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- ########## ########## ########## | THE EFF AND THE FBI: Two Letters
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- ######## ######## ######## | ONE BBSCON REPORTS
- ######## ######## ######## | At Play in the Field of the Boards
- #### #### #### | Dueling BBSCONS
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- =====================================================================
- EFFector Online August 24, 1992 Issue 3.3
- A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- ISSN 1062-9424
- =====================================================================
-
-
- THE EFF AND THE FBI: An exchange of views
-
- This is an exchange of letters in the Wall Street Journal between
- the Director of the FBI, William Sessions and EFF's Staff Counsel, Mike
- Godwin.
-
- August 4,1992
-
- FBI Must Keep Up With Wonks & Hackers
-
- Re your July 9 article about a very successful "computer hackers"
- investigation conducted by the FBI and the Secret Service ("Wiretap
- Inquiry Spurs Computer Hacker Charges"): The article mentions that
- court-ordered electronic surveillance was a critical part of the
- investigation and that the FBI is seeking laws to make it easier to tap
- computer systems. Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Electronic
- Frontier Foundation, said that "the success in this case 'undercuts' the
- argument that new laws are needed." I believe the opposite to be the
- case. This investigation clearly demonstrates why legislation is
- absolutely necessary.
-
- What Mr. Godwin is referring to is a legislative proposal on behalf of
- law enforcement to ensure that as telecommunications technology
- advances, the ability of law enforcement to conduct court-ordered
- electronic surveillance is not lost. Without the legislation, it is
- almost certain that will occur. The proposal is not directed at
- computer systems, but pertains to telephone service providers and
- equipment manufacturers.
-
- In 1968, Congress carefully considered and passed legislation setting
- forth the exacting procedure by which court authorization to conduct
- electronic surveillance can be obtained. Since that time it has become
- an invaluable investigative tool in combating serious and often life-
- threatening crimes such as terrorism, kidnapping, drugs and organized
- crime. The 1968 law contemplates cooperation by the telecommunications
- service providers in implementing these court orders. The proposed
- legislation only clarifies that responsibility by making it clearly
- applicable regardless of the technology deployed.
-
- Absent legislation, the ability to conduct successful investigations
- such as the one mentioned in your article will certainly be jeopardized.
- The deployment of digital telecommunications equipment that is not
- designed to meet the need for law enforcement to investigate crime and
- enforce the laws will have that effect. No new authority is needed or
- requested. All the legislation would do if enacted is ensure that the
- status quo is maintained and the ability granted by Congress in 1968
- preserved.
-
- William S. Sessions
- Director, FBI, Department of Justice
- Wall Street Journal, August 4, 1992
-
-
- August 14, 1992
-
- Letters to the Editor
- The Wall Street Journal:
- 200 Liberty Street
- New York, NY 10281
-
-
- In his Aug. 4 letter to the editor, FBI Director William Sessions
- disagrees with my quoted opinion that the FBI's success in a
- computer-wiretap case "'undercuts' the argument that new laws are
- needed." His disagreement doesn't disturb me too much; it's the kind of
- thing over which reasonable people can disagree.
-
-
- What does disturb me, however, is Sessions's claim about the FBI's
- initiative to require the phone companies (and other
- communications-service providers, like CompuServe) to build wiretapping
- capabilities into their systems. Says Sessions, apparently without
- irony:
- "No new authority is needed or requested. All the legislation would if
- enacted is ensure that the status quo is maintained and the ability [of
- law enforcement to implement wiretaps] is preserved." Earlier, Sessions
- says the proposed legislation "only clarifies [the phone companies']
- responsibility" to cooperate with properly authorized law enforcement
- under the 1968 Wiretap Act.
-
-
- What Sessions does not mention, however, is that his legislation would,
- among other things, allow the government to impose upon those phone
- companies and communications-service providers who do not build
- wiretapping into their systems "a civil penalty of $10,000 per day for
- each day in violation." By any standards other than those of Sessions
- and the FBI, this constitutes "new authority." If this proposal "only
- clarifies" providers' obligations under the 1968 Act, one shudders to
- imagine what Sessions would call an "expansion" of law-enforcement
- authority.
-
- MIKE GODWIN
- Staff Counsel
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Cambridge, Massachusetts
-
- -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-
-
-
- At Play in the Field of the Boards: Report on ONE BBSCON
- August 13-16, 1992.
- by Steve Cisler (sac@apple.com)
-
- Validating the BBS Ticket
-
- Our plane punched down through the low clouds a half hour late into
- Denver. A short shuttle ride and you're at the Stouffer Concourse Hotel
- the site of the Online Networking Exposition and BBS Convention ONE
- BBSCon. This was to be the first ecumenical gathering of bulletin board
- system operators (sysops), hardware and software vendors, and
- programmers that spanned the DOS, Unix, and Macintosh worlds. There had
- once been annual meetings of Fidonet sysops, but the parent organization
- had folded even as the number of BBS systems continued to explode.
-
- Jack Rickard, President of ONE, Inc. and publisher of Boardwatch
- Magazine <jack.rickard@boardwatch.com> had partnered up with Phil
- Becker, author of TBBS software, to organize a trade show for BBS
- operators that would be inexpensive enough to attract those running
- their boards as hobbies but featured tutorials and panels with subjects
- attractive to entrepreneurs who have mounted and maintained successful
- business systems with four, eight, on up to 64 phone lines for their
- clients.
-
- Most of us in the online world are stratified in our interests when it
- comes to networking and communications. There are MIS shops depending on
- minis and mainframes; there are the academic and research networks where
- NREN and the Internet dominate; there are consumer services, a
- continuing, failure when promoted and maintained by the regional phone
- companies and successful in different ways at Prodigy, GEnie,
- CompuServe, and America Online. But then there are the BBS systems.
-
- BBS systems, users, and sysops have never been validated by many of the
- mainstream opinion makers. Most of the operators and users have been
- outsiders, socially, politically, and even economically. Of these, a
- significant subset are proud of this status, but others yearn to make
- their "hobby" into a full-fledged industry. Indeed, if some of the
- reports of BBS size heard in the panels and in the halls are even
- remotely accurate, there are many "machete and loincloth BBSs that rival
- commercial services. ONE BBSCON brought nearly 1000 of these outsiders
- together for the first time. It also attracted mainstream users who have
- found BBSs to be cost effective, easy to maintain (compared to other
- sorts of electronic systems), and extremely useful. ONE BBSCON put the
- spotlight on the "Industry" as Rickard and Becker hope it will become.
-
- BBS System vendors were on the organizing board, and there were tracks
- for the major DOS/Intel systems: Wildcat!, TBBS, PCBoard, MAJOR, and
- Searchlight as well as other operating systems such as UNIX and
- Macintosh (the latter comprised less than 5% of the attendees). Other
- tracks were for legal and social issues, corporate and business
- applications, how to make money with a BBS, the Internet/NREN, Mail
- networks, and a technical track.
-
- Few Ties and Big Skies
-
- The opening reception included a sprinkling of ties, making me feel
- over-dressed in a sport coat. With the dress code set for the rest of
- the days ahead, I thumbed through the program and spoke with BBS and
- networking folks whom I had met online or at other conferences. Dave
- Hughes of Old Colorado City Communications <dave@well.sf.ca.us> and
- Frank Odasz of Big Sky Telegraph <frank@bigsky.dillon.mt.us> noted the
- lack of education tracks in the program, but with their participation in
- the program it became an important sub-theme.
-
- The range of activities in the BBS world indicates the potential power
- and freedom to experiment that goes with cheap hardware, BBS software,
- and a reasonably priced public telephone network. A journalist from
- Albuquerque is running his newspaper's 16 line system, which provides
- news to callers at no charge. A BBS team had just returned from Russia
- where they were helping set up a country-wide system using low-orbiting
- satellites for data transmission. An entrepreneur who had been sued by
- Playboy enterprises for vending GIF images of Playmates (and using that
- trademarked name in his BBS menus) without much thought of copyright was
- present and seeking advice and solace.
-
- At the opening session it was immediately evident ONE BBSCON was going
- to be a successful conference. It was also clear how BBSs would become
- an industry that would overshadow but not eliminate hobby uses of such
- systems: cheap 9600 bps modems, inexpensive 486 servers, and telephone
- systems that are not charging by measured use (as is done in many other
- countries). Boardwatch estimates that there are 44,000 public systems
- (and many more private and corporate ones) in the U.S. The four vendors
- sitting on ONE, Inc. board claim to have an installed base of 50,000,
- and this excludes Fido, the most popular of all systems. Phil Becker
- made a strong pitch for the BBS as a business tool for mainstream
- activities and belittled what he called the 'stupid niches' like Keith
- Wade's THE ANARCHIST GUIDE TO BBS. Clearly, Becker wanted to encourage
- mainstream business uses of this technology. They were impressive and
- diverse. Others like Tom Jennings (author of the extremely cheap and
- popular Fido software) sees the technology benefiting the outsiders: the
- fat, the handicapped, the socially inept, the disenfranchised, the
- radical, the non-mainstream. And of course, BBS technology can fill both
- Becker's and Jennings' very different visions, but Becker's was the one
- in the ascendent at ONE BBSCon
-
- The keynote speech was given by John Dvorak, who writes for many
- computer magazines, has co-authored a successful book on telecomms, and
- is often on the public speaker circuit. His columns are entertaining,
- opinionated and as Art Kleiner said in an old S.F. Bay Guardian article,
- he is a "curmudgeon without a cause."
-
- People who like to rattle cages can be good speakers and warm the crowd
- up for the ensuing events. However, Dvorak devoted so much time to self
- advertisements and plugging his books that it seemed he must have spent
- about 10 minutes thinking about some of the issues that needed
- addressing with regards to BBSes. A sprinkling of Dvorak comments: "get
- a fan for your 486 machines... OS/2 is fun! (Windows is not)...the BBS
- community needs a lobbyist in each state; it's embarrassingly naive and
- should examine how it operates on different levels...Al Gore is the Dan
- Quayle of the Democratic Party...The porno boards are always under
- scrutiny by the government. one way or another... Playboy images on a
- BBS has to be called fair use... BBSes cannot continue to allow slander
- on the boards. You have to clean up your act by self-policing.
-
- Dvorak also called for a constitutional amendment to protect electronic
- rights, apparently unaware that constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe
- had proposed this in his keynote at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 1
- some eighteen months ago, a proposal that received national publicity.
- On the one hand Dvorak pandered to anti-Congress sentiments in the crowd
- and then urged involvement in politics; on the other hand he found the
- Perot candidacy a sham, including the electronic element.
-
- Panels: Social and Technical
-
- I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation program which filled up
- with an overflow from the Legal track where Lance Rose addressed many
- questions about the rights and responsibilities of sysops in an
- increasingly litigious and regulated environment. Shari Steele, a lawyer
- in the EFF Washington office, explained their activities and then
- answered questions. The questions revealed the strong anti-Washington,
- anti-lawyer, anti-regulation sentiments in the audience. It is evident
- that many sysops value the control they believe they have when they set
- up and run a bulletin board. Hearing about the FCC and Congressional
- efforts to change 'their' world made some people angry and others want
- to organize.
-
- Midway through the conference a group of software developers decided to
- organize to try and learn about existing standards before setting ones
- that would benefit their own developers and users. The three main areas
- include interface, messaging and document structure, and graphics.
- Surprisingly, some did not want to give up the diversity that is so
- evident in the many interfaces and message protocols, but most agreed to
- try and set an agenda via electronic mail and plan for other actions at
- the next conference. The Internet Engineering Task Force use of RFCs
- (Request for Comment) was held up as a model they would emulate.
-
- Jim Warren moderated the panel on electronic democracy where most
- members were excited about the power of the tools. Gary Stryker of
- Galacticom proposed a system called SuperDemocracy which would include
- continuous electronic voting on issues in a hierarchy by geographical
- region. Shari Steele reminded the group that many did not have computers
- or modems, and that electronic democracy would exclude many potential
- voters. Gary Nakarado, a PUC commissioner in Colorado recounted how he
- started a BBS to learn more about the medium and to be in touch with the
- interesting people in his community. Unfortunately, they have not been
- logging in. PUC activities attract very little attention and he has very
- few calls and questions from the general public. He is interested in
- having more input on issues such as ISDN service, BBSes, and other
- issues affecting Colorado utility users.
-
- Bernard Aboba, author of BBSes and Beyond , talked about the software
- for connecting Macs to the global mail networks (RIME, Fido, Internet,
- uucp) and it was evident that the Mac is a terrific front end for many
- systems, but as a server it needs more power and more tools from third
- parties. Developers from ResNova 714 840 6082 showed how their Mac BBS
- software could fill the gaps, as did a rep. from SoftArc 416 299 4723.
- SoftArc's FirstClass server and client software looked very powerful and
- full of features that would allow a FirstClass BBS to serve many
- concurrent users on LAN, dialup and TCP/IP access.
-
- All of the companies are quite small, and the wish lists of new features
- grows faster than the staff to work on them. Still I was amazed at the
- power and sophistication of the DOS and Mac BBS systems. Event Horizons,
- the BBS vending adult GIF images south of Portland, Oregon, has a 64
- line 80486 system running on TBBS! Other systems running multiple cpus
- have a hundred or more lines coming in. Clearly, these are not basement
- run, part time operations.
-
- The BBS Bulletin Board
-
- One morning I went down to comb the literature tables and read the cork
- bulletin board where a variety of fascinating notes had been posted.
- They will give you a sense of the diversity in this community:
-
- -Monterey Gaming System 408 655 5555 (free)
-
- -Black Cat Information Service in Rochester NY 716 262 3680 (Visa/MC
- accepted!) Games, Society for Creative Anachronism files and Adult Info
-
- -the Zoo...an electric safari. your tour guide: Chuck 2. 312 907
- 1831 to 1839.
-
- -The OU BBS, University of Oklahoma (telnet
- oubbs,telecom.uoknor.edu)
-
- -Power Windows! BBS (also for OS/2 users) Huntsville, AL 205 881
- 8619
-
- -The Invention Factory, (NY, NY) 212 274 8110
-
- -The Online Diver (Brooklyn Center, MN) 566 5267 No area code must
- indicate that it's for local Minnesota divers primarily.
-
- -Nautilus Commercial Data System with 250,000 public domain files,
- 200 incoming data lines (!), 28 gigabytes of storage, satellite weather
- images, hourly news updates, games, dBase templates, GIF images---all
- out of Iola, Kansas 316 365 7631.
-
- -Infinity Complex "a wickedly addictive Science Fiction game for
- MAJOR BBS systems. Infinity Complex puts your users in a bizarre arena
- of the future, where they must battle for their very lives...and use up
- a lot of online hours in the process!" 403 476 8369 (voice)
-
- -an ad for the first annual Puget Sound (WA) BBS convention (no
- phone contact)
-
- -ads for serial port boards, new BBS software, consulting services,
- and calls for source code for data compression.
-
- -BAWIT Bay Area Women in Telecom for working women in
- telecommunications in the San Francisco area. Contact
- bawitrequest@igc.apc.org.
-
- -Make your own custom CD-ROM for $199. Up to 640 mb. ISO 9660. 800
- 762.
-
- Internet and NREN
-
- There was a lot of interest in Internet/NREN issues, but only a few
- people knew much about them. The panels on Internet connectivity,
- legislation, and interfaces drew good sized crowds but needed more basic
- information in a standard presentation format before having Q&A. BBSes
- can be a good interface for people going on to the Internet. It provides
- a way of formatting and filtering the anarchy of the Internet, even as
- it offers occasion for excess control of what a caller can see and use.
- I spent more time showing resources using Mac-based interfaces than
- talking about the intricacies of the growth of NREN in my session which
- was included in the small Macintosh track rather than the larger
- Internet track. I also participated in a graphics discussion where the
- panelists discussed GIF (the CompuServe standard so popular on BBSes and
- the Internet), NAPLPS (which is good for multi-lingual communications
- and small vector-based images), JPEG (the compression du jour that may
- displace GIF and the one that the Smithsonian and Apple are touting for
- Project Chapman), and FIF (fractal image format which is a more
- efficient proprietary algorithm than JPEG but which takes a long time to
- compress).
-
- Summary
-
- The BBS world is changing, growing, exploding. Jack Rickard has provided
- good coverage in his magazine. His conference was a big success (and a
- very good value considering the amount of fine food that was included
- with the conference activities). If you are not in the BBS world, and
- even if you are, it's hard to be aware of the all activity because it is
- so distributed. This conference helped immensely.
-
- I think that Rickard will have to face a problem of success: will he
- continue to be the lively and opinionated journalist when his magazine
- and his conference become the focus of the whole industry and a possible
- industry association? He may have to defend actions when he should be
- exposing them, but that is looking a couple of years ahead. Right now,
- there is no way to go but up and out because of the growing interest in
- this medium of information dissemination and of personal communication.
-
- A BBS provides both sysops and users an enormous amount of leverage, and
- the library world should take notice more than it does. One prominent
- public librarian who is quite involved in electronic dissemination of
- information remarked to me a few years ago that it would be great if
- BBSes just went away. I have heard other dismissive or even snobbish
- comments about BBSes, but the four librarians whom I met at ONE BBSCON
- all realized this is foolish. It's not the only tool to use, but it can
- be a very important one.
-
- Contacts mentioned in the text:
- Gary Nakarado, Colorado Public Utilities commissioner
- <nakarado@well.sf.ca.us> 303 526 5505 is his BBS number.
- NAPLPS: North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax.
- Dave Hughes <dave@oldcolo.com or dave@well.sf.ca.us>
- Fractal compression: Fracterm, Inc. in Richmond, BC
- 800-676-3111
- GIF: CompuServe Art Gallery and various browsers at ftp sites
- JPEG: mail jpeg-info@uunet.uu.net or contact sac@apple.com
- Boardwatch : 303 973 6038 or jack.rickard@boardwatch.com
- TBBS software: eSoft 303 699 6565
- SuperDemocracy Foundation: 305 583 5990
- Bernard Aboba: BMUG, Inc., 510 547 0345
- Jim Warren (electronic democracy): jwarren@well.sf.ca.us
- Electronic Frontier Foundation: eff@eff.org
- Lance Rose (legal issues): author of Syslaw a legal guide to the
- rights and responsibilities of sysops.
- Laurence H. Tribe, "The Constitution in Cyberspace" anonymous ftp
- from ftp.apple.com in the /ftp/alug/rights directory 49 kb.
-
- ====================================================================
- Copyright 1992 by Steve Cisler, Apple Library. All or part of this
- document may be redistributed free of charge in electronic format (disk,
- CD-ROM, online) by any party. Print re-distribution is allowed for
- personal use as well as non-profit. educational and government
- newsletters and journals. Please send email to the author when you do
- reprint or repost or quote from this report. Internet: sac@apple.com
-
-
- -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-
-
-
- Dueling BBScons:
- The View From The Booth
- by Rita Rouvalis (rita@eff.org)
-
- Last week, Denver was the host of not one, but two BBS conferences.
- Most people didn't know that -- especially those attending ONE BBSCON.
-
- At some point, last year's FidoCon split -- spinning off into The ONE
- BBScon and IBECC (International BBSing and Electronic Commuications
- Conference). Who split first is hotly debated. Why they split in
- the first place was never addressed. Neither conference benefitted.
-
- IBECC, focused primarily upon hobbyist and other non-profit boards, took
- the worse hit. Hampered by the absence of an adequate publicity
- machine, attendance was extremely low. On the afternoon I spent at that
- conference, the EFF's panel was the best attended class -- with
- around ten people in the audience. These individuals were
- intensely interested in the social implications of the growth
- of BBS networks, questioning EFF staff attorney Shari Steele and myself
- about everything from the Open Platform proposal to what the EFF plans
- to do about the harassment of pagan BBS'ers in heavy fundamentalist
- territory.
-
- Although the hit didn't come in the pocketbook for ONE BBScon, it did
- suffer from the split. Without the presence of the educational and non-
- profit interests of IBECC, much of the conference came off as crass
- commercialism at its worst. I found it odd that a conference professing
- to be "it" for the BBS world would intentionally excluded such a large
- faction of the BBS community. The emphasis was placed squarely on
- making money from your BBS. Phil Becker even went so far as to ridicule
- a book entitled The Anarchist's Guide to the BBS -- summarily dismissing
- one of the most valuable functions of BBS's -- the distribution of
- information not easily had in other places.
-
- Just previous and during the conference rumors and accusations were
- flying about unfair methods on the behalf of ONE to lure IBECC attendees
- to ONE BBSCon. Some individuals claimed that when they called the
- Stouffer Concourse, where ONE BBSCon was being held, hotel staff told
- them that it was the hotel for IBECC (IBECC was held in the Sheraton on
- the other side of Denver). Another claimed that ONE intentionally
- designed a sign in the lobby on the first day to look like IBECC. Some
- ONE attendees, unaware that IBECC was happening across town, recalled
- hearing about it and assumed that ONE was the same conference.
-
- ONE BBSCon was a far better publicized and organized conference than
- IBECC, which goes a lot farther in accounting for its success than any
- alleged underhanded practices. What I fail to understand, however,
- is why these two conferences split off in the first place, and why their
- organizers are wasting our time with petty politics when it is obvious
- that the BBS community needs and wants to become more unified.
-
-
- -==--==--==-<-==--==--==-
-
-
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