sexually
oriented materials on the BBS he owned and operated. Ironically, he
seems to be one of the guys who took all the right precautions. In
the
end, his prudent measures lost out to a repressive local cultural
climate and petty personal vengeance.

For over two years, Mr. Houston's quiet incarceration did not raise
even a murmur. Then suddenly, he showed up briefly in a segment of
the
CNN news show Technology Week as an example of a sysop who got
popped.
An interview with Mr. Houston was hastily arranged afterward, just
in
time for this issue of Boardwatch. In a collect call from the
Georgia
Diagnostic Center, Robert Houston described how he went from sysop
of
an adult BBS to convicted felon:

Houston owned and operated a video store and repair shop in
Georgia.
His BBS, a Wildcat system called the Stonewall BBS, was a hobby,
and
did not net him any money. There was a sister BBS called "Stonewall
West" in California, but the two operations shared little but their
names.

The Stonewall BBS contained sexually-oriented adult materials, both
straight and gay varieties. Different types of adult materials were
separated from each other by security levels defined on the BBS.
The
materials were relatively mild by adult BBS standards. According to
Houston, nothing on the BBS was racier than what one might find in
Hustler, a popular magazine nationally distributed on newsstands.
There were no files with extreme material such as child pornography
or
bestiality. There was also a popular chat area, which Houston
describes as the BBS version of a 900 sex talk line.  using
computers
to converse instead of our voices.

These areas and materials were closed to casual visitors. Anyone
wishing access to the adult materials on Stonewall BBS first had to
pass through Houston's hair-raisingly exhaustive verification
procedures. On the first call to Stonewall, each caller had to fill
in
a standard questionnaire of personal information - name, address,
age,
phone number, and so on. Upon completion, the caller was asked if
he
desired access to any of the adult areas of the BBS. If the answer
was
yes, the caller was asked which category of materials interested
him,
and what kind of lifestyle he led. Houston says he used this
classification to try and group together people of similar
interests
within the system. Houston himself was gay, and had a fair amount
of
gay-oriented materials on the system.

Next, all callers, regardless of whether they filled out both
questionnaires or only the first one, were placed in the "new users
romper room" area of Stonewall. Callers still wishing to proceed
with
registration were then led into an automated callback verification
sequence, where the BBS software called back the number submitted
by
the caller. After callback verification, new callers were still
restricted to the new users romper room. In this area, callers
could
sample limited, non-adult-oriented sections of the BBS, but could
not
upload or download any files.

In the evenings, Houston read through all new applications for the
day. He called back all applicants personally the next day, and
verified their applications by voice. In certain cases, such as
borderline-age applicants stating they were college students, he
checked their references to make sure they were genuine. All
callers
who passed this verification step then had to send Houston
photocopies
of their driver's licenses, after which they were finally given
access
to the adult areas. Houston's verification process was quite an
extended routine, but he says he fully verified over 600 callers
using
this method.

Houston's troubles started when he fired a teenage employee of his
video store business for basic laziness. According to Houston,
directly upon being fired the ex-employee went to Sheriff Earle Lee
of
Douglas County, Georgia, the county in which Stonewall BBS
operated.
He told Sheriff Lee that Houston was running a nationwide network
for
the distribution of homosexual materials from the Stonewall BBS.
The
police moved like lightning on these charges. The employee was
fired
Saturday, September 8, 1990. Two days later, on Monday, September
10,
Sheriff Lee and his deputies hauled Houston off to jail and
confiscated his computer equipment.

The arrest and seizure warrant, and the indictment that followed,
contained four counts against Houston: 2 counts of distribution of
obscene materials; 1 count of solicitation of sodomy; and 1 count
that
Houston "provided a medium as to which sexually explicit materials
containing children could be found".  The counts in the indictment
were based on the testimony of two of Houston's ex-employees: the
one
who started the legal process against Houston, and another who had
been fired some months earlier.

The second ex-employee, according to Houston, was a computer hacker
whom Houston had suspected of stealing some money from his
business,
then altering his business computer records to cover it up. For the
indictment, both ex-employees testified that Houston had created
sex
videos with them (another allegation he entirely denies), and that
he
had given them both access to the adult areas of his BBS while they
were his employees, even though they were 17- year-old minors.
Houston
thought they were 18 years old until then.  Houston entirely denies
all accusations.

After sitting in jail for a couple of months, Houston went to trial
and lost.  The prosecuting attorney was D.A. David McDade of
Douglas
County. Houston paid his own lawyer $10,000, and had no money left
to
pay for an appeal after the trial.

Houston says the trial against him was filled with misconduct.
Perhaps
his most shocking charge is that the State did not use a police
expert
or independent expert to evaluate the materials contained in his
confiscated BBS. Instead, they put his own ex-employee, the
computer
hacker who testified against him for the indictment, in charge of
investigating the computer to conduct the State's own inspection of
the evidence! This amazing approach bore no resemblance to normal
procedure, which was to send seized evidence requiring technical
examination to the Georgia Crime Lab. If Houston's charge is true,
this is fatal contamination of the evidence - placing key evidence
against the accused in the hands of a hostile and complaining
witness!

Further, Houston says the hacker/ex-employee made the most of his
opportunity, tampering with the BBS computer files to create
damning
evidence against Houston. Specifically, Houston says that computer
files were altered before trial to make it look like he had been
using
his BBS to solicit two 17-year-olds. There were indeed two
17-year-olds on Stonewall BBS, but Houston had given them access
only
to a special "teen board" area he set especially up for them.
Houston
believes his ex-employee, while he had control of BBS computer,
raised
the 17 year olds' security level to make it look like they had
access
to the adult materials, and added suggestive messages addressed
from
Houston to these callers.

Houston moved for inspection of the computer prior to trial, but
the
judge denied his motion. Houston also lined up 3 different computer
experts to check the BBS system for tampering using software tools
for
inspecting the computer's hard disk, and to testify to the
tampering
at trial. For reasons that are unclear, his lawyer refused to use
the
experts. Finally, Houston wanted to show the judge at trial how his
BBS worked and how he maintained system security and age
verification,
but the judge would not permit the demonstration.

In the end, Houston was convicted of a single count of sexual
exploitation of children, under Georgia Statute 16-12-100-B6. This
conviction classifies him as a craven sex offender, equivalent to
a
rapist. The only evidence supporting his conviction were the
computer
records regarding the 17-year-olds submitted by the ex-employee
hacker. As mentioned above, Houston's lawyer failed to offer expert
testimony disputing the authenticity and accuracy of the computer
records regarding the 17-year-olds' status on the system. Houston's
lawyer further failed to obtain testimony from the 17-year-olds
themselves, which could have shown the computer evidence to be
false.
Houston seems bewildered at the approach taken by his lawyer. The
only
reasoning the lawyer seems to have given him for these seeming
enormous strategic lapses is that such attempts to discredit the
state's case would only make Houston look worse in the eyes of the
judge.

Houston says there is no law against precisely what he's been
imprisoned for, and says the prosecuting D.A. said the same thing
publicly after his conviction. Despite the unanimous confusion over
whether Houston is actually guilty of any wrongdoing, he remains in
jail for the time being. Houston is due to be released in
September,
1993, and says he plans to head out of Georgia as soon as he is
permitted to do so. Douglas County has not been very kind to Robert
Houston. It is hard to say exactly what role local intolerance of
his
sexual preferences might have played in the insulting abridgement
of
personal rights Mr. Houston has suffered through, but it would
explain
the shocking manner in which his prosecution was carried out.

The story above is based solely on the interview with Mr. Houston.
Clearly there are some areas in which it would be useful to know
the
other side of the story. Nonetheless, we can make some useful
observations looking at things just from his side of the cell bars.

First, here is a sysop in jail for running an adult bulletin board.
For those who refused caution up to now for lack of evidence that
people are getting in trouble: here is your evidence. Take note
that
Houston was not convicted of having any obscene or child
pornography
materials on his BBS. Those carrying such materials could end up in
hotter water than he did if they are ever exposed to the court
process.

Second, sysops reading this may be comforting themselves that the
exact freakish course of events Houston suffered through will not
likely be repeated. However, Houston's case is also illustrative of
the way things can break down and land you in a heap of trouble. In
his case, canning a lazy employee ended up landing him in jail,
convicted of being a sleazy, child-molesting BBS sysop. Future
sysop
convictions, whenever and wherever they occur, can easily follow
similarly tortuous paths from precipitating cause to miserable
result.
Those who think they are clever enough to stay out of trouble while
running a hardcore porn board may see their whole scheme unravel
due
to one forgotten loose end.

Third, Houston's situation provides yet another example of the
institutional amnesia still inflicting far too many law enforcement
authorities and agents:  they forget all about the Constitution,
especially the First Amendment, when they seize a BBS. Houston's
BBS
was not adjudged to have any illegal materials falling outside the
First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and of the press.
His conviction, contrived though it may have been, was only for
certain conduct. Yet his BBS was taken down, and likely will never
be
resurrected, at least in Georgia.

There is a danger of reading too much into what happened to Robert
Houston (except for sysops knowingly running hardcore porn boards,
who
should pay very careful attention to his plight). His peculiar
treatment at the hands of the Douglas County legal system does not
mean that all BBS' have suddenly become unsafe. Running a BBS
carries
about the same risk as it always has. If you are reasonable in how
you
run your BBS, and don't knowingly get involved with anything
illegal,
your chances of legal trouble are next to nothing.  Think of Robert
Houston as a sysop who tried very hard to be careful while running
a
BBS with contents that were riskier than average, and one day got
hit
by lightning.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

Just as this column was being readied for submission, WNBC's "News
at
Eleven" showed the first installment of a news series to be aired
all
week called "Software: Hard Porn." This astonishing piece of
television journalism starts off with a surveillance film showing
two
men on a couch discussing a snuff movie they'd like to make using
a
little kid. The narrator's voice-over informs us that this time,
the
snuff guys are talking about procuring their dispensable prey using
a
computer bulletin board . . .

The segment segues into much milder territory, next featuring the
talking head of Bruce Fancher of MindVox (a NYC Unix-based BBS
system
and Internet access site) discussing the easy availability of adult
GIF image files on BBS'. Several shots of files supposedly taken
from
BBS' are shown, mostly just girlie pictures almost too tame for
Playboy. Surprisingly, the voice-over informs us that such pictures
are all quite legal. They are legal, of course. The surprising part
is
that the TV folks got it right.

But don't relax yet. In the very next breath, we are told that the
same BBS' carrying the adult image files also play host to
pedophiles,
who seek out youngsters and attempt to arrange illicit meetings for
sexual purposes.  Through the magic of TV sequencing, those cute
girlie shots are instantly converted from admittedly protected free
speech to cheesecake posters on the walls of dens of sin inhabited
by
sleazy, lecherous old men. The dens of sin, of course, are the BBS'
in
which they prowl.

So ends the first short episode of "Software: Hard Porn", with the
promise of more rating-boosting tidbits about the sleazy world of
BBS'
in tomorrow's news report.

This is a good postscript to the Houston piece. It shows that not
only
did someone with an adult board get nailed, but the anti-BBS porn
drumbeat is steadily swelling in the public consciousness. This is
not
the first news show covering the BBS porn angle. Last year, WOR in
New
York ran a story with a similar theme. But as Howard Stern likes to
remind his listeners (after his show on WOR ended), no one watches
WOR, while WNBC is one of the real TV stations in the New York
market.
Those who are committed to running hard core porn BBS' should watch
their backs.

(Copyright 1993, Lance Rose)

[Lance Rose is an attorney practicing high-tech, computer and
intellectual property law in Montclair New Jersey, and is available
on
the Internet at [e-mail] and on CompuServe at
72230,2044.
He works with shareware publishers, software authors, system
operators, technology buyers, interactive media developers, on-line
database services and others in the high technology area. He is
also
author of the book SYSLAW, a legal guide for bulletin board system
operators, available from PC Information Group [phone]. -
Editor]

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