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-
- THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
- One Cambridge Center, Suite 300
- Cambridge, MA 02142
- 617/577-1385
- 617/225-2347 fax
- eff@well.sf.ca.us
-
-
- Saturday, July 21, 1990
-
-
- Good people,
-
- Greetings. Some of you who read Crime and Puzzlement when it first went
- digital and offered immediate help in dealing with the issues raised therein.
- It's been five weeks since I promised to get back to you "shortly." It is now
- clear that we are operating on political rather than electronic time. And
- political time, though not so ponderous as geologic time or, worse, legal
- time,
- is hardly swift. The Net may be instantaneous, but people are as slow as
- ever.
-
- Nevertheless, much has happened since early June. Crime and Puzzlement
- rattled
- all over Cyberspace and has, by now, generated almost 300 unsolicited offers
- of
- help...financial, physical, and virtual. At times during this period I
- responded to as many as 100 e-mail messages a day with the average running
- around 50. (The voice of Peter Lorre is heard in the background, repeating,
- "Toktor, ve haf created a *monster*.")
-
- Well, we have at least created an organization. Lotus founder Mitch Kapor and
- I have founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an endeavor for which we
- have immodest ambitions. Descending from the Computer Liberty Foundation
- mentioned in Crime and Puzzlement, the EFF has received initial (and extremely
- generous) funding from Mitch, Steve Wozniak, and another Silicon Valley
- pioneer
- who wishes to remain anonymous. We have also received many smaller offers of
- support.
-
- As you will see in the accompanying press release, we formally announced the
- EFF at a press conference in Washington on July 10. The press attention was
- lavish but predictable...KAPOR TO AID COMPUTER CRIMINALS. Actually, our
- mission is nothing less than the civilization of Cyberspace.
-
- We mean to achieve this through a variety of undertakings, ranging from
- immediate legal action to patient, long-lasting efforts aimed at forming, in
- the public consciousness, useful metaphors for life in the Datasphere. There
- is much to do. Here is an abbreviated description of what we are already
- doing:
-
- * We have engaged the law firms of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky &
- Lieberman and Silverglate & Good to intervene on behalf of Craig Neidorf (the
- publisher of Phrack) and Steve Jackson Games. (For a digest of the legal
- issues, please see the message following this one.) We became involved in
- these particular cases because of their general relevance and we remain alert
- to developments in a number of other related cases.
-
- Despite what you may have read, we are not involved in these legal matters as
- a
- "cracker's defense fund," but rather to ensure that the Constitution will
- continue to apply to digital media. Free expression must be preserved long
- after the last printing press is gathering museum dust. And we intend an
- unequivocal legal demonstration that speech is speech whether it finds form in
- ink or in ascii.
-
- * We have funded a significant two-year project on computing and civil
- liberties to be managed by the Computer Professionals for Social
- Responsibility. With it, we aim to acquaint policy makers and law enforcement
- officials of the civil liberties issues which may lie hidden in the brambles
- of
- telecommunications policy. (A full description of this project follows.)
-
- * During the days before and after the press conference, Mitch and I met
- with Congressional staffers, legal authorities, and journalists, as well as
- officials from the White House and Library of Congress. Thus we began
- discussions which we expect to continue over a period of years. These
- informal
- sessions will relate to intellectual property, free flow of information, law
- enforcement training and techniques, and telecommunications law,
- infrastructure, and regulation.
-
- Much of this promises to be boring as dirt, but we believe that it is
- necessary
- to "re-package" the central issues in more digestible, even entertaining,
- forms
- if the general public is to become involved in the policies which will
- fundamentally determine the future of American liberty.
-
- * Recognizing that Cyberspace will be only as civilized as its
- inhabitants, we are working with a software developer to create an
- "intelligent
- front end" for UNIX mail systems. This will, we hope, make Net access so easy
- that your mother will be able cruise around the digital domain (if you can
- figure out a way to make her want to). As many of you are keenly aware, the
- best way, perhaps the only way, to understand the issues involved in digital
- telecommunications is to experience them first hand.
-
- These are audacious goals. However, the enthusiasm already shown the
- Foundation indicates that they may not be unrealistic ones. The EFF could be
- like a seed crystal dropped into a super-saturated solution. (Or perhaps more
- appropriately, "the hundredth monkey.") Our organization has been so far
- extremely self-generative as people find in it an expression for concerns
- which
- they had felt but had not articulated.
-
- In any case, we are seeing a spirit of voluntary engagement which is quite a
- departure from the common public interest sensation of "pushing a rope."
-
- You, the recipients of this first e-mailing are the pioneers in this effort.
- By coming forward and offering your support, both financial and personal, you
- are doing much to define the eventual structure and flavor of the Electronic
- Frontier Foundation.
-
- And much remains to be defined. We are applying for 501(c)3 status, which
- means that your contributions to the Foundation will be tax deductible at the
- time this status is granted. However, tax-exempt status also places
- restrictions on the ability to lobby which may not be consistent with our
- mission. Like many activist organizations, we may find it necessary to
- maintain two organizations, one for lobbying and the other for education.
-
- We are in the process of setting up both a BBS in Cambridge and a Net
- newsgroups. None of this is as straightforward as we would have it be. We
- have also just received an offer of production and editorial help with a
- newsletter.
-
- What can you do? Well, for starters, you can spread the word about EFF as
- widely as possible, both on and off the Net. Feel free, for example, to
- distribute any of the materials included in this or subsequent mailings,
- especially to those who may be interested but who may not have Net access.
-
- You can turn some of the immense processing horsepower of your distributed
- Mind
- to the task of finding useful new metaphors for community, expression,
- property, privacy and other realities of the physical world which seem up for
- grabs in these less tangible regions.
-
- And you can try to communicate to technically unsophisticated friends the
- extent to which their future freedoms and well-being may depend on
- understanding the broad forms of digital communication, if not necessarily the
- technical details.
-
- Finally, you can keep in touch with us at any of the above addresses. Please
- pass on your thoughts, concerns, insights, contacts, suggestions, and, and
- most
- importantly, news of relevant events. And we will return the favor.
-
-
- Forward,
-
- CíHHΩ╦éò╔╔σüBarlow
- for The Electronic Frontier Foundation
-
-
- P.S. The following documents were included in the press packets distributed
- at
- our announcement in Washington last week. Please distribute them as you see
- fit.
-
- If you would like a recently amended digital version of Crime and Puzzlement,
- please let us know, and we will e-mail you one. We would prefer, of course,
- that you simply buy the August issue of Whole Earth Review, in which it will
- appear.
-
- Finally, we also have available an excellent paper on hackers by Dorothy
- Denning, a widely respected computer security expert with DEC.
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
-
-
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
-
- Contact: Cathy Cook (415) 759-5578
-
- NEW FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE COMPUTER- BASED
- COMMUNICATIONS
- POLICIES
-
- Washington, D.C., July 10, 1990 -- Mitchell D. Kapor, founder of Lotus
- Development Corporation and ON Technology, today announced that he,
- along with colleague John Perry Barlow, has established a foundation to
- address social and legal issues arising from the impact on society of
- the increasingly pervasive use of computers as a means of communication
- and information distribution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
- will support and engage in public education on current and future
- developments in computer-based and telecommunications media. In
- addition, it will support litigation in the public interest to preserve,
- protect and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing
- and telecommunications technology.
-
- Initial funding for the Foundation comes from private contributions by
- Kapor and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. The
- Foundation expects to actively raise contributions from a wide
- constituency.
-
- As an initial step to foster public education on these issues, the
- Foundation today awarded a grant to the Palo Alto, California-based
- public advocacy group Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
- (CPSR). The grant will be used by CPSR to expand the scope of its
- on-going Computing and Civil Liberties Project (see attached).
-
- Because its mission is to not only increase public awareness about civil
- liberties issues arising in the area of computer-based communications,
- but also to support litigation in the public interest, the Foundation
- has recently intervened on behalf of two legal cases.
-
- The first case concerns Steve Jackson, an Austin-based game manufacturer
- who was the target of the Secret Service's Operation Sun Devil. The EFF
- has pressed for a full disclosure by the government regarding the
- seizure of his company's computer equipment. In the second action, the
- Foundation intends to seek amicus curiae (friend of the court) status
- in the government's case against Craig Neidorf, a 20-year-old University
- of Missouri student who is the editor of the electronic newsletter
- Phrack World News (see attached).
-
- "It is becoming increasingly obvious that the rate of technology
- advancement in communications is far outpacing the establishment of
- appropriate cultural, legal and political frameworks to handle the
- issues that are arising," said Kapor. "And the Steve Jackson and Neidorf
- cases dramatically point to the timeliness of the Foundation's mission.
- We intend to be instrumental in helping shape a new framework that
- embraces these powerful new technologies for the public good."
-
- The use of new digital media -- in the form of on-line information and
- interactive conferencing services, computer networks and electronic
- bulletin boards -- is becoming widespread in businesses and homes.
- However, the electronic society created by these new forms of digital
- communications does not fit neatly into existing, conventional legal and
- social structures.
-
- The question of how electronic communications should be accorded the
- same political freedoms as newspapers, books, journals and other modes
- of discourse is curren+üóíòüÜ╒ë⌐òì╤üz╠ü"Ñ═ì╒══Ñ╜╣ü
- ╡╜╣¥üóíÑ═ü╜╒╣╤╔σ¥Ü5R─+δ[à¡ò╔µü
- ╣æüjò╡ëò╔═üzÖüó╨òü╜╡┴╒╤ò╔üJ╣æ╒═╤╔σ╣Píòü*ee
- ΘZ╢l take an
- active role in these discussions through its continued funding of
- various educational projects and forums.
-
- An important facet of the Foundation's mission is to help both the
- public and policy-makers see and understand the opportunities as well as
- the challenges posed by developments in computing and
- telecommunications. Also, the EFF will encourage and support the
- development of new software to enable non-technical users to more easily
- use their computers to access the growing number of digital
- communications services available.
-
- The Foundation is located in Cambridge, Mass. Requests for information
- should be sent to Electronic Frontier Foundation, One Cambridge Center,
- Suite 300, Cambridge, MA 02142, 617/577-1385, fax 617/225-2347; or it
- can be reached at the Internet mail address eff@well.sf.ca.us.
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
-
-
- ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
-
- MISSION STATEMENT
-
-
- A new world is arising in the vast web of digital, electronic media
- which connect us. Computer-based communication media like electronic
- mail and computer conferencing are becoming the basis of new forms of
- community. These communities without a single, fixed geographical
- location comprise the first settlements on an electronic frontier.
-
- While well-established legal principles and cultural norms give
- structure and coherence to uses of conventional media like newspapers,
- books, and telephones, the new digital media do not so easily fit into
- existing frameworks. Conflicts come about as the law struggles to
- define its application in a context where fundamental notions of speech,
- property, and place take profoundly new forms. People sense both the
- promise and the threat inherent in new computer and communications
- technologies, even as they struggle to master or simply cope with them
- in the workplace and the home.
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been established to help civilize
- the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just
- to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is
- in keeping with our society's highest traditions of the free and open
- flow of information and communication.
-
- To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:
-
- 1. Engage in and support educational activities which increase
- popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by
- developments in computing and telecommunications.
-
- 2. Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues
- underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of
- legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of
- these new technologies by society.
-
- 3. Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from
- the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications
- media. Support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect,
- and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and
- telecommunications technology.
-
- 4. Encourage and support the development of new tools which will
- endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
- telecommunications.
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
-
-
- ACROSS THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER
-
- by
- John Perry Barlow and Mitchell Kapor
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Washington, DC
- July 10,1990
-
-
- Over the last 50 years, the people of the developed world have begun to
- cross into a landscape unlike any which humanity has experienced before. It
- is
- a region without physical shape or form. It exists, like a standing wave, in
- the vast web of our electronic communication systems. It consists of electron
- states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought itself.
-
- It is familiar to most people as the "place" in which a long-distance
- telephone
- conversation takes place. But it is also the repository for all digital or
- electronically transferred information, and, as such, it is the venue for most
- of what is now commerce, industry, and broad-scale human interaction. William
- Gibson called this Platonic realm "Cyberspace," a name which has some currency
- among its present inhabitants.
-
- Whatever it is eventually called, it is the homeland of the Information Age,
- the place where the future is destined to dwell.
-
- In its present condition, Cyberspace is a frontier region, populated by the
- few
- hardy technologists who can tolerate the austerity of its savage computer
- interfaces, incompatible communications protocols, proprietary barricades,
- cultural and legal ambiguities, and general lack of useful maps or metaphors.
-
- Certainly, the old concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and
- context, based as they are on physical manifestion, do not apply succinctly in
- a world where there can be none.
-
- Sovereignty over this new world is also not well defined. Large institutions
- already lay claim to large fiefdoms, but most of the actual natives are
- solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is,
- therefore, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and vigilantes.
-
- Most of society has chosen to ignore the existence of this arising domain.
- Every day millions of people use ATM's and credit cards, place telephone
- calls,
- make travel reservations, and access information of limitless variety...all
- without any perception of the digital machinations behind these transactions.
-
- Our financial, legal, and even physical lives are increasingly dependent on
- realities of which we have only dimmest awareness. We have entrusted the basic
- functions of modern existence to institutions we cannot name, using tools
- we've
- never heard of and could not operate if we had.
-
- As communications and data technology continues to change and develop at a
- pace
- many times that of society, the inevitable conflicts have begun to occur on
- the
- border between Cyberspace and the physical world.
-
- These are taking a wide variety of forms, including (but hardly limited to)
- the
- following:
-
- I. Legal and Constitutional Questions
-
- What is free speech and what is merely data? What is a free press without
- paper
- and ink? What is a "place" in a world without tangible dimensions? How does
- one protect property which has no physical form and can be infinitely and
- easily reproduced? Can the history of one's personal business affairs properly
- belong to someone else? Can anyone morally claim to own knowledge itself?
-
- These are just a few of the questions for which neither law nor custom can
- provide concrete answers. In their absence, law enforcement agencies like the
- Secret Service and FBI, acting at the disposal of large information
- corporations, are seeking to create legal precedents which would radically
- limit Constitutional application to digital media.
-
- The excesses of Operation Sun Devil are only the beginning of what threatens
- to
- become a long, difficult, and philosophically obscure struggle between
- institutional control and individual liberty.
-
- II. Future Shock
-
- Information workers, forced to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, are
- stuck on "the learning curve of Sisyphus." Increasingly, they find their
- hard-acquired skills to be obsolete even before they've been fully mastered.
- To
- a lesser extent, the same applies to ordinary citizens who correctly feel a
- lack of control over their own lives and identities.
-
- One result of this is a neo-Luddite resentment of digital technology from
- which
- little good can come. Another is a decrease in worker productivity ironically
- coupled to tools designed to enhance it. Finally, there is a spreading sense
- of
- alienation, dislocation, and helplessness in the general presence of which no
- society can expect to remain healthy.
-
- III. The "Knows" and the "Know-Nots"
-
- Modern economies are increasingly divided between those who are comfortable
- and
- proficient with digital technology and those who neither understand nor trust
- it. In essence, this development disenfranchises the latter group, denying
- them
- any possibility of citizenship in Cyberspace and, thus, participation in the
- future.
-
- Furthermore, as policy-makers and elected officials remain relatively ignorant
- of computers and their uses, they unknowingly abdicate most of their authority
- to corporate technocrats whose jobs do not include general social
- responsibility. Elected government is thus replaced by institutions with
- little
- real interest beyond their own quarterly profits.
-
- We are founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation to deal with these and
- related challenges. While our agenda is ambitious to the point of audacity,
- we
- don't see much that these issues are being given the broad social attention
- they deserve. We were forced to ask, "If not us, then whom?"
-
- In fact, our original objectives were more modest. When we first heard about
- Operation Sun Devil and other official adventures into the digital realm, we
- thought that remedy could be derived by simply unleashing a few highly
- competent Constitutional lawyers upon the Government. In essence, we were
- prepared to fight a few civil libertarian brush fires and go on about our
- private work.
-
- However, examination of the issues surrounding these government actions
- revealed that we were dealing with the symptoms of a much larger malady, the
- collision between Society and Cyberspace.
-
- We have concluded that a cure can lie only in bringing civilization to
- Cyberspace. Unless a successful effort is made to render that harsh and
- mysterious terrain suitable for ordinary inhabits, friction between the two
- worlds will worsen. Constitutional protections, indeed the perceived
- legitimacy of representative government itself, might gradually disappear.
-
- We could not allow this to happen unchallenged, and so arises the Electronic
- Frontier Foundation. In addition to our legal interventions on behalf of those
- whose rights are threatened, we will:
-
- * Engage in and support efforts to educate both the general public and policy-
- makers about the opportunities and challenges posed by developments in
- computing and telecommunications.
-
- * Encourage communication between the developers of technology, government and
- corporate officials, and the general public in which we might define the
- appropriate metaphors and legal concepts for life in Cyberspace.
-
- * And, finally, foster the development of new tools which will endow non-
- technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
- telecommunications.
-
- One of us, Mitch Kapor, had already been a vocal advocate of more accessible
- software design and had given considerable thought to some of the challenges
- we
- now intend to meet.
-
- The other, John Perry Barlow, is a relative newcomer to the world of
- computing
- (though not to the world of politics) and is therefore well- equipped to act
- as
- an emissary between the magicians of technology and the wary populace who must
- incorporate this magic into their daily lives.
-
- While we expect the Electronic Frontier Foundation to be a creation of some
- longevity, we hope to avoid the sclerosis which organizations usually develop
- in their efforts to exist over time. For this reason we will endeavor to
- remain
- light and flexible, marshalling intellectual and financial resources to meet
- specific purposes rather than finding purposes to match our resources. As is
- appropriate, we will communicate between ourselves and with our constituents
- largely over the electronic Net, trusting self- distribution and
- self-organization to a much greater extent than would be possible for a more
- traditional organization.
-
- We readily admit that we have our work cut out for us. However, we are
- greatly
- encouraged by the overwhelming and positive response which we have received
- so
- far. We hope the Electronic Frontier Foundation can function as a focal point
- for the many people of good will who wish to settle in a future as abundant
- and
- free as the present.
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
-
-
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
-
- Contact: Marc Rotenberg (202) 775-1588
-
- CPSR TO UNDERTAKE EXPANDED CIVIL LIBERTIES PROGRAM
-
- Washington, D.C., July 10, 1990 -- Computer Professionals for Social
- Responsibility (CPSR), a national computing organization, announced
- today that it would receive a two-year grant in the amount of $275,000
- for its Computing and Civil Liberties Project. The Electronic Frontier
- Foundation (EFF),founded by Mitchell Kapor, made the grant to expand
- ongoing CPSR work on civil liberties protections for computer users.
-
- At a press conference in Washington today, Mr. Kapor praised CPSR's
- work, "CPSR plays an important role in the computer community. For the
- last several years, it has sought to extend civil liberties protections
- to new information technologies. Now we want to help CPSR expand that
- work."
-
- Marc Rotenberg, director of the CPSR Washington Office said, "We are
- obviously very happy about the grant from the EFF. There is a lot of
- work that needs to be done to ensure that our civil liberties
- protections are not lost amidst policy confusion about the use of new
- computer technologies."
-
- CPSR said that it will host a series of policy round tables in
- Washington, DC, during the next two years with lawmakers, computer
- users, including (hackers), the FBI, industry representatives, and
- members of the computer security community. Mr. Rotenberg said that the
- purpose of the meetings will be to "begin a dialogue about the new uses
- of electronic media and the protection of the public interest."
-
- CPSR also plans to develop policy papers on computers and civil
- liberties, to oversee the Government's handling of computer crime
- investigations, and to act as an information resource for organizations
- and individuals interested in civil liberties issues.
-
- The CPSR Computing and Civil Liberties project began in 1985 after
- President Reagan attempted to restrict access to government computer
- systems through the creation of new classification authority. In 1988,
- CPSR prepared a report on the proposed expansion of the FBI's computer
- system, the National Crime Information Center. The report found serious
- threats to privacy and civil liberties. Shortly after the report was
- issued, the FBI announced that it would drop a proposed computer feature
- to track the movements of people across the country who had not been
- charged with any crime.
-
- "We need to build bridges between the technical community and the policy
- community," said Dr. Eric Roberts, CPSR president and a research
- scientist at Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto, California.
- "There is simply too much misinformation about how computer networks
- operate. This could produce terribly misguided public policy."
-
- CPSR representatives have testified several times before Congressional
- committees on matters involving civil liberties and computer policy.
- Last year CPSR urged a House Committee to avoid poorly conceived
- computer activity. "In the rush to criminalize the malicious acts of
- the few we may discourage the beneficial acts of the many," warned
- CPSR. A House subcommittee recently followed CPSR's recommendations
- on computer crime amendments.
-
- Dr. Ronni Rosenberg, an expert on the role of computer scientists and
- public policy, praised the new initiative. She said, "It's clear that
- there is an information gap that needs to be filled. This is an
- important opportunity for computer scientists to help fill the gap."
-
- CPSR is a national membership organization of computer professionals,
- based in Palo Alto, California. CPSR has over 20,000 members and 21
- chapters across the country. In addition to the civil liberties project,
- CPSR conducts research, advises policy makers and educates the public
- about computers in the workplace, computer risk and reliability, and
- international security.
-
- For more information contact:
-
- Marc Rotenberg
- CPSR Washington Office
- 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW
- Suite 1015
- Washington, DC 20036 202/775-1588
-
- Gary Chapman
- CPSR National Office
- P.O. Box 717
- Palo Alto, CA 94302
- 415/322-3778
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
- ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
-
- LEGAL CASE SUMMARY
- July 10, 1990
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently providing litigation
- support in two cases in which it perceived there to be substantial civil
- liberties concerns which are likely to prove important in the overall
- legal scheme by which electronic communications will, now and in the
- future, be governed, regulated, encouraged, and protected.
-
- Steve Jackson Games
-
- Steve Jackson Games is a small, privately owned adventure game
- manufacturer located in Austin, Texas. Like most businesses today,
- Steve Jackson Games uses computers for word processing and bookkeeping.
- In addition, like many other manufacturers, the company operates an
- electronic bulletin board to advertise and to obtain feedback on its
- product ideas and lines.
-
- One of the company's most recent products is GURPS CYBERPUNK, a science
- fiction role-playing game set in a high-tech futuristic world. The
- rules of the game are set out in a game book. Playing of the game is
- not performed on computers and does not make use of computers in any
- way. This game was to be the company's most important first quarter
- release, the keystone of its line.
-
- On March 1, 1990, just weeks before GURPS CYBERPUNK was due to be
- released, agents of the United States Secret Service raided the premises
- of Steve Jackson Games. The Secret Service:
-
- * seized three of the company's computers which were used in the
- drafting and designing of GURPS CYBERPUNK, including the computer used
- to run the electronic bulletin board,
-
- * took all of the company software in the neighborhood of the computers
- taken,
-
- * took with them company business records which were located on the
- computers seized, and
-
- * destructively ransacked the company's warehouse, leaving many items
- in disarray.
-
- In addition, all working drafts of the soon-to-be-published GURPS
- CYBERPUNK game book -- on disk and in hard-copy manuscript form -- were
- confiscated by the authorities. One of the Secret Service agents told
- Steve Jackson that the GURPS CYBERPUNK science fiction fantasy game book
- was a, "handbook for computer crime."
-
- Steve Jackson Games was temporarily shut down. The company was forced
- to lay-off half of its employees and, ever since the raid, has operated
- on relatively precarious ground.
-
- Steve Jackson Games, which has not been involved in any illegal activity
- insofar as the Foundation's inquiries have been able to determine, tried
- in vain for over three months to find out why its property had been
- seized, why the property was being retained by the Secret Service long
- after it should have become apparent to the agents that GURPS CYBERPUNK
- and everything else in the company's repertoire were entirely lawful and
- innocuous, and when the company's vital materials would be returned. In
- late June of this year, after attorneys for the Electronic Frontier
- Foundation became involved in the case, the Secret Service finally
- returned most of the property, but retained a number of documents,
- including the seized drafts of GURPS CYBERPUNKS.
-
- The Foundation is presently seeking to find out the basis for the search
- warrant that led to the raid on Steve Jackson Games. Unfortunately, the
- application for that warrant remains sealed by order of the court. The
- Foundation is making efforts to unseal those papers in order to find out
- what it was that the Secret Service told a judicial officer that
- prompted that officer to issue the search warrant.
-
- Under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a search
- warrant may be lawfully issued only if the information presented to the
- court by the government agents demonstrates "probable cause" to believe
- that evidence of criminal conduct would be found on the premises to be
- searched. Unsealing the search warrant application should enable the
- Foundation's lawyers, representing Steve Jackson Games, to determine the
- theory by which Secret Service Agents concluded or hypothesized that
- either the GURPS CYBERPUNK game or any of the company's computerized
- business records constituted criminal activity or contained evidence of
- criminal activity.
-
- Whatever the professed basis of the search, its scope clearly seems to
- have been unreasonably broad. The wholesale seizure of computer
- software, and subsequent rummaging through its contents, is precisely
- the sort of general search that the Fourth Amendment was designed to
- prohibit.
-
- If it is unlawful for government agents to indiscriminately seize all of
- the hard-copy filing cabinets on a business premises -- which it surely
- is -- that the same degree of protection should apply to businesses
- that store information electronically.
-
- The Steve Jackson Games situation appears to involve First Amendment
- violations as well. The First Amendment to the United States
- Constitution prohibits the government from "abridging the freedom of
- speech, or of the press". The government's apparent attempt to prevent
- the publication of the GURPS CYBERPUNK game book by seizing all copies
- of all drafts in all media prior to publication, violated the First
- Amendment. The particular type of First Amendment violation here is the
- single most serious type, since the government, by seizing the very
- material sought to be published, effectuated what is known in the law as
- a "prior restraint" on speech. This means that rather than allow the
- material to be published and then seek to punish it, the government
- sought instead to prevent publication in the first place. (This is not
- to say, of course, that anything published by Steve Jackson Games could
- successfully have been punished. Indeed, the opposite appears to be the
- case, since SJG's business seems to be entirely lawful.) In any effort
- to restrain publication, the government bears an extremely heavy burden
- of proof before a court is permitted to authorize a prior restraint.
-
- Indeed, in its 200-year history, the Supreme Court has never upheld a
- prior restraint on the publication of material protected by the First
- Amendment, warning that such efforts to restrain publication are
- presumptively unconstitutional. For example, the Department of Justice
- was unsuccessful in 1971 in obtaining the permission of the Supreme
- Court to enjoin The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston
- Globe from publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, which the
- government strenuously argued should be enjoined because of a perceived
- threat to national security. (In 1979, however, the government sought
- to prevent The Progressive magazine from publishing an article
- purporting to instruct the reader as to how to manufacture an atomic
- bomb. A lower federal court actually imposed an order for a temporary
- prior restraint that lasted six months. The Supreme Court never had an
- opportunity to issue a full ruling on the constitutionality of that
- restraint, however, because the case was mooted when another newspaper
- published the article.)
-
- Governmental efforts to restrain publication thus have been met by
- vigorous opposition in the courts. A major problem posed by the
- government's resort to the expedient of obtaining a search warrant,
- therefore, is that it allows the government to effectively prevent or
- delay publication without giving the citizen a ready opportunity to
- oppose that effort in court.
-
- The Secret Service managed to delay, and almost to prevent, the
- publication of an innocuous game book by a legitimate company -- not by
- asking a court for a prior restraint order that it surely could not have
- obtained, but by asking instead for a search warrant, which it obtained
- all too readily.
-
- The seizure of the company's computer hardware is also problematic, for
- it prevented the company not only from publishing GURPS CYBERPUNK, but
- also from operating its electronic bulletin board. The government's
- action in shutting down such an electronic bulletin board is the
- functional equivalent of shutting down printing presses of The New York
- Times or The Washington Post in order to prevent publication of The
- Pentagon Papers. Had the government sought a court order closing down
- the electronic bulletin board, such an order effecting a prior restraint
- almost certainly would have been refused. Yet by obtaining the search
- warrant, the government effected the same result.
-
- This is a stark example of how electronic media suffer under a less
- stringent standard of constitutional protection than applies to the
- print media -- for no apparent reason, it would appear, other than the
- fact that government agents and courts do not seem to readily equate
- computers with printing presses and typewriters. It is difficult to
- understand a difference between these media that should matter for
- constitutional protection purposes. This is one of the challenges
- facing the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation will continue to press for return of
- the remaining property of Steve Jackson Games and will take formal
- steps, if necessary, to determine the factual basis for the search.
- The purpose of these efforts is to establish law applying the First and
- Fourth Amendments to electronic media, so as to protect in the future
- Steve Jackson Games as well as other individuals and businesses from
- the devastating effects of unlawful and unconstitutional government
- intrusion upon and interference with protected property and speech
- rights.
-
- United States v. Craig Neidorf
-
- Craig Neidorf is a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri who
- has been indicted by the United States on several counts of interstate
- wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property in
- connection with his activities as editor and publisher of the
- electronic magazine, Phrack.
-
- The indictment charges Neidorf with: (1) wire fraud and interstate
- transportation of stolen property for the republication in Phrack of
- information which was allegedly illegally obtained through the accessing
- of a computer system without authorization, though it was obtained not
- by Neidorf but by a third party; and (2) wire fraud for the publication
- of an announcement of a computer conference and for the publication of
- articles which allegedly provide some suggestions on how to bypass
- security in some computer systems.
-
- The information obtained without authorization is a file relating to the
- provision of 911 emergency telephone services that was allegedly removed
- from the BellSouth computer system without authorization. It is
- important to note that neither the indictment, nor any briefs filed in
- this case by the government, contain any factual allegation or
- contention that Neidorf was involved in or participated in the removal
- of the 911 file.
-
- These indictments raise substantial constitutional issues which have
- significant impact on the uses of new computer communications
- technologies. The prosecution of an editor or publisher, under
- generalized statutes like wire fraud and interstate transportation of
- stolen property, for the publication of information received lawfully,
- which later turns out to be have been "stolen," presents an
- unprecedented threat to the freedom of the press. The person who should
- be prosecuted is the thief, and not a publisher who subsequently
- receives and publishes information of public interest. To draw an
- analogy to the print media, this would be the equivalent of prosecuting
- The New York Times and The Washington Post for publishing the Pentagon
- Papers when those papers were dropped off at the doorsteps of those
- newspapers.
-
- Similarly, the prosecution of a publisher for wire fraud arising out of
- the publication of articles that allegedly suggested methods of
- unlawful activity is also unprecedented. Even assuming that the
- articles here did advocate unlawful activity, advocacy of unlawful
- activity cannot constitutionally be the basis for a criminal
- prosecution, except where such advocacy is directed at producing
- imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite such action. The
- articles here simply do not fit within this limited category. The
- Supreme Court has often reiterated that in order for advocacy to be
- criminalized, the speech must be such that the words trigger an
- immediate action. Criminal prosecutions such as this pose an extreme
- hazard for First Amendment rights in all media of communication, as it
- has a chilling effect on writers and publishers who wish to discuss the
- ramifications of illegal activity, such as information describing
- illegal activity or describing how a crime might be committed.
-
- In addition, since the statutes under which Neidorf is charged clearly
- do not envision computer communications, applying them to situations
- such as that found in the Neidorf case raises fundamental questions of
- fair notice -- that is to say, the publisher or computer user has no
- way of knowing that his actions may in fact be a violation of criminal
- law. The judge in the case has already conceded that "no court has
- ever held that the electronic transfer of confidential, proprietary
- business information from one computer to another across state lines
- constitutes a violation of [the wire fraud statute]." The Due Process
- Clause prohibits the criminal prosecution of one who has not had fair
- notice of the illegality of his action. Strict adherence to the
- requirements of the Due Process Clause also minimizes the risk of
- selective or arbitrary enforcement, where prosecutors decide what
- conduct they do not like and then seek some statute that can be
- stretched by some theory to cover that conduct.
-
- Government seizure and liability of bulletin board systems
-
- During the recent government crackdown on computer crime, the government
- has on many occasions seized the computers which operate bulletin board
- systems ("BBSs"), even though the operator of the bulletin board is not
- suspected of any complicity in any alleged criminal activity. The
- government seizures go far beyond a "prior restraint" on the publication
- of any specific article, as the seizure of the computer equipment of a
- BBS prevents the BBS from publishing at all on any subject. This akin
- to seizing the word processing and computerized typesetting equipment
- of The New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers, simply because
- the government contends that there may be information relating to the
- commission of a crime on the system. Thus, the government does not
- simply restrain the publication of the "offending" document, but it
- seizes the means of production of the First Amendment activity so that
- no more stories of any type can be published.
-
- The government is allowed to seize "instrumentalities of crime," and a
- bulletin board and its associated computer system could arguably be
- called an instrumentality of crime if individuals used its private
- e-mail system to send messages in furtherance of criminal activity.
- However, even if the government has a compelling interest in interfering
- with First Amendment protected speech, it can only do so by the least
- restrictive means. Clearly, the wholesale seizure and retention of a
- publication's means of production, i.e., its computer system, is not the
- least restrictive alternative. The government obviously could seize
- the equipment long enough to make a copy of the information stored on
- the hard disk and to copy any other disks and documents, and then
- promptly return the computer system to the operator.
-
- Another unconstitutional aspect of the government seizures of the
- computers of bulletin board systems is the government infringement on
- the privacy of the electronic mail in the systems. It appears that the
- government, in seeking warrants for the seizures, has not forthrightly
- informed the court that private mail of third parties is on the
- computers, and has also read some of this private mail after the systems
- have been seized.
-
- The Neidorf case also raises issues of great significance to bulletin
- board systems. As Neidorf was a publisher of information he received,
- BBSs could be considered publishers of information that its users post
- on the boards. BBS operators have a great deal of concern as to the
- liability they might face for the dissemination of information on their
- boards which may turn out to have been obtained originally without
- authorization, or which discuss activity which may be considered
- illegal. This uncertainty as to the law has already caused a decrease
- in the free flow of information, as some BBS operators have removed
- information solely because of the fear of liability.
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation stands firmly against the
- unauthorized access of computer systems, computer trespass and computer
- theft, and strongly supports the security and sanctity of private
- computer systems and networks. One of the goals of the Foundation,
- however, is to ensure that, as the legal framework is established to
- protect the security of these computer systems, the unfettered
- communication and exchange of ideas is not hindered. The Foundation is
- concerned that the Government has cast its net too broadly, ensnaring
- the innocent and chilling or indeed supressing the free flow of
- information. The Foundation fears not only that protected speech will
- be curtailed, but also that the citizen's reasonable expectation in the
- privacy and sanctity of electronic communications systems will be
- thwarted, and people will be hesitant to communicate via these networks.
- Such a lack of confidence in electronic communication modes will
- substantially set back the kind of experimentation by and communication
- among fertile minds that are essential to our nation's development. The
- Foundation has therefore applied for amicus curiae (friend of the
- court) status in the Neidorf case and has filed legal briefs in support
- of the First Amendment issues there, and is prepared to assist in
- protecting the free flow of information over bulletin board systems and
- other computer technologies.
-
- For further information regarding Steve Jackson Games please contact:
-
- Harvey Silverglate or Sharon Beckman
- Silverglate & Good
- 89 Broad Street, 14th Floor
- Boston, MA 02110
- 617/542-6663
-
- For further information regarding Craig Neidorf please contact:
-
- Terry Gross or Eric Lieberman
- Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman
- 740 Broadway, 5th Floor
- New York, NY 10003
- 212/254-1111
-
-
-
- ======================================================
-
-
-
- LEGAL OVERVIEW
-
- THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS
-
- Advances in computer technology have brought us to a new frontier in
- communications, where the law is largely unsettled and woefully
- inadequate to deal with the problems and challenges posed by electronic
- technology. How the law develops in this area will have a direct impact
- on the electronic communications experiments and innovations being
- devised day in and day out by millions of citizens on both a large and
- small scale from coast to coast. Reasonable balances have to be struck
- among:
-
- * traditional civil liberties
- * protection of intellectual property
- * freedom to experiment and innovate
- * protection of the security and integrity of computer
- systems from improper governmental and private
- interference.
-
- Striking these balances properly will not be easy, but if they are
- struck too far in one direction or the other, important social and legal
- values surely will be sacrificed.
-
- Helping to see to it that this important and difficult task is done
- properly is a major goal of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It is
- critical to assure that these lines are drawn in accordance with the
- fundamental constitutional rights that have protected individuals from
- government excesses since our nation was founded -- freedom of speech,
- press, and association, the right to privacy and protection from
- unwarranted governmental intrusion, as well as the right to procedural
- fairness and due process of law.
-
- The First Amendment
-
- The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the
- government from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," and
- guarantees freedom of association as well. It is widely considered to
- be the single most important of the guarantees contained in the Bill of
- Rights, since free speech and association are fundamental in securing
- all other rights.
-
- The First Amendment throughout history has been challenged by every
- important technological development. It has enjoyed only a mixed record
- of success. Traditional forms of speech -- the print media and public
- speaking -- have enjoyed a long and rich history of freedom from
- governmental interference. The United States Supreme Court has not
- afforded the same degree of freedom to electronic broadcasting,
- however.
-
- Radio and television communications, for example, have been subjected to
- regulation and censorship by the Federal Communications Commission
- (FCC), and by the Congress. The Supreme Court initially justified
- regulation of the broadcast media on technological grounds -- since
- there were assumed to be a finite number of radio and television
- frequencies, the Court believed that regulation was necessary to prevent
- interference among frequencies and to make sure that scarce resources
- were allocated fairly. The multiplicity of cable TV networks has
- demonstrated the falsity of this "scarce resource" rationale, but the
- Court has expressed a reluctance to abandon its outmoded approach
- without some signal from Congress or the FCC.
-
- Congress has not seemed overly eager to relinquish even
- counterproductive control over the airwaves. Witness, for example,
- legislation and rule-making in recent years that have kept even
- important literature, such as the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, from being
- broadcast on radio because of language deemed "offensive" to regulators.
- Diversity and experimentation have been sorely hampered by these rules.
-
- The development of computer technology provides the perfect opportunity
- for lawmakers and courts to abandon much of the distinction between the
- print and electronic media and to extend First Amendment protections to
- all communications regardless of the medium. Just as the multiplicity
- of cable lines has rendered obsolete the argument that television has to
- be regulated because of a scarcity of airwave frequencies, so has the
- ready availability of virtually unlimited computer communication
- modalities made obsolete a similar argument for harsh controls in this
- area. With the computer taking over the role previously played by the
- typewriter and the printing press, it would be a constitutional disaster
- of major proportions if the treatment of computers were to follow the
- history of regulation of radio and television, rather than the history
- of freedom of the press.
-
- To the extent that regulation is seen as necessary and proper, it should
- foster the goal of allowing maximum freedom, innovation and
- experimentation in an atmosphere where no one's efforts are sabotaged by
- either government or private parties. Regulation should be limited by
- the adage that quite aptly describes the line that separates reasonable
- from unreasonable regulation in the First Amendment area: "Your liberty
- ends at the tip of my nose."
-
- As usual, the law lags well behind the development of technology. It is
- important to educate lawmakers and judges about new technologies, lest
- fear and ignorance of the new and unfamiliar, create barriers to free
- communication, expression, experimentation, innovation, and other such
- values that help keep a nation both free and vigorous.
-
- The Fourth Amendment
-
- The Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in
- their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
- searches and seizures." Judges are not to issue search warrants for
- private property unless the law enforcement officer seeking the warrant
- demonstrates the existence of "a probable cause, supported by Oath or
- affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and
- the persons or things to be seized." In short, the scope of the search
- has to be as narrow as possible, and there has to be good reason to
- believe that the search will turn up evidence of illegal activity.
-
- The meaning of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee has evolved over time in
- response to changing technologies. For example, while the Fourth
- Amendment was first applied to prevent the government from trespassing
- onto private property and seizing tangible objects, the physical
- trespass rationale was made obsolete by the development of electronic
- eavesdropping devices which permitted the government to "seize" an
- individual's words without ever treading onto that person's private
- property. To put the matter more concretely, while the drafters of the
- First Amendment surely knew nothing about electronic databases, surely
- they would have considered one's database to be as sacrosanct as, for
- example, the contents of one's private desk or filing cabinet.
-
- The Supreme Court responded decades ago to these types of technological
- challenges by interpreting the Fourth Amendment more broadly to prevent
- governmental violation of an individual's reasonable expectation of
- privacy, a concept that transcended the narrow definition of one's
- private physical space. It is now well established that an individual
- has a reasonable expectation of privacy, not only in his or her home
- and business, but also in private communications. Thus, for example:
-
- * Government wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping are now limited
- by state and federal statutes enacted to effectuate and even to expand
- upon Fourth Amendment protections.
-
- * More recently, the Fourth Amendment has been used, albeit with
- limited success, to protect individuals from undergoing certain random
- mandatory drug testing imposed by governmental authorities.
-
- Advancements in technology have also worked in the opposite direction,
- to diminish expectations of privacy that society once considered
- reasonable, and thus have helped limit the scope of Fourth Amendment
- protections. Thus, while one might once have reasonably expected
- privacy in a fenced-in field, the Supreme Court has recently told us
- that such an expectation is not reasonable in an age of surveillance
- facilitated by airplanes and zoom lenses.
-
- Applicability of Fourth Amendment to computer media
-
- Just as the Fourth Amendment has evolved in response to changing
- technologies, so it must now be interpreted to protect the reasonable
- expectation of privacy of computer users in, for example, their
- electronic mail or electronically stored secrets. The extent to which
- government intrusion into these private areas should be allowed, ought
- to be debated openly, fully, and intelligently, as the Congress seeks to
- legislate in the area, as courts decide cases, and as administrative,
- regulatory, and prosecutorial agencies seek to establish their turf.
-
- One point that must be made, but which is commonly misunderstood, is
- that the Bill of Rights seeks to protect citizens from privacy invasions
- committed by the government, but, with very few narrow exceptions, these
- protections do not serve to deter private citizens from doing what the
- government is prohibited from doing. In short, while the Fourth
- Amendment limits the government's ability to invade and spy upon private
- databanks, it does not protect against similar invasions by private
- parties. Protection of citizens from the depredations of other citizens
- requires the passage of privacy legislation.
-
- The Fifth Amendment
-
- The Fifth Amendment assures citizens that they will not "be deprived of
- life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and that private
- property shall not "be taken for public use without just compensation."
- This Amendment thus protects both the sanctity of private property and
- the right of citizens to be proceeded against by fair means before they
- may be punished for alleged infractions of the law.
-
- One aspect of due process of law is that citizens not be prosecuted for
- alleged violations of laws that are so vague that persons of reasonable
- intelligence cannot be expected to assume that some prosecutor will
- charge that his or her conduct is criminal. A hypothetical law, for
- example, that makes it a crime to do "that which should not be done",
- would obviously not pass constitutional muster under the Fifth
- Amendment. Yet the application of some existing laws to new situations
- that arise in the electronic age is only slightly less problematic than
- the hypothetical, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to
- monitor the process by which old laws are modified, and new laws are
- crafted, to meet modern situations.
-
- One area in which old laws and new technologies have already clashed and
- are bound to continue to clash, is the application of federal criminal
- laws against the interstate transportation of stolen property. The
- placement on an electronic bulletin board of arguably propriety computer
- files, and the "re-publication" of such material by those with access to
- the bulletin board, might well expose the sponsor of the bulletin board
- as well as all participants to federal felony charges, if the U.S.
- Department of Justice can convince the courts to give these federal laws
- a broad enough reading. Similarly, federal laws protecting against
- wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping clearly have to be updated to
- take into account electronic bulletin board technology, lest those who
- utilize such means of communication should be assured of reasonable
- privacy from unwanted government surveillance.
-
- Summary
-
- The problem of melding old but still valid concepts of constitutional
- rights, with new and rapidly evolving technologies, is perhaps best
- summed up by the following observation. Twenty-five years ago there was
- not much question but that the First Amendment prohibited the government
- from seizing a newspaper's printing press, or a writer's typewriter, in
- order to prevent the publication of protected speech. Similarly, the
- government would not have been allowed to search through, and seize,
- one's private papers stored in a filing cabinet, without first
- convincing a judge that probable cause existed to believe that evidence
- of crime would be found.
-
- Today, a single computer is in reality a printing press, typewriter, and
- filing cabinet (and more) all wrapped up in one. How the use and output
- of this device is treated in a nation governed by a Constitution that
- protects liberty as well as private property, is a major challenge we
- face. How well we allow this marvelous invention to continue to be
- developed by creative minds, while we seek to prohibit or discourage
- truly abusive practices, will depend upon the degree of wisdom that
- guides our courts, our legislatures, and governmental agencies entrusted
- with authority in this area of our national life.
-
- For further information regarding The Bill of Rights please contact:
-
- Harvey Silverglate
- Silverglate & Good
- 89 Broad Street, 14th Floor
- Boston, MA 02110
- 617/542-6663
-
- From lll-winken!decwrl!apple!well!jef Mon Aug 20 01:56:09 1990
- Return-Path: <lll-winken!decwrl!apple!well!jef>
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- Received: by lll-winken.llnl.gov (smail2.5)
- id AA13373; 19 Aug 90 23:35:20 PDT (Sun)
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- From: decwrl!apple!well!eff-news-request
- Reply-To: decwrl!apple!well.sf.ca.us!eff-news-request
- Subject: EFF mailing #3: About the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- To: eff-news
- Date: Sun, 19 Aug 90 21:02:14 PDT
- Sender: decwrl!apple!well!jef
- Status: RO
-
- [Our story so far: If you're getting this message, you either asked to
- be added to the EFF mailing list, or asked for general information about
- the EFF. We have sent out two mailings before this one; if you missed
- them and want copies, send a request to eff-news-request@well.sf.ca.us.
- We now have two Usenet newsgroups set up, in the "inet" distribution.
- The moderated newsgroup, comp.org.eff.news, will carry everything we send
- to this mailing list, plus other things of interest. If your site gets
- the newsgroup and you want to read this stuff there instead of through
- the mailing list, send a request to eff-news-request@well.sf.ca.us and
- I'll be happy to take you off the list. And now...]
-
-
- ************************************************************
- About the EFF
- General Information
- Revised August 1990
- ************************************************************
-
- The EFF (formally the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.) has
- been established to help civilize the electronic frontier; to make
- it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but
- to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with our
- society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information
- and communication.
-
- The EFF now has legal status as a corporation in the state of
- Massachusetts. We are in the process of applying to the IRS for
- status as a non-profit, 501c3 organization. Once that status is
- granted contributions to the EFF will be tax-deductible.
-
- ************************************************************
- Mission of the EFF
- ************************************************************
-
- 1. to engage in and support educational activities which
- increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges
- posed by developments in computing and telecommunications.
-
- 2. to develop among policy-makers a better understanding of
- the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support
- the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease
- the assimilation of these new technologies by society.
-
- 3. to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues
- arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based
- communications media and, where necessary, support litigation in
- the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment
- rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications
- technology.
-
- 4. to encourage and support the development of new tools which
- will endow non-technical users with full and easy access to
- computer-based telecommunications.
-
- ************************************************************
- Current EFF Activities
- ************************************************************
-
- > We are helping educate policy makers and the general public.
-
- To this end we have funded a significant two-year project on
- computing and civil liberties to be managed by the Computer
- Professionals for Social Responsibility. With it, we aim to acquaint
- policy makers and law enforcement officials of the civil liberties
- issues which may lie hidden in the brambles of telecommunications
- policy.
-
- Members of the EFF are speaking at computer and government conferences
- and meetings throughout the country to raise awareness about the
- important civil liberties issues.
-
- We are in the process of forming alliances with other other public
- interest organizations concerned with the development of a digital
- national information infrastructure.
-
- The EFF is in the early stages of software design and development
- of programs for personal computers which provide simplified and
- enhanced access to network services such as mail and netnews.
-
- Because our resources are already fully committed to these projects,
- we are not at this time considering additional grant proposals.
-
- > We are helping defend the innocent.
-
- We gave substantial legal support in the criminal defense of Craig
- Neidorf, the publisher of Phrack, an on-line magazine devoted to
- telecommunications, computer security and hacking. Neidorf was
- indicted on felony charges of wire fraud and interstate transportation
- of stolen property for the electronic publication of a document
- which someone else had removed, without Neidorf's participation,
- from a Bell South computer. The government contended that the
- republication of proprietary business information, even if the
- information is of public significance, is illegal. The EFF submitted
- two friend of the court briefs arguing that the publication of the
- disputed document was constitutionally protected speech. We also
- were instrumental in locating an expert witness who located documents
- which were publicly available from Bell South which contained all
- the information in the disputed document. This information was
- critical in discrediting the government's expert witness. The
- government dropped its prosecution in the middle of the trial, when
- it became aware that its case was untenable.
-
- EFF attorneys are also representing Steve Jackson Games in its
- efforts to secure the complete return and restoration of all computer
- equipment seized in the Secret Service raid on its offices and to
- understand what might have been the legal basis for the raid.
-
- We are not involved in these legal matters as a "cracker's defense
- fund," despite press reports you may have read, but rather to ensure
- that the Constitution will continue to apply to digital media. We
- intend to demonstrate legally that speech is speech whether it
- finds form in ink or in ASCII.
-
- ************************************************************
- What can you do?
- ************************************************************
-
- For starters, you can spread the word about EFF as widely as
- possible, both on and off the Net. Feel free, for example, to
- distribute any of the materials included in this or other EFF
- mailings.
-
- You can turn some of the immense processing horsepower of your
- distributed Mind to the task of finding useful new metaphors for
- community, expression, property, privacy and other realities of
- the physical world which seem up for grabs in these less tangible
- regions.
-
- And you can try to communicate to technically unsophisticated
- friends the extent to which their future freedoms and well-being
- may depend on understanding the broad forms of digital communication,
- if not necessarily the technical details.
-
- Finally, you can keep in touch with us at any of the addresses
- listed below. Please pass on your thoughts, concerns, insights,
- contacts, suggestions, and news. And we will return the favor.
-
- ************************************************************
- Staying in Touch
- ************************************************************
-
- Send requests to be added to or dropped from the EFF mailing list
- or other general correspondence to eff-request@well.sf.ca.us. We
- will periodically mail updates on EFF-related activities to this
- list.
-
- If you receive any USENET newsgroups, your site may carry two new
- newsgroups in the INET distribution called comp.org.eff.news and
- comp.org.eff.talk. The former is a moderated newsgroup of
- announcements, responses to announcements, and selected discussion
- drawn from the unmoderated "talk" group and the mailing list.
-
- Everything that goes out over the EFF mailing list will also be
- posted in comp.org.eff.news, so if you read the newsgroup you don't
- need to subscribe to the mailing list.
-
- Postings submitted to the moderated newsgroup may be reprinted by
- the EFF. To submit a posting, you may send mail to eff@well.sf.ca.us.
-
- There is an active EFF conference on the Well, as well as many
- other related conferences of interest to EFF supporters. As of
- August 1990, access to the Well is $8/month plus $3/hour. Outside
- the S.F. Bay area, telecom access for $5/hr. is available through
- CPN. Register online at (415) 332-6106.
-
- A document library containing all of the EFF news releases, John
- Barlow's "Crime and Puzzlement" and others is available on the
- Well. We are working toward providing FTP availability into the
- document library through an EFF host system to be set up in Cambridge,
- Mass. Details will be forthcoming.
-
- Our Address:
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.
- One Cambridge Center, Suite 300
- Cambridge, MA 02142
-
- (617) 577-1385
- (617) 225-2347 (fax)
-
- After August 25, 1990:
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.
- 155 Second Street
- Cambridge, MA 02142
-
- We will distribute the new telephone number once we have it.
- ************************************************************
-
- Mitchell Kapor (mkapor@well.sf.ca.us)
- John Perry Barlow (barlow@well.sf.ca.us)
-
- Postings and email for the moderated newsgroup should be sent
- to "comp-org-eff-news@well.sf.ca.us".
-
- ************************************************************
-
- $ Power to the people.
- Power: not found
-
- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253 12yrs+
-