The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/zines/a_m/jauc5.txt

Text File | 2003-06-11 | 126.3 KB | 2,323 lines

  THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING / Published Periodically
  ======================================================================
  ISSN 1074-3111           Volume One, Issue Five         August 1, 1994
  ======================================================================

      Editor-in-Chief:               Scott Davis      ([e-mail])
      Co-Editor/Technology:          Max Mednick      ([e-mail])
      Consipracy Editor:             Gordon Fagan     ([e-mail])
      Information Systems:           Carl Guderian    ([e-mail])
      Computer Security:             John Logan       ([e-mail])

      ** ftp site: etext.archive.umich.edu    /pub/Zines/JAUC

      U.S. Mail:
      The Journal Of American Underground Computing
      10111 N. Lamar #25
      Austin, Texas 78753-3601

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

 IMPORTANT ADDRESSES -
 ============================================================================
 To Subscribe to "TJOAUC", send mail to:              [e-mail]
 All questions/comments about this publication to:    [e-mail]
 Send all articles/info that you want published to:   [e-mail]
 Commercial Registration for Profitable Media:        [e-mail]
 Advertising Rates:                                   [e-mail]
 ============================================================================

 "The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing
 power, and more sophisticated techniques used by establishment mass media
 to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a priori
 ridiculous, or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books,
 discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest..."

 (William S. Burroughs and Daniel Odier, "The Job", Viking, New York, 1989)

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

 Contents Copyright (C) 1994 The Journal Of American Underground Computing
 and/or the author of the articles presented herein. All rights reserved.
 Nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission
 of the Editor-In-Chief and/or the author of the article. This publication
 is made available periodically to the amateur computer hobbyist free of
 charge.  Any commercial usage (electronic or otherwise) is strictly
 prohibited without prior consent of the Editor, and is in violation of
 applicable US Copyright laws. To subscribe, send email to [e-mail]

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

 DISCLAIMER AND NOTICE TO DISTRIBUTORS -

 NOTE: This electronic publication is to be distributed free of charge
 without modifications to anyone who wishes to have a copy. Under NO
 circumstances is any issue of this publication, in part or in whole,
 to be sold for money or services, nor is it to be packaged with other
 computer software, including, but not limited to CD Rom disks, without
 the express written or verbal consent of the author and/or editor.
 To obtain permission to distribute this publication under any of the
 certain circumstances stated above, please contact the editor at one of
 the addresses above. If you have intentions of publishing this journal
 in any of the ways described above, or you are in doubt about whether or
 not your intentions conflict with the restrictions, please contact the
 editor. FOR A COPY OF THE REGISTRATION FORM, MAIL - [e-mail]
 This publication is provided without charge to anyone who wants it.
 This includes, but is not limited to lawyers, government officials,
 cops, feds, hackers, social deviants, and computer hobbyists. If anyone
 asks for a copy, please provide them with one, or mail the subscription
 list so that you may be added.

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

  LET THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING ADVERTISE FOR YOU.

  Computer services, Online access, Books, Software, Video, Music,
  Wierdness, Publishing, Hardware, Anything!

  For more information, send electronic mail to: [e-mail]
  You will be mailed a detailed list of rates and other information.

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

  COMING SOON!!!  The Journal's own World-Wide Web Home Page. You will be
  notified by mail when it is ready for use.

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

     THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING - Volume 1, Issue 5

                          TABLE OF CONTENTS

 1)  The Next Thirty Years:  Sociolegal Implications
     Of The Information Technology Explosion                Steve Ryan

 2)  Advertising On The Net                                 Fawn Fitter
 3)  Availability Of TJOAUC; Overseas Fido Gateways         Editors
 4)  Cyberpasse Manifesto                                   Don Webb
 5)  AA BBS Convicted!                                      Anon News Svc
 6)  Open Platform Under Threat By Monopoly Interests       Anonymous
 7)  House Opens Vote Results; HR 3937                      Shabbir Safdar
 8)  High-Speed Internet Access Expanded; Minnesota         Dennis Fazio
 9)  Internet Access Now Available For All Minn. Teachers   Dennis Fazio
 10) Legion Of Doom T-Shirt Ad                              Chris Goggans
 11) White House Retreats On Clipper                        Stanton McCandlish
 12) Why Cops Hate Civilians                                Unknown
 13) Public Space On Info Highway                           Ctr. Media Ed.
 14) Software Key Escrow - A New Threat?                    Tim May
 15) Hoods Hit The Highway                                  Charlotte Lucas
 16) The Internet And The Anti-Net                          Nick Arnett

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

  The Computer Is Your Friend         -Unknown
  Send Money, Guns, And Lawyers       -H. S. Thompson^Z

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

                THE NEXT THIRTY TEARS:  SOCIOLEGAL IMPLICATIONS
                  OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXPLOSION

 By Steve Ryan ([e-mail])

  [EDITOR'S NOTE:  This is facinating reading! It is a college thesis
  written by an attorney who is a friend of the JAUC staff. Please
  keep in mind that it was written in *1980* and is a fantastic
  and accurate look into the future from his perspective in 1980.
  Feel free to mail the editors with any comments on this one and
  especially feel free to drop Steve a note with your opinions.]


 I do romance the law.  It's alive, it's vibrant, its' bubling. Every time
 society tries something, we have new laws.

 --Hon. Jack Pope, Associate Justice Supreme Court of Texas

 INTRODUCTION

 The purpose of this paper is twofold.  First, an attempt is made to
 acquaint the reader with current trends in computer technology which are
 likely to have a major impact on American life in the forseeable future,
 and to provide an overview of the staggering dimensions of the information-
 handling revolution now in progress.  Second, the response of the American
 legal system to this explosive growth in the application of computer
 technology is examined critically and areas of current and future legal
 concern are outlined.  No attempt has been made to provide an in-depth
 legal analysis of the current state of the law in any single area;
 the reader in search of such is reffered to the numerous excellent legal
 periodicals presently published in this field.

 I.  DATA-HANDLING SYSTEMS OF THE FUTURE

 It is difficult to overstate the rapidity oand magnitude of the
 technological advances occurring every year in the data processing industry.
 New developments and applications of those developments are announced with
 bewildering rapidity.  Enormous amounts of dollars are poured into research
 and development every year by the American data processing industry, and
 the pace of change is so rapid that those who work with customers must keep
 current or risk having their knowledge and skills become obsolescent within
 a year or two.

 HARDWARE

 This near-exponential rate of technical progress can be quantiativley
 expressed through several different conceptual "handles."  The number of
 additions per second performed by computers in the U.S. every year grew by
 three orders of magnitude (factor 1,000) between 1955 and 1965, and again
 by the same factor in the decade 1965-1975.  This number appears to be still
 growing at the rate of 100% per year.  Between 1955 and 1975 C. P. U.
 memory size shrank by over four orders of magnitude (factor 10,000) and
 this trend continues.  Speed of operation has been rising more linearly,
 at the rate of two orders of magnitude (factor 100) per decade, and the
 ultimate limiting speed (dictated by the speed with which the electrical
 impulses propagate through conductors) is still almost two and a one-half
 orders of magnitude away.  The cost of computer storage devices is plunging
 at the rate of nearly three orders of magnitude per decade.  The density
 with which intergrated circuit chips can be packed with electronic
 components is now measured in the millions devices per square inch.  It
 has been projected that during this decade the percentage of the gross
 national product contributed by the data processing industry (broadly
 defined) will outstrip that contributed by the auto industry.

 COMMUNICATIONS

 Similar advances have been occurring in the communications industry,
 slashing the cost of maintaining computer-to-user and computer-to-computer
 information links.  The major trends are development of satellite, fiber
 optic, and laswer methods of data transmission.  As initially developed,
 the cost to lease a 900-channel transponder on a satellite was between on
 and one-half and two million dollars per year.  In the first half of this
 decade , this cost is expected to drop to $250,000 per year.  The greatest
 expense of satellite utilization is the cost of placing it in orbit; this
 will become cheaper by at least this tak.  The new generation of satellites
 launched by reusable shuttle will offer a greater number of data channels
 and perform switching functions as well as relay tasks; and all of this
 greatly reduced cost.  Annual growth of data communiccations through the
 middle of this decade is projected to be 35 percent.  Additionally, federal
 deregulation of and new competitor entry into the communications industry
 is expected to lower data communications costs in the future.

 ECONOMICS

 This author believes that the rapidly falling costs of computer hardware
 and data links carry tremendous implications for the future.  Economic
 barriers to computer utilization are falling, and the end result will be
 an exlosive profilferation of small personal and business computers and
 intelligent terminals in an incredible variety of application.  The
 structure of business relations and transactions will change radically
 as corporate America discovers that they cannot afford not to utilize
 the new technology.

 It will simply become bad business to process most transactions through
 human hands and the mails in the form of paper of documents, when powerful
 microprocessors having large memories are available for literally pennies
 per chip.  Speed-of-light datalinks cheaply available for these machines
 will eliminate time lags as a source of inefficiency and boost productivity.

 PERSONAL COMPUTING

 The same factors that make widespread use of data handling equipment
 inevitable in the business world will also have the effect of placing
 small, cheap computers by the millions in nonbusiness or personal
 applications.  Computers are possibly the most versatile tool human beings
 have ever invented to extend their capabilities.  Because they deal with
 pure information, their potential applications are limitless, or rather
 limited only by the ingenuity of their users.  Nowhere is this more
 evident than in the brand-new field of personal computers. For better or
 worse, the personal computer revolution is upon us.  The first true
 personal computer was brought out in 1974 by M.I.T.S. Corporation.
 Baded on the Intel 8080 Comuter-on-a-chip, the Model T of microprocessors,
 it was sold by mail in kit form for $420.00.  Customer response was
 overwhelming, and M.I.T.S. was unable to to keep up with demand.  At the
 time of this writing, six years later, the American consumer is the
 target of an enormous marketing effort for similar small computers mounted
 by such corparate giants as Texas Instruments, Tandy Corp. (Radio Shack),
 Sears & Roebuck, and a host of smaller competitors.  Clearly, these
 corporations believe in the market for and future of home computing enough
 to back their beliefs with large capital investments.

 The home computer, with appropriate interfaces and accessory hadware, can
 play games, balance its owner's checkbook, optimize household energy usage,
 play music, store information, show movies, do typing, draw pictures,
 give its owner access to any database or other systems accessible by phone,
 send mail, and let the cat out.  Some enthusiasts predict that the home
 computer will remake our way of life as drastically as the automobiles, and
 will be the most explosive consumer product in human history, having a more
 revolutionary effect than any other object ever sold.  it is also predicted
 that home and personal uses of computers will dwarf the ordinary computer
 industry within five or ten years, and will do IBM great economic harm by
 destroying the IBM-fostered image of computers as enormous, centralized,
 horrendouly expensive machines requiring the services of a band of devoted
 priest-programmers.  These things remain to be seen.  This author believes
 that the most profound effects on American society created by the
 microcomputer revolution will not be the result of dedicating small
 computers to specific business and personal tasks but rather will result
 from the ability of these countless small C.P.U.'s to communicate with
 one another economically.

 THE CONCEPT OF "THE NET"

 In recent years, as communication technology began to catch up with advanced
 computer technology, a trend toward distributed computation has occured in
 systems design.  Instead of a massive central computer linked to many
 unitelligent I/O terminals, this new method of system architecture links
 a number of central processing units into a network in which tasks can be
 distributed to different locations for maximum efficiency in processing.
 Networks are very efficient method of processing where the amount of
 processing needed increases faster than the amount of data to be
 transferred, and where a common specialized resouce is shared among
 geographically desperesed end users.  Minicomputers linked into centralized
 computers in some applications, and they can be linked in such a manner that
 individual minicomputers can fail without affecting the operational status
 of the network.

 Given the above-forecasted situation of millions of small business and
 personal computers linked by common inexpensive communications channels,
 it is easy to see how a gigantic, highly flexible meta-network of
 minicomputers could be said to exist.  The terms "network" and "distributed
 processin" have customarily been used to refer to relatively small,
 tightly interfaced groups of processors and are thus inadequate to use in
 reference to such a huge complex of computers as would be formed by the
 potential linkage of all the home and business computers of America.
 Therefore the term "The Net" will be used in this paper to refer to such
 a potential structure. This term has already gained currency with some
 writers who are concerned with the social implicaitons of such an
 electronic network.

 Persons who are fearful of suspicious of the advent of The Net for whatever
 reason, and persons who doubt that such a broadly-based and widely linked
 national (and transnational) EDP system wil become an operational reality
 in the near future will no doubt be suprised and/or dismayed to learn
 that two private information utilities which demonstrate the feasibility
 and usefulness of the Net concept are already on line and available to
 minicomputer users today.  These are The Source and MicroNet, both about a
 year old.  These services are accessed through telephone lines, which will
 be the primary method of Net linkage until new technology make satellite-
 based or fiber optic linkage economically competitive with ordinary
 landline and microwave channels.  Accessing these services augments the
 computing power and usefulness of a home computer to and amazing extent.
 By linking to a large mainframe, the small ones gain the power to program
 in many languages ordinarily unavailable to them and gain the use of
 utility programs such as word processors and text editors.  Large libraries
 of generally applicable business and financial programs and data are
 available to subscribers, as well as stock market information.  Also
 available are game programs, UPI news wire service, New York Times news
 service, and the New York Times Consumer Data Base, which abstracts over
 60 publications.

 The flexibility and broad utility of even these fledgling Net Linkage
 systems is demonstrated by other revolutionary services information
 utilities offer.  The Source offers electonic mail service to its
 subscribers; when users log on, the system notifies them of any messages
 or mail it is holding for them.  Users of the Source can also call a program
 named CHAT, which enables direct two-way between any users simultaneously
 logged on.  MicroNet offers a fasicinating computerized version of CB radio
 in which the user selects a numbered "Channel" which, in effect is a
 "public airwave" of this small Net.  All users linked on the same channel
 receive every message transmitted on that channel;  they can either join
 the discourse or remain passive and watch the coversations of others on
 their CRT.  A disadvantage is that like CB, two users cannot transmit on
 the same channel simultaneously without mutual interference.

 The Source and MicroNet are privately operated for profit and charge the
 subscriber for registration as a user and access time.  An alternative
 mode of linking isolated home computers is provided by Computer Community
 Bulletin Boards (CCBBS), of which there are well over one hundred operating
 now in the U.S. These are free services operated by a variety of small
 computer users and related organizations, and are rapidly growing in
 popularity. Unlike the information utilities, which have phone exchanges in
 most large cities and therby spare their users high connect charges, CCBB
 users must pay long distance charges unless the usefulness of CCBBs is
 that no two-way communication is possible, only message posting within
 the system.  The software package needed to establish a CCBB costs only
 about $65.

 One final, rather ominous aspect of the commercial information utilities
 is that it is required of applicants for user status to have a
 Mastercharge or Visa card account for billing purposes. In other words,
 person without identity in the presently existing credit subnet are denied
 access to these new private Net components.  As the Net incorporates more
 data-handling subunits into itself and becomes more ubiquitous in American
 life, it may strike users as unfair and coercive to discover that routing
 one's financial transactions through the Net is a necessary prerequisite
 to enjoying certain limited uses and benefites of The Net.

 It is impossible to summarize or secribe all potential structures and
 applications of the net likley to impact our society in the future because
 of the amorphousness inherent in its conceptualization. For example,
 although every EDP device capable of linking to the Net must be considered
 a part of it, this linage may be "broad" or "Narrow": a sensitive
 Government EDP file system with heavy security would be only narrowly
 accessible from other Net components, whereas an individual's personal
 computer would of necessity be broadly accessible form almost all other
 Net components because of the wide variety of functions it performs (mail,
 entertainment access, retail buying and recordkeeping, phone message
 functions, etc.).  As each new Net subunit goes online to the common Net,
 that subunit must determine (1) what it wants from the rest of the Net,
 and (2) what it is willing to make available to those who can now access
 it as part of the net.  Thus, considerations of function and security
 determine what role each subunit will play in relation to The Net as a
 whole, and these considerations will be different for each subunit.
 The net must not be thought of as monolithic block of EDP devices joined
 together, but rater as a vast and turbulent population of dicrete subunits
 whose only common characteristic is a need for the efficient communication
 and optimal use of EDP technology provided by The Net's linkage.

 The Net will be far more than a group of computers exchanging data and
 software; widespread acceptance and utiliztion of Net linkage and
 effieciency concepts will probably eventually result in the routing of
 most current non-EDP methods of information transfer through the omnipresent
 microcomputers. It will become inefficient and unnecessary to have a TV
 set, or a newspaper, or a mailbox, or a radio in one's house when
 comprehensive Net access through an efficient, centralized home computer
 (whose sole design function is information handling) is just a keystroke
 away.  One theme which home computer/Net enthusiasts frequently sound these
 days is that the Net will solve the petroleum crisis by making ti largely
 unnecessary for people to leave their homes.  Why drive to an office when
 one can transact business, give a lecture, attend a class, generate
 documents, transfer information, access a huge variety of data bases, and
 receive all communications at one's home keyboard?  The Net has the
 potential of becoming America's primary avenue of business and even social
 interaction in the forseeable future.

 One troubling question occurs as we examin the social consequence of the
 Net ethic of efficiency as the ultimate justification for change: what
 happens to individuals who, for economic or personal reasons, cannot or
 will not participate in the net society?  Unless non-net modes of
 information handling are retained in all areas of Net pre-eminence, these
 individuals run the risk of effectibely becoming non-persons.  One
 solution to this problem would be govermental maintenece of free public
 computer terminals, where those unfortunate enough to lack the cash or
 hardware necessary for net access could perform the necessary interactions
 with their electronic society.  Hopefully, net Participants will keep open
 non-net channels of comminication to forestall the possiblity that the
 information revolution will create two classes of American citizens:
 Net-priviledged and invisible.  Property utilized, The Net can be
 beneficial in countless ways.  But even if its use becomes a new norm,
 legal protection is necessary to ensure that no citizen suffers injury or
 diadvantage as a result of failing to join The Net.  This writer believes
 that economic considerations related to efficiency and the technology
 revolution now occurring cannot fail to propel us willingly down the road
 to a Net society, even in the face of the vague hostility most people feel
 toward the increasing intrusion of computers into their lives.  The day
 may yet come when The Net is so central to American life that a person
 excluded from access to it by State action might successfully argue in
 court that his Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly
 have been effectively abrogated.


 II. AREAS OF CONTINUING LEGAL CONCERN

 PRIVACY

 Privacy will continue to be a controversial issue as computer technology
 increases in impact on the daily life of Americans.  The magnitude of the
 perceived threat to individuals created by computer recordkeeping will
 increase as the system-to-system network of computer linkages expands.
 The scope of future Federal protective legislation will almost certainly
 extend to regulate private data collectors as well as governmental ones.

 Efforts have already been made in this direction. In 1974, Congressional
 legislation was proposed containing provisions making all private personal
 record systems subject to F.O.I.A.- type controls on collection, accuracy,
 and dissemination.  This bill also set up a Federal Privacy Board to
 monitor and enforce its provisions, and provided criminal penalties for
 its violation as well as vibil remedies for persons injured by unfair
 information practices.

 The gradual development of a Net-Type structure of data processors and
 their associated databases will surely result in extreme public concern
 about its possible harmful uses.  It is thus a certainty that such a
 system would be very heavily regulated by the congress under its commerce
 and "federal media" powers.  In fact, it is impossible to conceive of how
 the public would tolerate the existence of such an intimidating system
 without detailed privacy controls on it.  The Privacy Act of 1974 is only
 the first halting step toward the creation of a comprehensive code of fair
 information practices necessary to let Americans enjoy the benefits of
 advanced computer technology without fear.


 PROTECTION OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS

 Since copyright protection of proprietary computer software is inadequate
 to protect novel ideas and algrorithms incorporated therein, and since
 the patenablility of software has been effectively denied by Supreme Court
 ruling, further protection of substantial financial investments made in
 the development of software would seem to be necessary in the future.
 Common law and State statutory protection of such programs as trade secrets
 will probably be inadequate in many respects to afford the degree of
 protection necessary to encourage heavy corporate investment in software
 research and development, as the industry grows in importance to all areas
 of economic life.  Public policy will militate that further protection
 be granted by explicit statutory means. The most logical way to go about
 this would be by act of Congress, under either of the broad copyright or
 commerce powers.

 Congress has already realized that the trend toward the use of Electronic
 Funds Transfers and the computerization of economic activity will present
 unknown problems in the future.  Current EFT legislation in force has
 established a commission charged with the duty of evaluating the future
 development of this area and reporting to the congress its findings and
 conclusions.  Present legislation concering EFT can only be considered a
 skeleton of what will eventually prove necessary.


 THE PROBLEMS OF ABUSE AND VULNERABILITY

 The wide linkage capabilities of the components of The Net coupled with
 the computerization of business records and transactions creates an
 enormous potential for abuse in a variety of ways.  Theft of CPU time and
 software, manipulation of financial records, destruction of datafiles,
 and even sabotage of whole systems are just a few of the potential abuses
 that might occur.  Computer people often see the compromise of a security
 system designed to prevenet unauthorized access as a challenging
 intellectual game, and try it even without criminal motive.  Already, one
 consequence of wide use of timesharing and networking techiniques is the
 widespread acceptance of the ethic that any programs which may be found to
 be somehow accessible from remote terminals can be treated as used as if
 in the public domain (the "Peninsula Ethic").  Security problems are the
 number-one concern in the design and establishment of The Net.  The Net
 concept is unworkable without means of controlling access and limiting
 possible manupulations of data contained in Net subunits.  Due to its
 flexibility of linkage, security control in the Net will not be physical
 in nature but will be provided by confidential coding and password
 techniques.  Although generally speaking, what one person can do, another
 can undo, new "trapdoor" cryptological techniques have been discovered
 that make it possible to create an access control code system that cannot
 be cracked even by computers in a reasonable amount of time.  This offers
 hope for the feasibility of a fairly abuse-free Net.

 Still, no security system can be said to be totally proof against
 compromise.  Prevention of abuse is the job of computer sercurity
 specialist, but the law can play a large role in discouraging abuse by
 imposing sanctions for it.  The currecnt Federal criminal law provisions
 applicable to computer abuse are a hodge-podge of miscellaneous statutes
 generally oriented around traditional fraud and misappropriation-of-
 property concepts that often present difficulties in application to
 computer-related wrongful activity.  In the future it will become necessary
 to greatly refine our collective societal concepts of what contitutes
 impermissible conduct in relation to computers and their manifold
 applications.  The deterrent effect on persons tempted to misuse the vast
 capbilities of computers would be greatly enhanced by the passage of
 legislation targeted specifically at computer abuse rather than framed in
 terms of traditional concepts of wrongdoing like fraud, theft, and
 misappropriation.  Prosecutors, when confronted by an instance of computer
 abuse that clearly has damaged someone in a criminal manner, should not be
 forced to search among and "stretch" the applications of the miscellaneous
 batch of statutory provisions enacted when computers were a laboratory
 curiosty.

 Response to this problem has been made be Senator Abraham Ribibcoff of
 Connecticut, the Charman of the Senat Governmenatal Affairs Committee.
 In 1977, he sponsered legislation entitled The Federal Computer Systems
 Protection Act of 1977,which has never been enacted.  This proposed law
 provides comprehensive santions against (1) introduction of fraudulent
 records into computer systems, (2) improper alteration of destruction of
 computer records, (3) unauthorized use of computer facilities, and (4) use
 of computers to steal property of data.  The bill was drafted to apply to
 all computer systems used in interstate commerce, and not just those in
 use by the Federal Governmet.  Additionally, the measure eases the
 jurisdictional and evidentiary burdens on prosecutors that make prosecution
 of computer crime so difficult. Specific thought was given by the framers
 of this legislation to the problems of unauthorized access and to the need
 to assure the integrity of the growing EFTS network.  This bill is an
 outstinding attempt to deal now with the computer abuse problems that will
 become increasingly more threatening in the future, and it is an excellent
 example of how the response of the legal system should aggressively track
 the pace of technological development.

 CONCLUSION

 The next thirty years will be a time of swift and revolutionary change in
 American life related to computer usage on an uprecedented scale.  At this
 point in time, the emerging outline of the social and legal changes this
 will inevitably cause are visible.  The first halting steps have been
 taken by congress to enact legislation dealing with the problems caused
 by these changes, but the pace of progress is so rapid that there is
 substantial time lag between the time a problem comes into existence and
 the time our legal system turns its attention to the necessary solution.
 This lag time must be reduced by increased awareness of the capabilities
 and coming applications of computers on the respective parts of legislators,
 attorneys, and judges; it is the duty of the legal system to serve the
 needs of its society, and our society cannot wait until tomorrow to be
 given the legal safeguards and processes it needs today in the area of
 data processing.

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

                         ADVERTISING ON THE NET

 By Fawn Fitter ([e-mail])
 This article is copyright 1994 by Fawn Fitter

 A cybersavvy business owner could be forgiven for thinking of the
 Internet as an advertising opportunity like no other. After all, the Net,
 with its 6,000 discussion groups known as "newsgroups," connects -- at
 last count -- 2 million sites in 60 countries. That's 10 million
 potential customers already self-sorted into 6,000 demographic slots, a
 thought to make marketing executives weep with joy.

 But while many commercial online services like CompuServe and Prodigy
 have built electronic shopping malls where virtual vendors peddle their
 wares, advertising is a touchy subject on the Internet itself.

 Originally, commercial messages were banned on the government-funded
 portions of the Net. Today, while they aren't forbidden, they are still
 highly controversial. A practice known as "spamming" -- posting a message
 to all 6,000 newsgroups at once -- has infuriated longtime citizens of
 cyberspace.

 Not long ago, two Phoenix attorneys "spammed" the Net with a long post
 touting their expertise in U.S. immigration law. Mere weeks later,
 another advertiser followed suit, shilling thigh-reducing cream in every
 group from alt.pagan to comp.sys.mac.advocacy. Both were kicked off their
 respective Net access providers for inappropriate use.

 "The problem is not content, it's the appropriateness of the forum where
 the ad appears," explained Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic
 Frontier Foundation, which focuses on public interest and civil liberties
 issues as they relate to computer communications. "The value of the
 newsgroups lies in their being organized by subject matter. 'Spamming' is
 like reshelving all the books in a library -- the information is there,
 but it's impossible to find what's valuable."

 Although indiscriminate salesmanship is frowned upon, there are still
 ways to advertise online without crossing the bounds of netiquette. The
 simplest way is to keep ads short and tasteful, indicate in their subject
 headers that they are advertisements so people can skip them if they so
 choose, and post them only to appropriate groups. In other words, a legal
 advice newsgroup is the wrong place for an ad for couples workshops.

 Signature files, which provide a tagged-on signature (or .sig, pronounced
 "dot-sig") at the end of a user's post, are another inoffensive and
 discreet way to promote a product or service provider. Many programmers
 and consultants identify themselves in their .sigs, which are
 automatically appended to their every post in any group they frequent.

 The now-infamous "green card lawyers" have been dumped unceremoniously
 from several online systems and have been refused accounts by others.
 Despite the furor against them, they've defended their actions in
 postings and newspaper articles by claiming that mass-distributed
 advertising on the Net is convenient and therefore inevitable. They've
 even started their own Internet marketing company, Cybersell, to bring
 that day closer. One of the lawyers argued on CNN that "spamming" was
 like "picking up the newspaper and getting advertisements along with the
 sports pages."

 But Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and a well-known
 defender of the Net, thinks it's more like "going to your mailbox and
 finding two letters, a magazine, and 65,000 pieces of junk mail,
 postage-due."

 The Net works because people agree to give each other the minimal amount
 of cooperation necessary to keep information flowing in a free but
 organized way, Rheingold explained. "IIf people don't abide by an
 agreement to limit discussion to the appropriate group, the groups lose
 their function, and there will be no value in the system any more," he
 said. But, he added, "the day will pass when sleazebags who try to take
 advantage of the openness of the system will be shut out."

 Rheingold is executive editor of HotWired, an online magazine being
 launched this fall by the publisher of WIRED. HotWired will bring in
 revenue by soliciting "sponsors" rather than "advertisers," as the Public
 Broadcasting System does, he said.

 In the future, advertisers may also spread the word by subsidizing
 people's net usage, Godwin said. "They may say, 'look at our ads in
 e-mail and we'll give you an hour's free online time'," he speculated.
 "No one's actually done it yet, but companies are thinking about it."

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

                      AVAILIBILITY OF THIS MAGAZINE
                   A Message from the editorial staff

      OVERSEAS FIDONET GATEWAYS NO LONGER SUPPORTED BY THIS MAGAZINE!

   We will do everything in our power to get this publication to you in
 a timely manner. And we certainly appreciate the hundreds of subscription
 requests that we have received. There is one slight issue regarding the
 distribution of this magazine that we must address. This new policy will
 take effect immediately.

 It is no longer feasable for us to add people to the mailing list who have
 OVERSEAS FIDONET GATEWAYS. The reason for this is that some administrators
 who operate these gateways are getting irate with the amount of traffic
 coming through their systems from the USA in the form of large electronic
 magazines.

 AS LONG AS YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS DOES NOT HAVE A "%" IN IT, YOU'RE OK!

 The second reason is that our mailing system may not handle the address
 line properly due to the fact that Fido addresses overseas are usually
 very long.

 We are currently working on a way to set up an automatic mailing list
 for those who do fit into this catagory so that you can have the magazine
 mailed back to you when you know that the traffic in your area will be low.
 We will update you as the situation develops.

 Thank you for your understanding.

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

                           CYBERPASSE MANIFESTO

 By Don Webb ([e-mail])
 This has no Copyright, and may be reposted at will.

 We have long awaited the moment to release our manifesto, so that we would
 not appear guilty of the sin of vanguardism.  Since Bart Nagle has noted
 that book publishers now note books bearing the suffix "Cyber" in the
 title passe, we realize that it is time to strike while the iron is cooling.
 The Cyberpasse movement began on October 8, 1966 when the BBC aired *The
 Tenth Planet* -- part of their popular %Dr. Who% series.  The Cybermen have
 replaced their natural bodies with plastic and thus have become disease free
 and nearly immortal.  They represent the ideal of the Cyberpasse movement.
 Cyberpasse will overtake cyberpunk, because we created it as a front.
 The movement has great wealth and power, and is an open conspiracy.  Any
 number may play, provided that they obey the Cyberlaws.  We are the rulers
 of the world, the makers of the zeitgeist, and the oatmeal of reality.

 These are the Cyberlaws, the key to Cyberpasse:

 1.  You must own a computer.  It must be a boring computer with lots of
     capacity for upward and downward networking.  You favorite phrase is
     "The computer is a tool." You must pretend incompetence with your
     computer, so that people explain things for you, and do things for you.
     Thus you learn to tap the skills of lots of experts.

 2.  You must belong to a frequent flyer plan.  You'll travel a lot to see
     other Cybermen.  You must own a futon to put up traveling Cybermen.
     You must make your visitors look as boring as possible, so as not to
     tip off your neighbors that you are a planetary ruler.

 3.  You must appear dull.  This is essential.  Everyone must view you as a
     harmless amateur.  You must practice perfect manners, so you don't get
     thrown out of places for being too dull.

 4.  You must foster a myth of a long-term illness.
     Thusly you can call in sick for work, whenever a learning opportunity
     presents itself.  Knowledge is power.

 5.  You must You must place yourself in the middle of various webs of
     information.  Always share information, but always filter to extend
     the Cybervalues of logic, and of slow and steady change.  You must deny
     that you are trying to improve the world, as always appear to be a
     shambling slow witted machine that just happens to pass along the
     correct information at one time.  Remember humans are hostile to change
     agents.

 6.  You must make sure that they're a lot of cutting edge movements around
     to draw fire.  As a long term way to secure this, be sure and strongly
     support civil liberties issues.

 7.  You must always deny the importance of new information technologies.
     This is not to stifle, but to make people think they are harmless. Always
     argue that there is nothing new going on.  This will make people, less
     likely to fear/resist certain changes.

 8.  You must act every day to bring about the change into a cybersociety.
     Each act must may be downplayed, but it must be constant and quiet.
     Accumulate power to make your actions a little stronger.  Afterall the
     boss can OK the T1 phone lines for the business, and she can allow
     personal Email accounts.  Always have a boring explanation, economy,
     efficiency, whatever.  But be sure you never allow a step backward.

 9.  You must deny there is an organized Cyberpasse movement.  Even to
     yourself.

 10.  You must seek allies in all areas of society.

 11.  You must never act in anger, but only with logic
      and harmonious feelings.  Our battles are not the day to day battles
      of the news.  Our battle is that of the vegetable empire vast and slow.

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

                           AA BBS - CONVICTED !

 MEMPHIS, Tenn -- A federal jury convicted a California couple Thursday
 of transmitting obscene pictures over a computer bulletin board.

 The case has raised questions, in this age of international computer
 networks, about a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that defines obscenity
 by local community standards.

 ``This case would never have gone to trial in California,'' defense lawyer
 Richard Williams said.

 Prosecutor Dan Newsom, an assistant U.S. attorney, said the trial was the
 first he knows of for computer bulletin board operators charged under federal
 law with transmitting pornography featuring sex by adults.

 Robert and Carleen Thomas, both 38, of Milpitas, Calif., were convicted of
 transmitting sexually obscene pictures through interstate phone lines via
 their members-only Amateur Action Bulletin Board System.

 The Thomases were convicted on 11 criminal counts, each carrying maximum
 sentences of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

 Thomas was acquitted on a charge of accepting child pornography mailed to him
 by an undercover postal inspector.

 The Thomases refused to comment after the verdict. They remain free on
 $20,000 bond to await sentencing, for which no date was set.

 Williams said his clients will appeal, arguing the jury was wrongly
 instructed on how to apply the Supreme Court's standard on obscenity.

 The trial raised questions of how to apply First Amendment free-speech
 protections to ``cyberspace,'' the emerging community of millions of
 Americans who use computers and modems to share pictures and words on every
 imaginable topic.

 Williams argued unsuccessfully before trial that prosecutors sought out a
 city for the trial where a conservative jury might be found.

 During the weeklong trial jurors were shown photographs carried over the
 Thomases' bulletin board featuring scenes of bestiality and other sexual
 fetishes. Williams argued this was voluntary, private communication between
 adults who knew what they were getting by paying $55 for six months or $99
 for a year.

 Their conviction also covers videotapes they sent to Memphis via United
 Parcel Service. The videotapes were advertised over the bulletin board.

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

          OPEN PLATFORM UNDER THREAT BY MONOPOLY INTERESTS!!!

 Anonymously Submitted

 First off, I apologise for sending this anonymously, but my company is
 sufficiently close to the center of this dispute that the usual personal
 disclaimers would not be enough.  We have to do business with these people
 and public criticism of them could lead to disconnexion and the collapse of
 our business.

 Recently the CIX Association (a Non-Profit 501(c)6 Trade Association) has
 chosen to make a change to its policies that will make entry into the
 internet extremely hard if not impossible for small companies or individuals
 or cooperatives.

 Some background:  first there was the Arpanet, and it was for government
 organizations and academics only.  Slowly, private companies attached to the
 Arpanet, but only when they had legitimate reasons to communicate with the
 government organizations they connected to.  Soon, enough private
 organizations were connected that they saw advantages in talking to each
 other, and they put in direct links to each other because they couldn't
 transit the NSF backbone.  Sometimes the connexion agreements for these
 links were informally ad-hoc, other times the people connecting would come
 to a 'settlement agreement'.  This meant that at the end of each year, they
 would work out the net flow of traffic over their link, and the side that
 got the most benefit from it was contracted to pay the other side a cash
 settlement.

 There were the bad old days, and getting full connectivity to non-academic
 sites by making lots of individual connexions was expensive.

 Then along came the group of big companies who formed the CIX.  They wrote a
 contract that said that members would route each others packets without
 settlement.  People still made their own arrangements about who they
 physically connected to, and their share of the cost of the wire etc, but
 once connected, they could send packets to _anyone_ who was a
 mutually-connected CIX member.  And just to make sure there weren't pockets
 of unconnected members, every member had also to make sure they had a
 working path to the CIX backbone.  That way A could talk to B even if it
 meant going all the way to the CIX backbone in Falls Church VA.

 In fact, most of the big vendors have direct connexions to each other, and
 the CIX backbone itself is seldom transited.  It's not an expensive or long
 wire--just a couple of routers in Falls Church.

 Now, the arrangement that CIX has decided to enforce as of November is that
 they will route for their clients, and people directly connected to their
 clients, but not people a step further downstream than that.  Which means
 that the clients of CIX clients who re-sell services will have to become
 members of the CIX themselves, at a cost of $10000.

 This isn't small change for the majority of sites that it affects, and it is
 particularly insidious in that it halts completely the process that was
 beginning to take place where bandwidth would be split into smaller and
 smaller units by smaller and smaller enterprises, until you got down to the
 level of a guy in his garage running 6 modems on his PC allowing access to
 local people over his SLIP or PPP line to his own access provider down his
 v.fast modem, that would be a small company running a 56K line up to their
 access provider, who might be a medium company running a T1 to a big
 provider.

 With this change in policy, "Mom & Pop" internet connexions are no longer
 possible.  The game is for big players only.  And I mean BIG--calculations
 show that to reach break-even, a new vendor needs something like 400
 customers from the start.

 The CIX board justifies their change in policy by claiming it will actually
 increase mutual interconnectivity, by adding more people to the communal
 interoperability agreement.  However, the facts are that the downstream
 sites who are affected by this would have routed all packets going through
 them anyway.  It is, quite simply, an attempt by the big players to lock the
 small players out of the market, to consolidate their oligarchy.  And the
 fact that they'll be collecting many many more $10,000 annual fees has not
 gone unnoticed either.

 This is one area where government interference _to ensure interoperability
 only and to stop restrictive practises_ would be welcome by we smaller
 players.  All that the CIX contributes is a piece of paper saying that
 people will cooperate--the cost of their hardware is small beer.  People
 who are in the CIX have an incentive to stay in because it keeps the
 competition out.  People outside the CIX _could_ make their own mutual
 care because we can afford the fees (almost), and
 it keeps out up and coming competitors.  I don't feel this way, which is why
 I'm posting, and why I have to post anonymously.  But then, I don't own the
 company.

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

          HOUSE RULES VOTE RESULTS; HR 3937 A DEAD END THIS YEAR

 By Shabbir J. Safdar ([e-mail])
 Organization: Voters Telecomm Watch ([e-mail])


 INTRODUCTION

 Voters Telecomm Watch keeps scorecards on legislators' positions on
 legislation that affects telecommunications and civil liberties.
 If you have updates to a legislator's positions, from either:

        -public testimony,
        -reply letters from the legislator,
        -stated positions from their office,

 please contact [e-mail] so they can be added to this list.

 General questions:      [e-mail]
 Mailing List Requests:  [e-mail]
 Press Contact:          [e-mail]
 Gopher URL:             gopher://gopher.panix.com:70/11/vtw
 WWW URL:                We're working on it. :-)

 RESULT OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE VOTE ON HR 3937

 Based on information gathered by volunteers, we've been able to
 piece together some of the positions of the House Rules Committee
 as to how they voted for/against opening up HR 3937 to amendments on
 the House floor.  [This is now somewhat moot, as is explained in the
 next section.]

 Extensive kudos go to
        Joe Thomas <[e-mail]>
        [e-mail] (Gordon Jacobson)
 who both did extensive work to help find this information.

 Here are the results we were able to obtain:

        [The committee voted 5-4 to open the bill]

                HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE MEMBERS

   Dist ST Name, Address, and Party       Phone
   ==== == ========================       ==============
      9 MA Moakley, John Joseph (D)       1-202-225-8273
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

      3 SC Derrick, Butler (D)            1-202-225-5301
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

     24 CA Beilenson, Anthony (D)         1-202-225-5911
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

     24 TX Frost, Martin (D)              1-202-225-3605
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

     10 MI Bonior, David E. (D)           1-202-225-2106
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

      3 OH Hall, Tony P. (D)              1-202-225-6465
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

      5 MO Wheat, Alan (D)                1-202-225-4535
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

      6 TN Gordon, Bart (R)               1-202-225-4231
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

     28 NY Slaughter, Louise M. (D)       1-202-225-3615
        Voted "open"

     22 NY Solomon, Gerald B. (R)         1-202-225-5614
        Voted "open"

      1 TN Quillen, James H. (R)          1-202-225-6356
        Told a constituent he would vote for "open".

     28 CA Dreier, David (R)              1-202-225-2305
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

     14 FL Goss, Porter J. (R)            1-202-225-2536
        UNSPECIFIED POSITION

 It is probably not worth the trouble to ask the remaining legislators
 how they voted unless you happen to chat with their staff often.

 STATUS OF THE BILL (updated 7/21/94)

 If you read the appropriate newsgroups (or any major newspaper) you've
 seen the news about the Gore/Cantwell compromise.  Since everyone
 has reprinted it already, we'll not reprint it again, though we'll
 happily send you a copy should you have missed it.

 The upshot of this is that Rep. Maria Cantwell will not be offering
 her amendment and therefore HR 3937 is a dead end this year for
 liberalizing cryptography exports.  Since VTW is an organization dedicated
 to working on legislation, and there is no longer a piece of relevant
 legislation, we will be concentrating on other projects.  The "cantwell"
 section of our archive will be reworked, and the records of legislators
 that voted will be kept there for future reference.  [NOTE: these
 voting records will also be rolled into our 1994 Voters Guide]

 Here is the final schedule/chronology of the bill

 Jul 21, 94  Rep. Cantwell and Vice Pres. Al Gore compromise on seven
             principles, retreating on the Clipper chip; Rep. Cantwell
             chooses not continue to press the legislation or the amendment
             (see relevant articles in today's NY Times and Washington Post)
 Jul 20, 94  HR3937 comes to House floor; a "good" amendement will be offered
 Jul 11, 94  House Rules Committee marks HR3937 "open"; allowing amendments
 Jun 30, 94  [*** vote postponed, perhaps till the week of 7/11/94]
             House Rules Comm. decides whether to allow amendments
             on the bill when it reaches the House floor
 Jun 14, 94  Gutted by the House Select Committee on Intelligence
 May 20, 94  Referred to the House Select Committee on Intelligence
 May 18, 94  Passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 18
             attached to HR 3937, the General Export Administration Act
 Dec  6, 93  Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and
 Nov 22, 93  Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

 1994 VOTERS GUIDE

 Voters Telecomm Watch believes that you should be informed about your
 legislators' positions on key issues.  We will be developing a survey
 to give to current legislators and their challengers that will gauge
 their positions on key issues involving telecommunications and civil
 liberties.  These results will be made publicly available on the net
 for you to use in casting your vote in November.

 We'll be depending on you to help get legislative candidates to fill
 out and return their surveys.  Please watch this space for the
 announcement of survey availability in the coming weeks.

 If you wish to participate in the development of the survey, feel free
 to join the working list by mailing a note to that effect to

                       [e-mail]

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

      HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS EXPANDED THROUGHOUT MINNESOTA

 By Dennis Fazio ([e-mail])

 Contact:
 Dennis Fazio, Executive Director
 Minnesota Regional Network
 511 11th Avenue South, Box 212
 Minneapolis, MN 55415
 [phone]
 [e-mail]

 Minneapolis, MN, July 18, 1994 -- The Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet), a
 nonprofit corporation that provides connections to the burgeoning world-wide
 Internet in Minnesota, has implemented a major statewide expansion by
 installing several additional access sites around the state using a new data
 transport technology called Frame Relay. This new technology is available as
 a regular service by US WestM- s !nterPRISE Networking Services division. It
 allows MRNet to expand its central hub sites, which are locations where many
 customer connections are gathered together, to the four corners of
 Minnesota, providing a more economical means of connection for colleges,
 schools, libraries, government agencies and businesses in any city or town
 in the state.

 The Internet, a high-speed network of networks, is a current major component
 of what is coming to be called the "Information Superhighway". It is
 composed of a multitude of computer and information networks including
 international links, national backbones, regional and state distribution
 networks and campus or corporate networks. These are all connected in a
 seamless whole creating an information infrastructure containing several
 million individual computers used by ten to twenty million people around the
 globe. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Regional Network or MRNet, is the primary
 statewide distribution network for Internet access.

 "The deployment of these new network switching technologies has the
 potential to revolutionize the creation of wide-area networks," says Dennis
 Fazio, Executive Director of MRNet. "It has reduced the cost of providing
 high-speed connections to customer sites, not only within the US West Frame
 Relay service areas, but even in the outlying towns beyond the suburbs and
 in between the major state metropolitan areas."

 Previously, point-to-point phone circuits had to be connected and expensive
 multi-port hub equipment installed in hub sites. Frame Relay service allows
 MRNet to install smaller less complex and less expensive equipment since the
 aggregation of traffic from multiple customer connections is done within US
 WestM- s switching equipment. It is necessary to only have a single connection
 from the hub site into the Frame Relay service. Additionally, the end-site
 connection links are less expensive, since they now only need a termination
 point at the customer's site. The other end of the link is brought directly
 into the Frame Relay system and doesnM- t incur any termination charges, which
 are the most expensive portion of a digital circuit. This means that it is
 now more economical to cover the entire state by extending links to the
 nearest Frame Relay service area than it is to distribute many more hubs to
 cover the large number of communities necessary to provide full state-wide
 access. Finally, Frame Relay service is a much higher quality of service,
 since all links are monitored and maintained 24 hours a day by US WestM- s
 advanced engineers and technicians.

 With this new expansion, MRNet can provide lower cost direct Frame Relay
 access in Duluth, Hibbing, Thief River Falls, Bemidji, Brainerd, Moorhead,
 Willmar, St. Cloud, Marshall, Owatonna and Rochester in addition to the Twin
 Cities metro area. Those towns outside these areas can be served by
 extending a link to one of these 12 distributed sites.

 MRNet has established partnerships with the University of Minnesota in the
 Twin Cities and Duluth and the Minnesota State University System to share
 long distance trunk lines, which bring the outstate traffic to the Twin
 Cities for forwarding to the Internet, and to obtain space to house
 equipment.

 Beyond this initial new deployment, plans are being put in place to expand
 local calling access for dialup subscribers in other parts of the state.
 This will provide lower-cost links to the Internet for individuals and small
 organizations who cannot yet justify the effort and expense of a high-speed
 digital link. Presently, local calling access is available in the Twin
 Cities, Rochester and St. Cloud. Toll-free access is already available to
 Minnesota educators in all parts of the state through the InforMNs
 demonstration project, a joint effort implemented by MRNet, TIES and the
 Minnesota Department of Education. This effort is partially subsidized by
 the state to provide equal access to all state educators. There are now
 about 1,000 subscribers on the InforMNs system.

 The ability to provide this state-wide network expansion was helped in part
 with funds from the National Science Foundation via a grant to CICNet, a
 regional network comprised primarily of the Big-10 Universities in which
 several state networks including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois,
 Michigan and Indiana participated. This was a for a project titled "Rural
 Datafication" whose purpose was to extend Internet access to areas not
 easily served in the major metropolitan areas.

 The Minnesota Regional Network is an independent member-based nonprofit
 corporation that has been providing access to the Internet since 1988. Its
 mission is to enhance the academic, research and economic environment of the
 state through the use of computer and information networks. It is the
 leading provider of Internet access in Minnesota and now has more than 100
 colleges, universities, libraries, school districts, nonprofit
 organizations, government agencies and businesses listed as connected
 members. Additionally, over 250 individuals and small organizations or
 businesses have access via various forms of dialup connections. MRNet works
 cooperatively with the stateM- s higher education community, the state
 government and several other service organizations of all types to expand
 and increase the level and quality of world-wide network access for the
 improvement of education, general research and commercial business
 operations.

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

       INTERNET ACCESS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ALL MINNESOTA TEACHERS

 By Dennis Fazio ([e-mail])


 MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MN, July 24, 1994 -- Nearly 1,000 Minnesota teachers
 are cruising the information superhighway this summer via InforMNs -
 Internet for Minnesota Schools, a service offered to K-12 educators
 throughout the state.  Using the direct full-function access to the Internet
 that InforMNs provides, teachers browse through on-line databases and
 library catalogs around the world; they have access to U.S. government
 information from a number of agencies including NASA, the Department of
 Education, and the National Institutes of Health; and they share lesson
 plans, ideas for more effective teaching, and thematic classroom activities
 with other teachers and students.

 For instance, the Wolf Studies Project of the International Wolf Center in
 Ely, Minnesota allows students and teachers around the world to hear, see,
 and track radio-collared wolves in the Superior National Forest via the
 Internet.  They can read reports, see pictures and video images, and hear
 sound files about the wolves' movement and activity that are posted on the
 Wolf Studies Project Gopher server.  In another project, students and
 teachers in Minnesota have been exchanging electronic mail with their
 counterparts in Kamchatka, Russia for the past year.  This August the
 Kamchatka Ministry of Education is sponsoring the Second Annual Educational
 Travel Seminar to the Russian Far East with the help of the Minnesota
 Global Education Resource Center.  These kinds of resources and activities,
 and the communication that happens between people, are what make the
 Internet what is -- a worldwide network of computers, resources, and the
 people that use them.

 InforMNs is available to teachers, administrators, and staff from any
 school district, public or private, in Minnesota.  Subscriptions run for a
 12-month period and can start at any time.  The fee is $20 per month, paid
 annually, and provides up to 30 hours of toll free access per month.
 Software, user guides, and a toll free helpline for on-going support are
 included.  In addition, the InforMNs service provides one day of training
 for one person in each subscribing school building to prepare that person
 to give on-site assistance to his or her colleagues.  To subscribe or for
 more information, call InforMNs at [phone] or send email to
 [e-mail].

 InforMNs is funded in part by an appropriation from the state legislature
 to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to provide Internet access
 to all Minnesota schools.  The appropriation subsidizes the cost of
 providing the service so that toll free dial-up access is ensured from any
 school in the state, regardless of its location.  Of the 1,000 subscribers,
 approximately half connect to the network via local calls in St. Cloud,
 Rochester, and the Twin Cities, and half use the InforMNs 800 toll free
 access number.

 In addition to toll free access, InforMNs subscribers receive all the
 software they need to connect their Macintosh or IBM-compatible personal
 computers directly to the Internet.  After making a dial-up connection with
 an ordinary phone line and a modem, the InforMNs user's computer becomes
 one of the estimated two million computers now on the Internet worldwide.
 This method of connection differs from the more familiar link to a bulletin
 board system or on-line service like Compuserve, where the user's access to
 the Internet is relayed through a central computer operated by the bulletin
 board owner or on-line service provider.  The InforMNs direct connection
 allows teachers to use all the features and resources available on the
 Internet including news groups, discussion lists, electronic mail,
 Gopher-organized resources, the World Wide Web, and file transfer.
 Information flows from a distant Internet repository directly to the user's
 own Macintosh or PC.

 The InforMNs service is provided by a partnership of the Minnesota
 Department of Education, the Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet), and
 Technology Information and Educational Services (TIES).  In addition, the
 University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State University System (MSUS)
 share use of their telecommunications infrastructure with the project, and
 InforMNs was launched with the support of the Minnesota Educational Media
 Organization (MEMO) and the Project for Automated Libraries (PALS) at
 Mankato State University.

 For more information, contact:
 Marla Davenport, [e-mail], [phone]
 Margo Berg, [e-mail], [phone]

 InforMNs - Internet for Minnesota Schools
 2665 Long Lake Road, Suite 250
 Roseville, MN  55113-2535

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

                       LEGION OF DOOM T-SHIRTS

 By Chris Goggans <[e-mail]>

 After a complete sellout at HoHo Con 1993 in Austin, TX this past
 December, the official Legion of Doom t-shirts are available
 once again.  Join the net luminaries world-wide in owning one of
 these amazing shirts.  Impress members of the opposite sex, increase
 your IQ, annoy system administrators, get raided by the government and
 lose your wardrobe!

 Can a t-shirt really do all this?  Of course it can!


 "THE HACKER WAR  --  LOD vs MOD"

 This t-shirt chronicles the infamous "Hacker War" between rival
 groups The Legion of Doom and  The Masters of Destruction.  The front
 of the shirt displays a flight map of the various battle-sites
 hit by MOD and tracked by LOD.  The back of the shirt
 has a detailed timeline of the key dates in the conflict, and
 a rather ironic quote from an MOD member.

 (For a limited time, the original is back!)

 "LEGION OF DOOM  --  INTERNET WORLD TOUR"

 The front of this classic shirt displays "Legion of Doom Internet World
 Tour" as well as a sword and telephone intersecting the planet
 earth, skull-and-crossbones style.  The back displays the
 words "Hacking for Jesus" as well as a substantial list of "tour-stops"
 (internet sites) and a quote from Aleister Crowley.

 All t-shirts are sized XL, and are 100% cotton.

 Cost is $15.00 (US) per shirt.  International orders add $5.00 per shirt for
 postage.

 Send checks or money orders.  Please, no credit cards, even if
 it's really your card.


 Name:       __________________________________________________

 Address:    __________________________________________________

 City, State, Zip:   __________________________________________


 I want ____ "Hacker War" shirt(s)

 I want ____ "Internet World Tour" shirt(s)

 Enclosed is $______ for the total cost.

 Mail to:   Chris Goggans
            603 W. 13th #1A-278
            Austin, TX 78701


 These T-shirts are sold only as a novelty items, and are in no way
 attempting to glorify computer crime.

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

                     WHITE HOUSE RETREATS ON CLIPPER

 By Stanton McCandlish ([e-mail])

 Yesterday, the Clinton Administration announced that it is taking several
 large, quick steps back in its efforts to push EES or Clipper
 encryption technology.  Vice-President Gore stated in a letter to
 Rep. Maria Cantwell, whose encryption export legislation is today being
 debated on the House floor, that EES is being limited to voice
 communications only.

 The EES (Escrowed Encryption Standard using the Skipjack algorithm, and
 including the Clipper and Capstone microchips) is a Federal Information
 Processing Standard (FIPS) designed by the National Security Agency, and
 approved, despite a stunningly high percentage anti-EES public comments on
 the proposal) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.  Since
 the very day of the announcement of Clipper in 1993, public outcry against
 the key "escrow" system has been strong, unwavering and growing rapidly.

 What's changed?  The most immediate alteration in the White House's
 previously hardline path is an expressed willingness to abandon the EES
 for computer applications (the Capstone chip and Tessera card), and push
 for its deployment only in telephone technology (Clipper).  The most
 immediate effect this will have is a reduction in the threat to the
 encryption software market that Skipjack/EES plans posed.

 Additionally, Gore's letter indicates that deployment for even the telephone
 application of Clipper has been put off for months of studies, perhaps
 partly in response to a draft bill from Sens. Patrick Leahy and Ernest
 Hollings that would block appropriation for EES development until many
 detailed conditions had been met.

 And according to observers such as Brock Meeks (Cyberwire Dispatch) and
 Mark Voorhees (Voorhees Reports/Information Law Alert), even Clipper is
 headed for a fall, due to a variety of factors including failure in
 attempts to get other countries to adopt the scheme, at least one state
 bill banning use of EES for medical records, loss of NSA credibility after
 a flaw in the "escrowed" key system was discovered by Dr. Matt Blaze of
 Bell Labs, a patent infringement lawsuit threat (dealt with by buying off
 the claimant), condemnation of the scheme by a former Canadian Defense
 Minister, world wide opposition to Clipper and the presumptions behind it,
 skeptical back-to-back House and Senate hearings on the details of the
 Administration's plan, and pointed questions from lawmakers regarding
 monopolism and accountability.

 One of the most signigicant concessions in the letter is that upcoming
 encryption standards will be "voluntary," unclassified, and exportable,
 according to Gore, who also says there will be no moves to tighten export
 controls.

 Though Gore hints at private, rather than governmental, key "escrow," the
 Administration does still maintain that key "escrow" is an important part of
 its future cryptography policy.

 EFF would like to extend thanks to all who've participated in our online
 campaigns to sink Clipper.  This retreat on the part of the Executive
 Branch is due not just to discussions with Congresspersons, or letters
 from industry leaders, but in large measure to the overwhelming response from
 users of computer-mediated communication - members of virtual communities
 who stand a lot to gain or lose by the outcome of the interrelated
 cryptography debates.  Your participation and activism has played a key
 role, if not the key role, in the outcome thus far, and will be vitally
 important to the end game!


 Below is the public letter sent from VP Gore to Rep. Cantwell.

 ******

 July 20, 1994

 The Honorable Maria Cantwell
 House of Representatives
 Washington, D.C.,  20515

 Dear Representative Cantwell:

        I write to express my sincere appreciation for your efforts to move
 the national debate forward on the issue of information security and export
 controls.  I share your strong conviction for the need to develop a
 comprehensive policy regarding encryption, incorporating an export policy
 that does not disadvantage American software companies in world markets
 while preserving our law enforcement and national security goals.

        As you know, the Administration disagrees with you on the extent to
 which existing controls are harming U.S. industry in the short run and the
 extent to which their immediate relaxation would affect national security.
 For that reason we have supported a five-month Presidential study.  In
 conducting this study, I want to assure you that the Administration will
 use the best available resources of the federal government.  This will
 include the active participation of the National Economic Council and the
 Department of Commerce.  In addition, consistent with the Senate-passed
 language, the first study will be completed within 150 days of passage of
 the Export Administration Act reauthorization bill, with the second study
 to be completed within one year after the completion of the first.  I want
 to personally assure you that we will reassess our existing export controls
 based on the results of these studies.  Moreover, all programs with
 encryption that can be exported today will continue to be exportable.

        On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this year
 to assure that over time American companies are able to include information
 security features in their programs in order to maintain their admirable
 international competitiveness.  We can achieve this by entering into an new
 phase of cooperation among government, industry representatives and privacy
 advocates with a goal of trying to develop a key escrow encryption system
 that will provide strong encryption, be acceptable to computer users
 worldwide, and address our national needs as well.

        Key escrow encryption offers a very effective way to accomplish our
 national goals,  That is why the Administration adopted key escrow
 encryption in the "Clipper Chip" to provide very secure encryption for
 telephone communications while preserving the ability for law enforcement
 and national security.  But the Clipper Chip is an approved federal
 standard for telephone communications and not for computer networks and
 video networks.  For that reason, we are working with industry to
 investigate other technologies for those applications.

        The Administration understands the concerns that industry has
 regarding the Clipper Chip.  We welcome the opportunity to work with
 industry to design a more versatile, less expensive system.  Such a key
 escrow system would be implementable in software, firmware, hardware, or
 any combination thereof, would not rely upon a classified algorithm, would
 be voluntary, and would be exportable.  While there are many severe
 challenges to developing such a system, we are committed to a diligent
 effort with industry and academia to create such a system.  We welcome your
 offer to assist us in furthering this effort.

        We also want to assure users of key escrow encryption products that
 they will not be subject to unauthorized electronic surveillance.  As we
 have done with the Clipper Chip, future key escrow systems must contain
 safeguards to provide for key disclosure only under legal authorization and
 should have audit procedures to ensure the integrity of the system.  Escrow
 holders should be strictly liable for releasing keys without legal
 authorization.

        We also recognize that a new key escrow encryption system must
 permit the use of private-sector key escrow agents as one option.  It is
 also possible that as key escrow encryption technology spreads, companies
 may established layered escrowing services for their own products.  Having
 a number of escrow agents would give individuals and businesses more
 choices and flexibility in meeting their needs for secure communications.

        I assure you the President and I are acutely aware of the need to
 balance economic an privacy needs with law enforcement and national
 security.  This is not an easy task, but I think that our approach offers
 the best opportunity to strike an appropriate balance.  I am looking
 forward to working with you and others who share our interest in developing
 a comprehensive national policy on encryption.  I am convinced that our
 cooperative endeavors will open new creative solutions to this critical
 problem.

 Sincerely,
 Al Gore
 AG/gcs

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

                         WHY COPS HATE CIVILIANS

 Author Unknown
 Posted By Don Montgomery ([e-mail])

      Why Cops Hate You or If You Have to Ask, Get Out of the Way

 Have you  ever been  stopped by  a traffic  cop and,  while he  was
 writing a  ticket or  giving you a warning, you got the feeling he would
 just love  to yank  you out  of the  car, right  through the window, and
 smash your face into the front fender?  Have you ever had a noisy little
 spat with  someone, and  a cop  cruising by  calls, Everything all right
 over there?

 Did you  maybe sense  that he  really hoped  everything was not all
 right, that  he wanted  one of  you to answer, No, officer, this idiot's
 bothering me?   That  all he  was looking  for was  an excuse  to launch
 himself from  the cruiser  and play  a drum  solo on your skull with his
 nightstick?

 Did you  ever call  the cops to report a crime, maybe someone stole
 something from  your car or broke into your home, and the cops act as if
 it were  your fault?   That they were sorry the crook didn't rip you off
 for more?   That  instead of looking for the culprit, they'd rather give
 you a  shot in  the chops  for bothering  them with your bullshit in the
 first place?

 If you've  picked  up  on  this  attitude  from  your  local  sworn
 protectors, it's  not just  paranoia.  They actually don't like you.  In
 fact  cops  don't  just  dislike  you,  they  hate  your  fucking  guts!
 Incidentally, for a number of very good reasons.

 First of  all, civilians  are so goddamn stupid.  They leave things
 lying around,  just begging  thieves to  steal them.   They park cars in
 high crime  areas and  leave portable  TVs,  cameras,  wallets,  purses,
 coats, luggage,  grocery bags  and briefcases in plain view on the seat.
 Oh, sure  maybe they'll  remember to  close all the windows and lock the
 doors, but  do you  know how  easy it is to bust a car window?  How fast
 can it be done?  A ten-year-old can do it in less than six seconds!  And
 a poor cop has another Larceny from Auto on his hands.  Another crime to
 write a  report on,  waste another  half hour on.  Another crime to make
 him look bad.

 Meanwhile the  asshole who  left the  family heirlooms  on the back
 seat in  the first  place is raising hell about where were the cops when
 the car  was being  looted.  He's planning to write irate letters to the
 mayor and  the police commissioner complaining about what a lousy police
 force you  have here;  they can't  even keep  my car from getting ripped
 off!  What, were they drinking coffee somewhere?

 And the cops are saying to themselves.  Lemme tell ya, fuckhead, we
 were seven  blocks away,  taking  another  stupid  report  from  another
 jerkoff civilian about his fucking car being broken into because he left
 his shit on the back seat too!

 These civilians  can't figure  out that  maybe they shouldn't leave
 stuff lying  around un-attended  where anybody  can just  pick it up and
 boogie.   Maybe they  should put the shit in the trunk, where no one but
 Superman is  gonna see it.  Maybe they should do that before they get to
 wherever they're  going just  in case  some riffraff  is hanging  around
 watching them while the car is being secured.

 Another thing  that drives  cops wild  is the, "surely this doesn't
 apply to  me" syndrome,  which never fails to reveal itself at scenes of
 sniper or barricade incidents.  There's always some asshole walking down
 the street  (or jogging  or driving) who thinks the police cars blocking
 off the  area, the  ropes marked  Police Line:   Do  Not Cross, the cops
 crouched behind  cars pointing  revolvers and  carbines and shotguns and
 bazookas at  some building  has nothing whatsoever to do with him, so he
 weasels around  the barricades  or slithers  under the restraining ropes
 and blithely continues on his way, right into the field of fire.

 The result  is that some cop risks his ass (or her's, don't forget,
 the cops include women now) to go after the cretin and drag him, usually
 under protest,  back to  safety.   All of  these cops, including the one
 risking his  ass, devoutly  hope  that  the  sniper  will  get  off  one
 miraculous shot and drill the idiot right between the horns, which would
 have two  immediate effects.   The  quiche-for-brains civilian  would be
 dispatched to  his  just  reward  and  every  cop  on  the  scene  would
 instantaneously be  licensed to  kill the  scumbag  doing  the  sniping.
 Whereupon the  cops would destroy the whole fucking building, sniper and
 all, in  about 30  seconds, which is what they wanted to do in the first
 place, except  the brass  wouldn't let  them  because  the  motherfucker
 hadn't killed anybody yet.

 An  allied  phenomenon  is  the  My  isn't  this  amusing  behavior
 exhibited, usually  by Yuppies  or other  members of  higher society, at
 some emergency  scenes.   For example,  a group  of trendy types will be
 strolling down  the street  when a  squad car  with lights  flashing and
 siren on  screeches up  to a  building.  They'll watch the cops yank out
 their guns  and run up to the door, flatten themselves against the wall,
 and peep  into the  place cautiously.   Now,  if  you  think  about  it,
 something serious  could be  happening here.   Cops  usually don't  pull
 their revolvers to go get a cup of coffee.  any five-year-old ghetto kid
 can tell  you these  cops are  definitely ready to cap somebody.  But do
 our society  friends perceive  this?   Do they stay out of the cops way?
 Of course  not!  They think it's vastly amusing.   And, of course, since
 they're not involved in the funny little game the cops are playing, they
 think nothing  can happen  to them!       While the ghetto kid is hiding
 behind a  car for  the shooting  to start,  Muffy and Chip and Biffy are
 continuing their  stroll, right  up to  the  officers,  tittering  among
 themselves about  how silly  the cops look, all scrunched up against the
 wall, trying  to look in  through the door without stopping bullets with
 their foreheads.

 What the  cops are  hoping at  that point is for a homicidal holdup
 man to  come busting  out the  door with  a sawed-off  shotgun.  They're
 hoping he  has it  loaded with  elephant shot,  and that  he immediately
 identifies our socialites as serious threats to his personal well-being.
 They're hoping  he has  just enough  ammunition to blast the shit out of
 the gigglers,  but not  enough to  return fire  when the cops open up on
 him.

 Of course,  if that  actually happens,  the poor  cops will be in a
 world of  trouble for not protecting the innocent bystanders.  The brass
 wouldn't even  want to  hear that  the shitheads  probably  didn't  have
 enough sense to come in out of an acid rain.  Somebody ought to tell all
 the quiche  eaters out  there to  stand back when they encounter someone
 with a  gun in  his hand,  whether he happens to be wearing a badge or a
 ski mask.

 Civilians also  aggravate cops  in a  number of other ways.  One of
 their favorite games is Officer, can you tell me?  A cop knows he's been
 selected to  play this game whenever someone approaches and utters those
 magic words.   Now, it's okay if they continue with How to get to so and
 so street?   or Where such and such a place is located?  After all, cops
 are supposed  to be  familiar with  the area they work.  But it eats the
 lining of  their stomachs  when some jerkoff asks, Where can I catch the
 number fifty-four bus?  Or, Where can I find a telephone?

 Cops look  forward to  their last  day before retirement, when they
 can safely  give these  douche bags the answer they've been choking back
 for 20  years:   No, maggot,  I can't  tell you where the fifty-four bus
 runs!   What does  this look  like an MTA uniform?  Go ask a fucking bus
 driver!   And, No,  dog breath, I don't know where you can find a phone,
 except wherever  your fucking  eyes see one!  Take your head out of your
 ass and look for one.

 And cops  just love  to find  a guy  parking his car in a crosswalk
 next to  a fire  hydrant at  a bus stop posted with a sigh saying, Don't
 Even Think  About Stopping, Standing, or Parking Here.  Cars Towed Away,
 Forfeited to  the Government,  and Sold at Public Auction.  And the jerk
 asks, Officer, may I park here a minute?

 What are  you nuts?   Of  course ya  can park  here!  As long as ya
 like!   Leave it  there all  day!   Ya don't  see anything  that says ya
 can't, do  ya?   You're welcome.   See  ya later.   The  cop then drives
 around the  corner and  calls a tow truck to remove the vehicle.  Later,
 in traffic  court, the  idiot will  be whining  to the  judge But,  Your
 Honor, I  asked an  officer if  I could park there, and he said I could!
 No, I don't know which officer, but I did ask! Honest!  No, wait, Judge,
 I can't afford five hundred dollars!  This isn't fair!  I'm not creating
 a disturbance!   I've got rights!  Get your hands off me!  Where are you
 taking me?  What do you mean , ten days for contempt of court?  What did
 I do?   Wait,  wait,...   If you  should happen  to see  a  cop  humming
 contentedly and  smiling to  himself for no apparent reason, he may have
 won this game.

 Wildly unrealistic civilian expectations also contribute to a cop's
 distaste for  the general  citizenry.  An officer can be running his ass
 off all  day or  night handling  call after  call and writing volumes of
 police reports,  but everybody thinks their problem is the only thing he
 has to  work on.  The policeman may have a few worries, too.  Ever think
 of that?   the sergeant is on him because he's been late for roll call a
 few days;  he's been  battling like  a badger  with his wife, who's just
 about to leave him because he never takes her anywhere and doesn't spend
 enough time at home and the kids need braces and the station wagon needs
 a major  engine overhaul and where are we gonna get the money to pay for
 all that  and we haven't had a real vacation for years and all you do is
 hang around with other cops and you've been drinking too much lately and
 I could've  married that  wonderful guy  I was going with when I met you
 and lived  happily ever  after and  why don't you get a regular job with
 regular days  off and  no night  shifts and  decent pay and a chance for
 advancement and no one throwing bottles or taking wild potshots at you?

 Meanwhile, that  sweet young thing he met on a call last month says
 her period is late.  Internal Affairs is investigating him on fucking up
 a disorderly  last week;  the captain  is pissed  at him  for tagging  a
 councilman's car; a burglar's tearing up the businesses on his post; and
 he's already  handled two robberies, three family fights, a stolen auto,
 and a half dozen juvenile complaints today.

 Now here he is, on another juvenile call, trying to explain to some
 bimbo, who's  the president of her neighborhood improvement association,
 that the  security of  Western Civilization is not really threatened all
 that much  by the kids who hang around on the corner by her house.  Yes,
 officer, I  know they're not there now.  They always leave when you come
 by.   But after  you're gone,  they come  right back, don't you see, and
 continue their  disturbance.   It's intolerable!   I'm  so upset,  I can
 barely sleep at night.

 By now,  the cops  eyes have  glazed over.    What  we  need  here,
 officer, she  continues vehemently,  Is greater attention to this matter
 by the  police.   You and  some other officers should hide and stake out
 that corner  so those  renegades wouldn't see you.  Then you could catch
 them in  the act!   Yes, ma'am, we'd love to stake out that corner a few
 hours every night, since we don't have anything else to do, but I've got
 a better idea, he'd like to say.  Here's a box of fragmentation grenades
 the Department  obtained from  the Army  just for  situations like this.
 The next  time you see those little fuckers out there, just lob a couple
 of these into the crowd and get down!

 Or he's  got and  artsy-craftsy type  who's  moved  into  a  tough,
 rundown neighborhood  and decides  it's gotta  be cleaned up.  You know,
 Urban Pioneers.   The  cops see  a lot  of them  now.   Most of them are
 intelligent(?), talented, hard-working, well-paid folks with masochistic
 chromosomes interspersed  among their otherwise normal genes.  They have
 nice jobs,  live in nice homes, and they somehow decide that it would be
 a marvelous  idea to  move into a slum and get yoked, roped, looted, and
 pillaged on  a regular  basis.   What else  do you  expect?   Peace  and
 harmony?  It's like tossing a juicy little pig into a piranha tank.

 Moving day:  Here come the pioneers, dropping all their groovy gear
 from their  Volvo station  wagon, setting it on the sidewalk so everyone
 can get  a good  look and  the food processor, the microwave, the stereo
 system, the  color TV,  the tape deck, etc.  At the same time, the local
 burglars are  appraising the goods unofficially and calculating how much
 they can get for the TV down at the corner bar, how much the stereo will
 bring at  Joe's garage, who might want the tape deck at the barber shop,
 and maybe mama can use the microwave herself.

 When the  pioneers get  ripped off,  the cops figure they asked for
 it, and  they got  it.   You want to poke your arm through the bars of a
 tiger cage?   Fuck you!  Don't be amazed when he eats it for lunch!  The
 cops regard  it as  naive for  trendies to  move into  crime  zones  and
 conduct their  lives the same way they did up on Society Hill.  In fact,
 they can't fathom why anyone who didn't have to would want to move there
 at all,  regardless of  how they want to live or how prepared they might
 be to  adapt their  behavior.   That's probably  because  the  cops  are
 intimately acquainted  with all  those petty  but disturbing  crimes and
 nasty little  incidents that  never make  the newspapers  but profoundly
 affect the quality of life in a particular area.

 Something else  that causes  premature aging  among cops  is the, I
 don't know who to call, so I'll call the police ploy.  Why, the cops ask
 themselves, do  they get so many calls for things like water leaks, sick
 cases, bats in houses, and the like, things that have nothing whatsoever
 to do  with law  enforcement or  the maintenance  of public order?  They
 figure it's  because civilians  are getting  more and more accustomed to
 having the government solve problems for them, and the local P.D. is the
 only governmental  agency that'll  even answer  the phone a 3:00 am, let
 alone send anybody.

 So, when  the call  comes over  the radio  to go  to  such-and-such
 address  for  a  water  leak,  the  assigned  officer  rolls  his  eyes,
 acknowledges, responds,  surveys the problem, and tells the complainant,
 Yep, that's  a water  leak all  right!   No doubt  about it. Ya probably
 ought to  call a  plumber!   And it  might not be a bad idea to turn off
 your main  valve for  a while.   Or,  Yep, your  Aunt Minnie's  sick all
 right!   Ya probably ought to get'er to a doctor tomorrow if she doesn't
 get any  better by  then.S   Or, Yep,  that's a bat all right!  Mebbe ya
 ought to open the windows so it can fly outside again!

 In the meantime our hero is wasting his time on this bullshit call,
 maybe someone  is having  a real  problem out there, like getting raped,
 robbed or  killed.   Street cops would like to work the phones just once
 and catch  a few  of these idiotic complaints:  A bat in your house?  No
 need to  send an officer when I can tell ya what to do right here on the
 phone, pal!  Close all your doors and windows right away.  Pour gasoline
 all over  your furniture.   That's  it.   Now, set  it on  fire and  get
 everybody outside!   Yeah,  you'll get the little motherfucker for sure!
 That's okay, call us anytime.

 Probably the  most serious beef cops have with civilians relates to
 those situations  in which  the use  of force  becomes necessary to deal
 with some desperado who may have just robbed a bank, iced somebody, beat
 up his wife and kids, or wounded some cop, and now he's caught but won't
 give up.  He's not going to be taken alive, he's going to take some cops
 with him, and you better say your prayers, you pig bastards!  Naturally,
 if the  chump's armed  with any  kind of  weapon, the  cops are going to
 shoot the  shit out  of him  so bad  they'll be able to open up his body
 later as  a lead  mine.  If he's not armed, and the cops aren't creative
 enough to find a weapon for him, they'll beat him into raw meat and hope
 he spends  the next  few weeks  in traction.  They view it as a learning
 experience for  the asshole.  You fuck up somebody, you find out what it
 feels like  to get  fucked up.  Don't like it?  Don't do it again!  It's
 called Street  Justice, and  civilians approve of it as much as cops do,
 even if they don't admit it.

 Remember how  the audience  cheered when  Charles Bronson fucked up
 the bad  guys in  Death Wish?  How they scream with joy every time Clint
 Eastwood's Dirty  Harry makes his day by blowing up some rotten scumball
 with his  .44 Magnum?  What they applaud is the administration of street
 justice.   The old  eye-for-an-eye concept, one of mankind's most primal
 instincts.  All of us have it, especially cops.

 It severely  offends and  deeply hurts  cops when they administer a
 dose of  good old-fashioned  street justice  only to have some bleeding-
 heart do-gooder  happens upon  the scene  at the  last minute,  when the
 hairbag is  at last  getting his just deserts, and start hollering about
 police brutality.   Cops  regard that  as very  serious business indeed.
 Brutality can get them fired.  Get fired from one police department, and
 it's tough to get a job as a cop anywhere else ever again.

 Brutality exposes  the cop  to civil  liability as well.  Also, his
 superior officers,  the police  department as  an agency, and maybe even
 the local  government itself.  You've seen those segments on 60 Minutes,
 right?   Some cop  screws up, gets sued along with everybody else in the
 department who  had anything to do with him, and the city or county ends
 up paying  the plaintiff  umpty-ump million  dollars, raising  taxes and
 hocking its  fire engines  in the process.  What do think happens to the
 cop who fucked up in the first place?  He's done for.

 On many occasions when the cops are accused of excessive force, the
 apparent brutality  is  a  misperception  by  some  observer  who  isn't
 acquainted with  the realities of police work.  For example, do you have
 any idea  how hard  it is to handcuff someone who really doesn't want to
 be handcuffed?   Without  hurting them?   It's almost impossible for one
 cop to  accomplish by  himself unless  he beats  the  hell  out  of  the
 prisoner first,  which would  also be viewed a brutality!  It frequently
 takes three or four cops to handcuff one son of a bitch who's determined
 to battle them.

 In situations  like that,  it's not  unusual for  the cops  to hear
 someone in  the crowd  of onlookers comment on how they're ganging up on
 the poor  bastard and  beating him  unnecessarily.  This makes them feel
 like telling  the complainer,  Hey,  motherfucker,  you  think  you  can
 handcuff this  shithead by  yourself without killing him first?  C'mere!
 You're deputized!  Now, go ahead and do it!

 The problem  is that,  in addition  to being  unfamiliar  with  how
 difficult it  is in the real world to physically control someone without
 beating  his   ass,  last-minute   observers  usually   don't  have  the
 opportunity to see for themselves, like they do in the movies and on TV,
 what a  fucking monster  the suspect  might be.   If  they  did,  they'd
 probably holler  at the  cops to  beat his  ass some  more.   They might
 actually even  want to  help!      The best thing for civilians to do if
 they think they see the cops rough up somebody too much is to keep their
 mouths shut  at the  scene, and  to make  inquiries of  the police brass
 later on.   There  might be  ample justification for the degree of force
 used that  just wasn't  apparent at the time of the arrest.  If not, the
 brass will  be very  interested in  the complaint.  If one of their cops
 went over  the deep end, they'll want to know about it.     Most of this
 comes down  to  common  sense,  a  characteristic  the  cops  feel  most
 civilians lack.   One of the elements of common sense is thinking before
 opening one's  yap or  taking other  action.   Just a  brief  moment  of
 thought will  often prevent  the utterance  of something  stupid or  the
 commission of  some idiotic  act that will, among other things, generate
 nothing but  contempt from  the average street cop.  Think, and it might
 mean getting  a warning instead of a traffic ticket.  Or getting sent on
 your way  rather than being arrested.  Or continuing on to your original
 destination instead of to the hospital.  It might mean getting some real
 assistance instead  of the runaround.  The very least it'll get you is a
 measure of  respect cops  seldom show  civilians.  Act like you've got a
 little sense,  and even  if the cops don't love you, at least they won't
 hate you.

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

           PUBLIC SPACE ON INFO HIGHWAY: CALL CONGRESS ASAP!

By The Center For Media Education ([e-mail])

People For the American Way is 300,000-member nonpartisan constitutional
liberties public interest organization. 2000 M Street NW, Suite 400,
Washington DC 20036.

 ACTION ALERT  --  From People For the American Way (DC)

 SENATE TO ACT ON INFO-HIGHWAY BILL -- ACTIVISTS NEEDED TO ENSURE THAT
 PUBLIC ACCESS PROVISIONS ARE INCLUDED.

 The Issue

 -  The "information superhighway" has the potential to give rise to a new
 era of democratic self governance by providing the means through which
 civic discourse can flourish.  Turning this into a reality means that
 those committed to promoting this new marketplace of ideas must be given
 the tools to use new telecommunications networks.

 -  A diverse coalition of public interest organizations is supporting
 legislation introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the
 Communications Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, to encourage
 this new marketplace of ideas by ensuring that the public has access to
 the information superhighway is protected (S. 2195).

 -  Without reserved capacity, the ability of local governmental
 institutions, libraries, schools, public broadcasters and other nonprofit
 organizations to take advantage of new telecommunications technologies
 will be determined by private gatekeepers who have few economic incentives
 to permit those institutions without the means to pay commercial rates
 access to their networks.

 -  Without Senator Inouye's legislation, the information superhighway will
 carry little more than video games, movies on demand and home shopping.

 -  There has been a great deal of rhetoric about the telecommunications
 networks of the future being of unlimited capacity.  This is certainly the
 goal.  However, it is necessary to ensure that between now and the time
 that such capacity is unlimited, that there is meaningful access available
 for those entities proving important educational, cultural, informational,
 civic and charitable services to the public.

 -  Senator Inouye's legislation must be included in the debate with the
 larger telecommunications legislation (S. 1822) introduced by Senator
 Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.


 LEGISLATIVE TIMING

 Senator Hollings (D-SC), Chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Senator
 Danforth (R-MO), Ranking Minority Member of the Commerce Committee are
 busily working on amendments to S. 1822, a major telecommunications reform
 bill.  Next week, the full Committee is expected to consider these
 amendments.  Therefore, a public access provision must be included now.

 ACTION REQUEST

 -  Please call Senator Hollings at the Commerce Committee and Senator
 Danforth (Ranking Minority Member) immediately!!  Ask them to support S.
 2195 and guarantee that requirements are put in place for public access at
 low or no-cost rates are included in the Chairman's Mark.  Phone calls on
 this issue by the public will have a profound effect on the outcome of
 this legislation--so please call!

  Senator Hollings  202-224-5115
  Senator Danforth  202-224-6154

 -  Please also call Senator Inouye and encourage him to continue to push
 for passage of S. 2195 and to seek it's combination with S. 1822.

  Inouye (D-HI)   202-224-3934

 -  Please try to find the time to make a few calls and ask the other
 Senators on the Commerce Committee to support S. 2195 and ensure public
 access provisions are included in S. 1822. Other Senators on the Commerce
 Committee are:

 Exon  (D-NB)   202-224-4224
 Ford  (D-KY)   202-224-4343
 Rockefeller (D-WV)  202-224-6472
 Kerry  (D-MA)   202-224-2742
 Breaux (D-LA)   202-224-4623
 Bryan (D-NV)   202-224-6244
 Robb (D-VA)   202-224-4024
 Dorgan (D-ND)   202-224-2551
 Matthews (D-TN)   202-224-4944
 Packwood (R-OR)   202-224-5244
 Pressler (R-SD)   202-224-5842
 Stevens (R-AK)   202-224-3004
 McCain (R-AZ)   202-224-2235
 Burns (R-MT)   202-224-2644
 Gorton (R-WA)   202-224-3441
 Lott (R-Miss.)   202-224-6253
 Hutchison (R-TX)   202-224-5922

 -  Calling these Senators *works*!!

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

                   SOFTWARE KEY ESCROW - A NEW THREAT?

 By Timothy May ([e-mail])

 At the June Cypherpunks meeting, Whit Diffie (co-inventor of
 public-key crypto, as you should all know) filled us in on a workshop
 on "key escrow" held in Karlsruhe, Germany. All the usual suspects
 were there, and I gather that part of the purpose was to bring the
 Europeans "into the tent" on key escrow, to deal with their objections
 to Clipper, and so on.

 Diffie described in some detail a software-based scheme developed by
 NIST (and Dorothy Denning, if I recall correctly) that, as I recall
 the details, avoids public key methods. Perhaps this was also
 described here on the list. I know Bill Stewart has recently discussed
 it in sci.crypt or talk.politics.crypto.

 What has me worried about it now is evidence from more than one source
 that this program is actually much further along than being merely a
 "trial balloon" being floated. In fact, it now looks as though the
 hardware-based key escrow systems will be deemphasized, as Al Gore's
 letter seems to say, in favor of software-based schemes.

 While I've been skeptical that software-based schemes are secure (the
 bits are hardly secure against tampering), the addition of negotiation
 with another site (a lot like online clearing of digital cash, it
 seems) can make it nearly impossible for tampering to occur. That is,
 I'm now more persuaded that the NIST/NSA(?) proposal would allow
 software-based key escrow.

 Here's the rub:

 * Suppose the various software vendors are "incentivized" to include
 this in upcoming releases. For example, in 30 million copies of
 Microsoft's "Chicago" (Windows 4.0) that will hit the streets early in
 '95 (betas are being used today by many).

 * This solves the "infrastructure" or "fax effect" problem--key escrow
 gets widely deployed, in a way that Clipper was apparently never going
 to be (did any of you know _anybody_ planning to buy a "Surety"
 phone?).

 (Granted, this is key escrow for computers, not for voice
 communication. More on this later.)

 * Once widely deployed, with not talk of the government holding the
 keys, then eventual "mandatory key escrow" can be proposed, passed
 into law by Executive Order (Emergency Order, Presidential Directive,
 whatever your paranoia supports), an act of Congress, etc.

 I don't claim this scenario is a sure thing, or that it can't be
 stopped. But if in fact a "software key escrow" system is in the
 works, and is more than just a "trial balloon," then we as Cypherpunks
 should begin to "do our thing," the thing we've actually done pretty
 well in the past. To wit: examine the implications, talk to the
 lobbyist groups about what it means, plan sabotage efforts (sabotage
 of public opinion, not planting bugs in the Chicago code!), and
 develop ways to make sure that a voluntary key escrow system could
 never be made mandatory.

 (Why would _anyone_ ever use a voluntary key escrow system? Lots of
 reasons, which is why I don't condemn key escrow automatically.
 Partners in a business may want access under the right circumstances
 to files. Corporations may want corporate encryption accessible under
 emergencyy circumstances (e.g., Accounting and Legal are escrow
 agencies). And individuals who forget their keys--which happens all
 the time--may want the emergency option of asking their friends who
 agreed to hold the key escrow stuff to help them. Lots of other
 reasons. And lots of chances for abuse, independent of mandatory key escrow.)

 But there are extreme dangers in having the infrastructure of a
 software key escrow system widely deployed.

 I can't see how a widely-deployed (e.g., all copies of Chicago, etc.)
 "voluntary key escrow" system would remain voluntary for long. It
 looks to me that the strategy is to get the infrastructure widely
 deployed with no mention of a government role, and then to bring the
 government in as a key holder.

 (The shift of focus away from telephone communications to data is an
 important one. I can see several reasons. First, this allows wide
 deployment by integration into next-gen operating systems. A few
 vendors can be "incentivized." Second, voice systems are increasingly
 turning into data systems, with all the stuff surrounding ISDN,
 cable/telco alliances, "set-top" boxes, voice encryption on home
 computers, etc. Third, an infrastructure for software key escrow would
 make the backward extension to voice key escrow more palatable. And
 finally, there is a likely awareness that the "terrorist rings" and
 "pedophile circles" they claim to want to infiltrate are more than
 likely already using computers and encryption, not simple voice lines.
 This will be even more so in the future. So, the shift of focus to
 data is understandable. That it's a much easier system in which to get
 40-60 million installed systems _almost overnight_ is also not lost on
 NIST and NSA, I'm sure.)

 In other words, a different approach than with Clipper, where
 essentially nobody was planning to buy the "Surety" phones (except
 maybe a few thousand) but the government role was very prominent--and
 attackable, as we all saw. Here, the scenario might be to get 40-60
 million units out there (Chicago, next iteration of Macintosh OS,
 maybe Sun, etc.) and then, after some series of events (bombings,
 pedophile rings, etc.) roll in the mandatory aspects.

 Enforcement is always an issue, and I agree that many bypasses exist.
 But as Diffie notes, the "War on Drugs" enlistment of corporations was
 done with various threats that corporations would lose
 assets/contracts unless they cooperated. I could see the same thing
 for a software-based key escrow.

 A potentially dangerous situation.

 I was the one who posted the Dorothy Denning "trial balloon" stuff to
 sci.crypt, in October of 1992, six months before it all became real
 with the announcement of Clipper. This generated more than a thousand
 postings, not all of them useful (:-}), and helped prepare us for the
 shock of the Clipper proposal the following April.

 I see this software-based key escrow the same way. Time to start
 thinking about how to stop it now, before it's gone much further.

 Putting Microsoft's feet to the fire, getting them to commit to *not*
 including any form of software-based key escrow in any future releases
 of Windows (Chicago or Daytona) could be a concrete step in the right
 direction. Ditto for Apple.

 I'm sure we can think of other steps to help derail widespread
 deployment of this infrastructure.

 --Tim May

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

            HOODS HIT THE HIGHWAY; COMPUTER USERS WARNED OF SCAMS

 By Charlotte-Anne Lucas
 Austin Bureau of The Dallas Morning News
 REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

 AUSTIN -- Computer users, beware: Driving on the information highway,
 it's possible to get fleeced.

 Scam artists have hit the cyberspace, offering high-tech ponzi schemes,
 sending illegal electronic chain letters and hyping virtually worthless
 stock, according to state securities regulators across the nation.

 In Texas, regulators say an Austin retiree lost $10,000 in a fake mutual
 fund deal sold by a man who promoted his "money managing" skills through
 an on-line computer service.

 "The danger here is that cyberspace, which could be a beneficial way for
 consumers to do a better job of informing themselves, will instead be
 discredited as a haven for fast-buck artists," said Denise Voigt
 Crawford, the Texas Securities Commissioner.

 In New Jersey and Missouri on Thursday, securities regulators filed
 cease and desist orders against promoters who used computer links to
 tout allegedly fraudulent deals.  Texas regulators say it is likely that
 they will seek an indictment in the case of the nonexistent mutual fund.

 But with nearly 4 million computer users nationwide linked into
 commercial computer services and 20 million people on the internet,
 a world-wide computer network, "it is almost too big to police
 effectively," said Jared Silverman, chief of the New Jersey Bureau of
 Securities and chairman of a multi-state team that investigates computer
 fraud.

 In response, regulators in all 50 states issued a bulletin to
 investigators, describing the potential frauds and listing steps small
 investors can take to protect themselves.  "We're trying to tell people
 to be careful," said Ms. Crawford, "there is a new fraud on the
 horizon."

 Although regulators are concerned about the problem, Ms. Crawford
 acknowledges enforcement will be a challenge.  Because electronic
 conversations, or E-mail, are considered private, "we don't know what
 difficulties we are going to have getting subpoenas enforced or what
 kind of cooperation we will get from (commercial bulletin board
 systems)." [sic]

 Officials say promoters tend to advertise offers or stock tips on the
 financial bulletin board sections of on-line computer services such as
 CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy, or in the specialized discussion
 forums in the Internet.

 Regulators said that of 75,000 messages posted on one computer service
 bulletin board during a recent two-week period, 5,600 were devoted to
 investment topics.  While some commercial computer bulletin board
 services try to control the publicly posted investment tips, most do not
 try to control most communications on the service.

 What begins as innocent E-mail can end with an unwary investor "getting
 cleaned out by high-tech schemers," said Ms. Crawford.

 In Texas, the case under investigation began when an Austin retiree
 posted a public note in a commercial bulletin board system looking for
 conversations about the stock market, according to John A. Peralta,
 deputy director of enforcement at the Texas Securities Board.

 "He was contacted.  It turned into a private E-mail conversation, a
 telephone conversation and then exchanges through the mail," said
 Mr. Peralta.  But the person who promoted himself on the computer as a
 skilled money manager turned out to be unlicensed -- and the mutual fund
 the retiree invested in turned out to be nonexistent.

 Mr. Peralta said at least one other person, not from Texas, invested
 $90,000 in the same deal, "We are aware of two, but we don't really
 know," he said.  "There may be dozens of victims."

 Securities regulators began taking interest in on-line scams last fall,
 after Mr. Silverman -- a computer junkie -- raised the issue at a
 national meeting of regulators.  "I heard stories about things going on
 on computer bulletin board services, and I have been monitoring these
 things for close to a year," he said.

 In fact, the New Jersey case came from Mr. Siverman's off-hours cruising
 of an on-line service.  "I sit at a keyboard two hours a day -- to the
 chagrin of my wife -- scanning these things," he said.

 What he found was a promoter pushing an E-mail chain letter.  The
 promoter, identified only as from San Antonio, claimed that in exchange
 for $5, investors could earn $60,000 in three to six weeks.

 Regulators said participants were told to send $1 to each of five people
 on a list in the computer bulletin board, add their own name to the list
 and post it on 10 different computer bulletin board sites.

 That, regulators said in a statement, "amounted to a high-tech
 variation on the old pyramid scam, which is barred by federal and state
 laws."

 In Missouri, regulators Thursday moved against an unlicensed stockbroker
 for touting his services and "making duubious [sic] claims for stocks
 not registered for sale in the state."  Among other things, regulators
 said, the promoter falsely claimed that Donald Trump was a "major,
 behind-the-scenes player in a tiny cruise line" whose stock he pitched.

 Ms. Crawford said that while computer users may be sophisticated in some
 ways, they still are attractive targets because they tend to have
 discretionary income and frequently are looking for ways to invest their
 money.

 Some of the commercial services also allow users to use various aliases,
 making it all the more difficult for investigators to figure out who
 they are really communication with.

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

                      THE INTERNET AND THE ANTI-NET

 By Nick Arnett ([e-mail])

 Two public internetworks are better than one

 Networking policy debates tend to paint a future monolithic internetwork
 that will follow consistent policies despite a number of independent
 operators.  Although that's how the interstate highway and telephone
 systems -- favorite metaphors for network futurists -- operate, historical
 comparisons suggest that it is probably not what the future holds.  Two
 distinct, interconnected publicly accessible digital internetworks are
 likely to emerge, which is surely better than just one.

 One of the future internetworks will grow out of today's Internet, whose
 roots are in the technology and scientific/academic communities, funded by
 government, institutions and increasingly, corporate and individual users.
 Although the Internet will support commercial services, they rarely will
 depend on advertising.  The other great internetwork will grow out of the
 technology and mass communications industries, especially cable and
 broadcast industries.  The "Anti-net" will rely on advertising revenue to
 recoup the cost of the infrastructure necessary to create cheap, high-speed
 bandwidth.  (I call this second network the Anti-net not to be a demagogue
 but to make a historical allusion, explained shortly.)  All three
 communities -- technology, science and academia, and mass media -- will
 participate in many joint projects.  The most successful new ventures often
 will arise from three-way collaborations; skills of each are essential to
 create and deliver network-based information products and services.

 The Internet community reacts with profound anger and resentment at
 Anti-net behavior on the Internet -- in net-speak, "spamming" advertising
 messages into hundreds of discussions.  The outrage is based in part on the
 idealistic traditions of academic and scientific freedom of thought and
 debate, but there's more behind it.  Anger and resentment fueled by the
 world's love-hate relationship with the mass media, particularly
 television, surface in many other contexts.  Nearly everyone in the modern
 world and large segments of the third world watches television; nearly all
 think broadcast television is stupid, offering a homogenized,
 sensationalized point of view that serves advertising interests above all
 others.  In competition with television's hypnotic powers, or perhaps
 simply due to the high cost of distribution, other mass media have followed
 suit.

 Idealistic defenders of the Internet's purity believe they are waging a
 humanitarian or even a holy war that pits a democracy of ideas against the
 mass media's empty promises and indulgences.  Television and its kin offer
 the false idols and communities of soaps, sitcoms and sports.  The mass
 media tantalize with suggestions of healing, wealth, popularity and
 advertising's other blessings and temptations.  Internet idealists even
 question the U.S. administration's unclear proposal of an "information
 superhighway," suspecting that the masses will be taxed only to further
 expand the Anti-net's stranglehold on information.

 The same kind of stage was set 500 years ago.  The convergence of
 inexpensive printing and inexpensive paper began to loosen the Roman
 Catholic church's centuries-old stranglehold on cultural information.  The
 church's rise to power centuries earlier had followed the arrival of the
 Dark Ages, caused in Marshall McLuhan's analysis by the loss of papyrus
 supplies.  The church quickly became the best customer of many of the early
 printer-publishers, but not to disseminate information, only to make money.
 The earliest dated publication of Johann Gutenberg himself was a "papal
 indulgence" to raise money for the church's defense against the Turk
 invasions.  Indulgences were papers sold to the common folk to pay for the
 Pope's remission of their sins, a sort of insurance against the wrath of
 God.  Indulgences had been sold by the church since the 11th century, but
 shortly after the arrival of printing, the pope expanded the market
 considerably by extending indulgences to include souls in purgatory.
 Indulgence revenue was shared with government officials, becoming almost a
 form of state and holy taxation.  The money financed the church's holy
 wars, as well as church officials' luxurious lifestyles.

 Jumping on the new technology for corrupt purposes, the church had sown the
 seeds of its own undoing.  The church had the same sort of love-hate
 relationship with common people and government that the mass media have
 today.  The spark for the 15th-century "flame war," in net-speak, was a
 monk, Martin Luther.  Outraged by the depth of the church's corruption,
 Luther wrote a series of short theses in 1517, questioning indulgences,
 papal infallibility, Latin-only Bibles and services, and other
 authoritarian, self-serving church practices.  Although Luther had
 previously written similar theses, something different happened to the 95
 that he nailed to the church door in Wittenburg.  Printers -- the "hackers"
 of their day, poking about the geographic network of church doors and
 libraries -- found Luther's theses.

 As an academic, Luther enjoyed a certain amount of freedom to raise
 potentially heretical arguments against church practice.  Nailing his
 theses to the Wittenburg door was a standard way to distribute information
 to his academic community for discussion, much like putting a research
 paper on an Internet server today.  In Luther's time, intellectual property
 laws hadn't even been contemplated, so his papers were fair game for
 publication (as today's Internet postings often seem to be, to the dismay
 of many).  Luther's ideas quickly became the talk of Europe.  Heresy sells,
 especially when the questioned authority is corrupt.  But the speed of
 printing technology caught many by surprise.  Even Luther, defending
 himself before the pope, was at a loss to explain how so many had been
 influenced so fast.

 Luther's initial goal was to reform the church.  But his ideas were
 rejected and he was excommunicated by his order, the pope and the emperor,
 convincing Luther that the Antichrist was in charge in Rome.  Abandoning
 attempts at reform, but accepting Biblical prophecy, Luther resisted the
 utopian goal of removing the Antichrist from the papacy.  Instead, as a
 pacifist, he focused on teaching and preaching his views of true
 Christianity.  Luther believed that he could make the world a better place
 by countering the angst and insecurity caused by the Antichrist, not that
 he could save it by his own powers.

 Luther's philosophy would serve the Internet's utopians well, especially
 those who believe that the Internet's economy of ideas untainted by
 advertising must "win" over the mass media's Anti-net ideas.  The
 Internet's incredibly low cost of distribution almost assures that it will
 remain free of advertising-based commerce.  Nonetheless, if lobbying by
 network idealists succeeds in derailing or co-opting efforts to build an
 advertising-based internetwork, then surely commercial interests will
 conspire with government officials to destroy or perhaps worse, to take
 over the Internet by political and economic means.  Historians, instead of
 comparing the Internet to the U.S. interstate highway system's success, may
 compare it with the near-destruction of the nation's railroad and trolley
 infrastructure by corrupt businesses with interests in automobiles and
 trucking.

 (which, like the Internet, was originally funded for military purposes)

 The printing press and cheap paper did not lead to widespread literacy in
 Europe; that event awaited the wealth created by the Industrial Revolution
 and the need for educated factory workers.  Printing technology's immediate
 and profound effect was the destruction of the self-serving, homogenized
 point of view of a single institution.  Although today's mass media don't
 claim divine inspiration, they are no less homogenized and at least as
 self-serving.  The people drown in information overload, but one point of
 view is barely discernable from another, ironically encouraging
 polarization of issues.

 Richard Butler, Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, draws the
 most disturbing analogy of all.  Butler, a leader in disarmament, compares
 the church's actions to the nuclear weapons industry's unwillingness to
 come under public scrutiny.  Like the church and its Bible, physicists
 argued that their subject was too difficult for lay people.  Medieval popes
 sold salvation; physicists sold destruction.  Neither was questioned until
 information began to move more freely.  The political power of nuclear
 weapons has begun to fall in part due to the role of the Internet and fax
 communications in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

 The truly influential and successful early publishers, such as Aldus
 Manutius, were merchant technologists who formed collaborations with the
 scientific/academic community and even the church, especially those who
 dissented against Rome.  Out of business needs for economies of scale, they
 brought together people with diverse points of view and created books that
 appealed to diverse communities.  The Renaissance was propelled in part by
 books that allowed geniuses such as Copernicus to easily compare and
 contrast the many points of view of his predecessors, reaching
 world-changing conclusions.

 Today we are at a turning point.  We are leaving behind a world dominated
 by easy, audiovisual, sensational, advertising-based media, beginning a
 future in which the mass media's power will be diluted by the low cost of
 distribution of many other points of view.  Using the Internet is still
 something like trying to learn from the pre-Gutenberg libraries, in which
 manuscripts were chained to tables and there were no standards for
 organization and structure.  But like the mendicant scholars of those days,
 today's "mendicant sysops," especially on the Internet, are doing much of
 the work of organization in exchange for free access to information.

 Today, the great opportunity is not to make copies of theses on the digital
 church doors.  It is to build electronic magazines, newspapers, books,
 newsletters, libraries and other collections that organize and package the
 writings, photos, videos, sounds and other multimedia information from
 diverse points of view on the networks.  The Internet, with one foot in
 technology and the other in science and academia, needs only a bit of help
 from the mass media in order to show the Anti-net how it's done.

 ------------
 Nick Arnett [[e-mail]] is president of Multimedia Computing
 Corporation, a strategic consulting and publishing company established in
 1988.  On the World-Wide Web: <URL:http://asearch.mccmedia.com/>

 Recommended reading:  "The printing press as an agent of change:
 Communications and cultural transformation in early-modern Europe," Vols. I
 and II.  Elizabeth Eisenstein.  Cambridge University Press, 1979.

 Copyright (c) 1994, Multimedia Computing Corp., Campbell, Calif., U.S.A.
 This article is shareware; it may be distributed at no charge, whole and
 unaltered, including this notice.  If you enjoy reading it and would like
 to encourage free distribution of more like it, please send a contribution
 to Plugged In (1923 University Ave., East Palo Alto, CA 94303), an
 after-school educational program for children in under-served communities.

 Multimedia Computing Corp.
 Campbell, California

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