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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. -==--==--==-<-==--==--==- 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, $40.00 per year for regular members. You may, of course, donate more if you wish. Our privacy policy: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will never, under any circumstances, sell any part of its membership list. We will, from time to time, share this list with other non-profit organizations whose work we determine to be in line with our goals. If you do not grant explicit permission, we assume that you do not wish your membership disclosed to any group for any reason. ---------------- EFF MEMBERSHIP FORM --------------- Mail to: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc. 155 Second St. #33 Cambridge, MA 02141 I wish to become a member of the EFF I enclose:$__________ $20.00 (student or low income membership) $40.00 (regular membership) $100.00(Corporate or company membership. This allows any organization to become a member of EFF. It allows such an organization, if it wishes to designate up to five individuals within the organization as members.) | I enclose an additional donation of $___________ Name:______________________________________________________ Organization:______________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________________ City or Town: _____________________________________________ State:_______ Zip:________ Phone:( )_____________(optional) FAX:( )____________________(optional) Email address: ______________________________ I enclose a check [ ] . Please charge my membership in the amount of $_____________ to my Mastercard [ ] Visa [ ] American Express [ ] Number:____________________________________________________ Expiration date: ____________ Signature: ________________________________________________ Date:______________________ I hereby grant permission to the EFF to share my name with other non-profit groups from time to time as it deems appropriate [ ] . Initials:___________________________ Your membership/donation is fully tax deductible. ===================================================================== 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 Internet Address: eff@eff.org Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged To reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express permission. ===================================================================== This newsletter is printed on 100% recycled electrons.