Hacker Chronicles 1/HACKER1.ISO/cud3/cud311e.txt

Text File | 1992-09-11 | 9KB | 191 lines

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: Letter to AT&T Cancelling Long-Distance Carrier Service
Date: Tue,  2 Apr 91 16:51:03 PST

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***  CuD #3.11: File 5 of 5: Letter to AT&T Cancelling Service   ***
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{Moderator Comment: Individuals may or may not be able to change
policies with their actions, but if enough people act things will
change. Keith Hansen cancelled AT&T as his long distance carrier, and
although it may seem a token gesture, if enough of us do it (including
the moderators), perhaps AT&T will eventually get the message. Or,
perhaps not, as cynics would argue. But, what can it hurt?

One observer remarked that AT&T and BellSouth/BellCorp are separate
entities, and allusion to the Craig Neidorf trial may not be
appropriate. But, as Craig Neidorf remarked, AT&T work closely
together and in his case AT&T was well aware of the prosecution's
evidence and could readily have intervened because of the close
working relationship. As we will suggest in a forthcoming CuD article,
AT&T in the past has hardly been reticent to challenge the limits of
law when it served their purposes. Yet, when their own ox is gored,
they seem to demand invocation of the full measure of criminal law and
more. Keith's letter is an excellent model for those willing to follow
his example.}

March 29, 1991


Robert E. Allen
Chairman of the Board
ATT Corporate Offices
550 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10022

Dear Mr. Allen:

As a loyal ATT long-distance customer all my life, I feel I
owe you an explanation for canceling my ATT long-distance
service.

I have never had a problem with ATT service, operators, or
audio quality.  I was more than willing to pay the small premium,
and have been a heavy user of ATT long-distance services for the
past 15 years.  I am also a consultant in the computer business
who has used Unix and its derivatives intermittently over the
past 10 years.  Outside of my technical work I have long been
involved in legal and political issues related to high
technology, especially space.  One of my past activities involved
the political defeat of an oppressive United Nations treaty.  I
have also taken substantial personal risks in opposing the
organizations of Lyndon LaRouche.  During the last three years I
have been personally involved with email privacy issues.

Because of my interest in email privacy, I have closely
followed the abusive activities of Southern Bell and the Secret
Service in the Phrack/Craig Neidorf case and the activities of
ATT and the Secret Service with respect to the recently concluded
case involving Len Rose.  Both cases seem to me to be attempts to
make draconian "zero tolerance" examples of people who are--at
most--gadflies.  In actuality, people who were pointing out
deficiencies and methods of attack on Unix systems should be
considered *resources* instead of villains.

I consider this head-in-the-sand "suppress behavior" instead
of "fix the problems" approach on the part of ATT and the
government to be potentially disastrous to the social fabric.
The one thing we don't need is a number of alienated programmers
or engineers mucking up the infrastructure or teaching real
criminals or terrorists how to do it.  I find the deception
of various aspects of ATT and the operating companies to obtain
behavior suppression activities from the government to be
disgusting, and certainly not in your long-term interest.

A specific example of deception is ATT's pricing login.c (the
short program in question in the Len Rose case) at over $77,000
so the government could obtain a felony conviction for
"interstate wire fraud."  Writing a version of login.c is often
assigned as a simple exercise in first-semester programming
classes.  It exists in thousands of versions, in hundreds of
thousands of copies.  The inflation is consistent with Southern
Bell's behavior in claiming a $79,000 value for the E911 document
which they admitted at trial could be obtained for $13.

I know you can argue that the person involved should not
have plead guilty if he could defend himself using these
arguments in court.  Unlike Craig Neidorf, Len Rose lacked
parents who could put up over a hundred thousand dollars to
defend him, and your company and the Secret Service seem to have
been involved in destroying his potential to even feed himself,
his wife, and two small children.  At least he gets fed and
housed while in jail, and his wife can go on welfare.  All, of
course, at the taxpayer's expense.

There are few ways to curtail abuses by the law (unless you
happen to catch them on videotape!) and I know of no effective
methods to express my opinion of Southern Bell's activities even
if I lived in their service area.  But I can express my anger at
ATT by not purchasing your services or products, and encouraging
others to do the same.

By the time this reaches your desk, I will have switched my
voice and computer phones to one of the other long-distance
carriers.  My consulting practice has often involved selecting
hardware and operating systems.  In any case where there is an
alternative, I will not recommend Unix, ATT hardware, or NCR
hardware if you manage to buy them.


Yours in anger,



H. Keith Henson

cc:  Telecom Digest, comp.risk, etc.


PS:  My wife added the following:

I want you to try to understand something--a lesson that can
be learned from these cases.  We are no longer living in the
Industrial Age, when a product could be made in "one-size-fits
all," packaged, sold and used without modification or support,
like a television.  We face massive problems in the Information
Age in protecting intellectual property, but we cannot simply
transfer old-world, Industrial-Age police attitudes to these
problems.  Possessing a copy of my program without paying for it
is not the same as stealing my television.  If you modify my
program and make it more usable to the community, I can still go
on charging for the use of my program, but I can also incorporate
your modifications, and charge for them--especially if I pay you
something for the help.  If you provide support for my programs
(something every major hardware and software manufacturer has had
to either severely curtail or--like IBM--abandon altogether
without extra charges), then you have made my product more
usable.  This is what the so-called "hacker" culture is all
about.  I'm talking about ethical "hackers" here, not the media
image of breakin artists or virus-spreading nerds whose only
compensation is a malignant satisfaction in destroying computer
systems.  The "hacker" culture is really a native population of
problem solvers whose pleasure is in tailoring products to their
own and other's use, and often pushing back the limits on a
product.  Ethical hackers are willing to pay for their use of
products (although it's absurd to charge such a support provider
tens of thousands of dollars for source code when he has neither
the equipment nor the desire to use source code *as a product*).
And they are willing to help others to use them by providing
support which ATT could not afford to provide if it charged twice
the price for its products!  This was the sort of "theft" Len
Rose was involved in--custom tailoring of the ATT product,
helping customers to use the programs, manipulation of software
which he could not use himself in any way except to help others
use it.  Prosecuting Len Rose was like prosecuting a TV repairman
as a thief because he was removing the television from the house
to take it to his shop--except that unlike the TV repairman, Len
Rose didn't even need to take it into the shop, and his having a
copy of it could do nothing except benefit ATT.

In the long run, this inappropriate application of Industrial-Age
concepts of ownership and prosecution is going to be lethal to
you and everyone else in the same boat.  While you think you are
sending a signal that theft will not be tolerated, what you are
actually doing is sending a signal that customer support,
personal tailoring of programs and cooperation with ATT in
producing a product usable by many more millions of people will
not be tolerated.  Your problem is partly that no official
channels exist for appreciation and remuneration for the type of
work Len Rose did as a consultant and support provider, not that
"hackers" like him exist and flourish.  (Unofficial channels
obviously do exist for circulation of ATT materials, else where
would he have obtained the source?--a local K-Mart?)  And be
aware that Len Rose was the least of your worries.  Hackers much
more powerful than he exist, and you have enraged them when you
could have engaged their cooperation.

Sincerely,

Arel Lucas

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