THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING / Published Periodically ====================================================================== ISSN 1074-3111 Volume One, Issue Six October 1, 1994 ====================================================================== Editor-in-Chief: Scott Davis (dfox@fc.net) Co-Editor/Technology: Max Mednick (kahuna@fc.net) Consipracy Editor: Gordon Fagan (flyer@fennec.com) Information Systems: Carl Guderian (bjacques@usis.com) Computer Security: John Logan (ice9@fennec.com) ** ftp site: etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/JAUC U.S. Mail: The Journal Of American Underground Computing 10111 N. 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We have the issue corrected. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING - Volume 1, Issue 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Cyberdoggles And Virtual Pork Carl Guderian EFF Summary Of The Edwards/Leahy Digital Telephony Bill Stanton McCandlish Zine FAQ Jerod Pore Legion Of Doom T-Shirts Ad Chris Goggans A Point And Click Society Scott Davis Keynote Address: Crypto Conference Bruce Sterling Jackboots On The Infobahn John Perry Barlow Notes From Cyberspace, Volume 3 Readers Pornography Fouls Internet Paul Pihichyn Security / Coast FTP Unknown On the Subject of CyberCulture George Phillips A Comment On Clipper Azrael Sex, The Internet And The Idiots K.K. Campbell NBC's Anti-Net Campaign Alaric The Miami Device Project Marty Cyber Cybersell Michael Ege Some Info On Green Card Spam Unknown Cable Resources On The Net John Higgins IDS Announces New Rochelle, New York POP (AC 914) green@ids.net The Media List Adam M. Gaffin A TeleStrategies Event/Commercial Internet eXchange Unknown Scream Of Consciousness From WIRED 1.1 Stewart Brand Digital Cash Mini-FAQ For The Layman Jim Miller Patent Searching Email Server Now Open Gregory Aharonian Five "Hackers" Indicted for Credit Card/Computer Fraud CUD/AP Wire Clipper T-Shirts Norman Harman Cybernews Debuts Patrick Grote PC Magazine Declares The PIPELINE Best Internet Service James Gleick Scout Report Subscriptions Exceed 10,000 Internic The Future Of The Net Is At Hand James Parry Galactic Guide FAQ Steve Baker Employment Background Checks Agre/Harbs %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% The Computer Is Your Friend -Unknown Send Money, Guns, And Lawyers -H. S. Thompson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CYBERDOGGLES AND VIRTUAL PORK - A SCENARIO FOR INTERNET II By Carl Guderian As one battle gets underway another is joined. While the EFF and others work to defend the noisy, colorful anarchy of the Net from the net.cops, the latter have begun gearing up for the endgame. If it's true that the electronic frontier is getting crowded while its newer colonists consider it too bare, then another system will be needed in a few years. That's the virtual Valley of Megiddo, the site of the (next) Final Battle between the techno-romantics and the corporate greyfaces. Internet II, or whatever they'll call it, is now only a vague idea in the minds of a few bureaucrats and infotainment industry execs, but it'll wind up a Mall of America, Panopticon, City of Quartz, or some other negative social metaphor (Brazil?). The first Internet grew up free because it was defined wholly by the users. Internet II, by contrast, will be a hybrid of corporate and government visions, combining the worst of both in a kind of Mendelian genetic distribution in which all offspring are defective. To the government it's a tax base and surveillance network; to industry it's a direct channel to a self-selecting, well-heeled market. To users the Internet is a community for which they've worked too hard to let it be taken away without a fight. The most obvious model for the Internet II standard is the U.S., or any other, civilian space program. It is about nothing so much as itself. The aerospace companies that are today inseparable from national space establishments make rockets or communications satellites. Like the designers of Internet II, they are concerned with delivering product (audiences) to the customers (advertisers). People generally support the space program because they hope it will open up space travel to everybody, from interplanetary honeymooners to lunar Libertarians (Jetsonian democracy!). Likewise, the Internet is popular because it's a vehicle for forming communities and getting free stuff. But Internet II will be about bandwidth, markets and security. The last item is emphasized because such a huge investment must be protected somehow, from the users of course. Whatever vision there might have been will be refocused instead on infrastructure. Call it information superhighway hypnosis, a trail of yellow stripes stretching to the horizon. Truly a vision to stir the soul. The pork barrel politics that characterize all big government projects will find a new arena on Internet II. The government can no longer pay for megaprojects like Internet II, but it can grant electronic Letters of Marque for companies to plunder the virtual seas under the federal colors. Obviously, the company or consortium that gets to write the new, none-dare- call-it-proprietary Internet protocols will have a leg up on competitors, sorta like the advantage Microsoft officially doesn't have over other developers for Windows. In the current and upcoming Congressional funding battles, watch for posturing by lawmakers from whatever states the infotainment conglomerates call their nominal homes (Austin? Provo? Los Gatos?). The relatively meager funding doled out by the government will become an instrument of control, and privacy and free expression on Internet II will be the first to go. While Reagan preached getting the government off the backs of the people, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth (Mrs. Bob) Dole ordered states to raise drinking ages and enforce seat-belt laws or else lose federal funding for highway development. The states meekly complied. Would-be government contractors will be told, adopt a Clipper-like standard or don't bother to apply. Infotainment industry execs will be grilled by Congress for allowing "pone" on the net. Subsequently, said execs will promise to read private e-mail and censor discussions in exchange for easy passage of whatever bill they're promoting at the time. In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center, led by Tipper (Mrs. Albert) Gore and financed by the likes of Mike Love of the Beach Boys, instigated Senatorial hearings on raunchy rock lyrics. Recording studio heads and distributors agreed to label and categorize "offensive" music in hopes Congress would tax blank tapes to offset revenue losses the industry attributed to home taping. Happily, the bill died and the hearings degenerated into a circus. But community standards on Internet II may be those of Memphis, Tennessee, if a recent court decision stands, and the only cyber-sex will be the user squealing like a pig for multimedia producers, petty bureaucrats, and self- appointed moral watchdogs. Government attempts to rein in the Internet community will continue no matter which party is in power. Repression smells the same whether it's for "national security," "community standards," or raising PG kids in an X-rated world. Corporate plans for Internet II are even less palatable. The future dream is a shopping scheme, a Third Mall from the Sun. This corporate paradigm will kill the Internet as surely as will government interference and turn it into Óan Internet of shopkeepers. In a shopping mall the offerings are calculated to offend no one, so they please no one. Though a mall could, in theory, serve diverse interests, in reality it does not. Individual tastes being what they are, a customer could be offended by what it finds upon wandering into the wrong shop, and may leave the mall without buying anything. As a result, the mall loses the customer to a rival mall. To avoid this risk, the mall operator rents to shops with watered down selections, nothing too daring. Similarly, in a corporate online service, the range of allowable discussion topics is kept small to prevent users from who access the wrong discussion groups. Though itØs possible to restrict access to the forum without censoring discussion within it, most services take the lazy way out and forbid them altogether, in case a user objects to their very existence. So much for open discussion on Internet II. The corporate vision accommodates shopkeepers who hate customers who browse but don't buy. Customers can turn a mall into a kind of public space for the price of a few sodas and pizza slices. Americans online on Internet II, however, will have to pay by the hour just to hang around. The ticking clock will prompt them to hurry up and pay for something to download. After being on the clock at work, consumers will get to log on and shop on the clock. Constant reminders of a rising bill will discourage idle chatting on the newsgroups, further restricting discussion on Internet II. Security will become an issue as cyberspace, once considered a kind of public space, becomes privatized. As with Los Angeles, Internet II will be vandalized by users who will take no pride in it because they will not own it. The Secret Service will work as mall cops for the owners of Internet II. The promise of "500 channels" betrays the limits of corporate vision. Internet II will be "one-to-many" like cable TV instead of the "many-to-many" structure of the common carriers, because the former facilitates billing and control by local monopolies. Also, customers are not accustomed to pay-per-call on a local line, but they're getting used to pay-per-view programming on cable. Will you cuss and spit when you drop offline during a rainstorm? You will...with [censored]. In the end, the corporate Internet will be designed for consumption, not community. Online services consider the latter an impediment to steady profits. Bovine consumers shop contentedly on 500 channels; discontented talkers just hog the lines. If corporate services had to destroy online communities that spring up like weeds in their well-kept yards, they would. Fortunately, they wonØt have to; the Online Mall is barren ground. By some estimates, 1998 is the deadline to keep the Net from turning into the Third Mall from the Sun or that sanitized 1901 Kansas-style underground city in "A Boy and His Dog." Here are ways to kill that serpent in its shell. - Breathe down the necks of the architects of Internet II. Infotainment industry demands may require physical features that facilitate billing and copyright protection. The IRS and the cops will certainly want their own window into the Net. What the users want, assuming they know, is considered irrelevant. Change that by working through groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but keep them from accepting "compromise" measures to wiretap "only" certain communications channels. It's like prison etiquette, in which the proper response to a proprietary hand on the shoulder is either a sock on the jaw or meek acceptance of what comes next. Given what's at stake, such a savage ethic applies. Freedom lent is freedom lost. - Boycott obvious government lapdogs. Do not surrender the Internet to the government; it has no legitimate claim to it. The Internet is like an abandoned military base built into a community by squatters. The original tenants have long ago gotten their money's worth from it and cannot take credit for the value added by the new settlers. The Internet communications standard, TCP/IP, which turned all the networks into the Internet, is public domain. The feds don't own it any more than they own the measurement of one U.S. gallon. The government still owns high-speed backbones, such as the National Science Foundation's NSFnet, and it can and does allow semi-private consortia like Merit to operate and maintain them. The users should claim the Internet, however, by usufruct ("fruitful use"), a legal concept under which squatters gain the right to occupy a structure in exchange for having improved it. If all else fails, boycott Internet II and go back to TCP/IP. The latter may not have the bandwidth and the bells and whistles of Internet II, but it works well enough and won't have wiretap-friendly features built into it. Most projected growth will come from the online services dumping settlers by the millions on Internet II, taking the load off the present Internet. Currently dedicated but unused Internet addresses can be redistributed. TCP/IP, the current protocol, can support 20+ million people worldwide, which is probably the proportion of the population willing and able to protect their freedom online. Even without an Internet, there are systems that will work in a pinch, like FIDOnet, invented by Tom Jennings and a few others. Using personal computers and ordinary phone lines, FIDOnet delivers e-mail to 30,000+ sites in the world. So alternatives exist, though it would be a shame to have to abandon a community just when it was starting to mature. De-evolution of the Internet community is a likely outcome but it's not inevitable. For the first time since the Whiskey Rebellion there's a chance to redirect American history from the seemingly endless march to centralized control. The technology is pretty cheap and widely available (unlike rockets), so it's a rare opportunity for real grass-roots action to create something that people can actually use. Internet doesn't have to go the way of other Big Science projects. But it will take a real fight; the other side won't deal if it doesn't think it has to. At stake is the future of the online community. Civilization built in an Autonomous Zone or pay-per-view surveillance (guess who pays?) in the Third Mall from the Sun: WHICH WILL IT BE? Those words fill the screen, accompanied by Raymond Massey whispering and chorus singing same, in "Things to Come." Fadeout). The Third Mall from the Sun concept belongs to late comic genius Bill Hicks. Burn joss money in his memory to help cover his bar tab in the afterlife. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO SEND MAIL TO YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS ASKING THEM IF THEY OFFER THEIR SYSTEM LOGS TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES - ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS. ACTIONS SUCH AS THIS MAY BE A VIOLATION OF YOUR PRIVACY. IF YOU DISCOVER THIS TO BE THE CASE, MAIL US! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% EFF SUMMARY OF THE EDWARDS/LEAHY DIGITAL TELEPHONY BILL From Stanton McCandlish OVERVIEW -------- The Edwards/Leahy Digital Telephony bill places functional requirements on telecommunications carriers in order to enable law enforcement to continue to conduct authorized electronic surveillance. It allows a court to impose fines on carriers that violate the requirements, and mandates that the processes for determining capacity requirements and technical standards be open and public. The bill also contains significant new privacy protections; including an increased standard for government access to transactional data (such as addressing information contained in electronic mail logs), a requirement that information acquired through the use of pen registers or trap and trace devices not disclose the physical location of an individual, and an expansion of current law to protect the radio portion of cordless telephone conversations from unauthorized surveillance. SCOPE OF THE BILL. WHO IS COVERED? ----------------------------------- The requirements of the bill apply to "telecommunications carriers", which are defined as any person or entity engaged in the transmission or switching of wire or electronic communications as a common carrier for hire (as defined by section 3 (h) of the Communications Act of 1934), including commercial mobile services (cellular, PCS, etc.). The bill also applies to those persons or entities engaged in providing wire or electronic communication switching or transmission service to the extent that the FCC finds that such service is a replacement for a substantial portion of the local telephone exchange. The bill does not apply to online communication and information services such as Internet providers, Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, and BBS's. It also excludes private networks, PBX's, and facilities which only interconnect telecommunications carriers or private networks (such as most long distance service). REQUIREMENTS IMPOSED ON CARRIERS -------------------------------- Telecommunications carriers would be required to ensure that they possess sufficient capability and capacity to accommodate law enforcement's needs. The bill distinguishes between capability and capacity requirements, and ensures that the determination of such requirements occur in an open and public process. CAPABILITY REQUIREMENTS ----------------------- A telecommunications carrier is required to ensure that, within four years from the date of enactment, it has the capability to: 1. expeditiously isolate the content of a targeted communication within its service area; 2. isolate call-identifying information about the origin and destination of a targeted communication; 3. enable the government to access isolated communications at a point away from the carrier's premises and on facilities procured by the government, and; 4. to do so unobtrusively and in such a way that protects the privacy and security of communications not authorized to be intercepted (Sec. 2601). However, the bill does not permit law enforcement agencies or officers to require the specific design of features or services, nor does it prohibit a carrier from deploying any feature or service which does not meet the requirements outlined above. CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS --------------------- Within 1 year of enactment of the bill, the Attorney General must determine the maximum number of intercepts, pen register, and trap and trace devices that law enforcement will require four years from the date of enactment. Notices of capacity requirements must be published in the Federal Register (Sec. 2603). Carriers have 4 years to comply with capacity requirements. PROCESS FOR DETERMINING TECH. STANDARDS TO IMPLEMENT CAPABILITY REQUIREMENTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telecommunications carriers, through trade associations or standards setting bodies and in consultation with the Attorney General, must determine the technical specifications necessary to implement the capability requirements (Sec. 2606). The bill contains a 'safe harbor' provision, which allows a carrier to meet its obligations under the legislation if it is in compliance with publicly available standards set through this process. A carrier may deploy a feature or service in the absence of technical standards, although in such a case the carrier would not be covered by the safe harbor provision and may be found in violation. Furthermore, the legislation allows any one to file a motion at the FCC in the event that a standard violates the privacy and security of telecommunications networks or does not meet the requirements of the bill (Sec. 2606). If petitioned under this section, the FCC may establish technical requirements or standards that: 1) meet the capability requirements (in Sec. 2602); 2) protect the privacy and security of communications not authorized to be intercepted, and; 3) encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public. ENFORCEMENT AND PENALTIES ------------------------- In the event that a court or the FCC deems a technical standard to be insufficient, or if law enforcement finds that it is unable to conduct authorized surveillance because a carrier has not met the requirements of this legislation, the Attorney General can request that a court issue an enforcement order (an order directing a carrier to comply), and/or a fine of up to $10,000 per day for each day in violation (Sec. 2607). However, a court can issue an enforcement order or fine a carrier only if it can be determined that no other reasonable alternatives are available to law enforcement. This provision allows carriers to deploy features and services which may not meet the requirements of the bill. Furthermore, this legislation does not permit the government to block the adoption or use of any feature or service by a telecommunications carrier which does not meet the requirements. The bill requires the government to reimburse carriers for all reasonable costs associated with complying with the capacity requirements. In other words, the government will pay for upgrades of current features or services, as well as any future upgrades which may be necessary, pursuant to published notices of capacity requirements (Sec. 2608). There is $500,000,000 authorized for appropriation to cover the costs of government reimbursements to carriers. In the event that a smaller sum is actually appropriated, the bill allows a court to determine whether a carrier must comply (Sec. 2608 (d)). This section recognizes that telecommunications carriers may not be responsible for meeting the requirements if the government does not cover reasonable costs. The government is also required to submit a report to congress within four years describing all costs paid to carriers for upgrades (Sec. 4). ENHANCED PRIVACY PROTECTIONS ---------------------------- The legislation contains enhanced privacy protections for transactional information (such as telephone toll records and electronic mail logs) generated in the course of completing a communication. Current law permits law enforcement to gain access to transactional information through a subpoena. The bill establishes a higher standard for law enforcement access to transactional data contained electronic mail logs and other online records. Telephone toll records would still be available through a subpoena. Under the new standard, law enforcement is required to obtain a court order by demonstrating specific and articulable facts that electronic mail logs and other online transactional records are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation (Sec. 10). Law enforcement is also prohibited from remotely activating any surveillance capability. All intercepts must be conducted with the affirmative consent of a telecommunications carrier and activated by a designated employee of the carrier within the carrier's facilities (Sec. 2604). The bill further requires that, when using pen registers and trap and trace devices, law enforcement will use, when reasonably available, devices which only provide call set up and dialed number information (Sec. 10). This provision will ensure that as law enforcement employs new technologies in pen register and trap and trace devices, it will not gain access to additional call setup information beyond its current authority. Finally, the bill extends the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) protections against interception of wireless communications to cordless telephones, making illegal the intentional interception of the radio portion of a cordless telephone (the transmission between the handset and the base unit). CELLULAR SCANNERS ----------------- The bill makes it a crime to possess or use an altered telecommunications instrument (such as a cellular telephone or scanning receiver) to obtain unauthorized access to telecommunications services (Sec. 9). This provision is intended to prevent the illegal use of cellular and other wireless communications services. Violations under this section face imprisonment for up to 15 years and a fine of up to $50,000. IMPROVEMENTS OF THE EDWARDS/LEAHY BILL OVER PREVIOUS FBI PROPOSALS ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Digital Telephony legislative proposal was first offered in 1992 by the Bush Administration. The 1992 version of the bill: * applied to all providers of wire or electronic communications services (no exemptions for information services, interexchange carriers or private networks); * gave the government the explicit authority to block or enjoin a feature or service that did not meet the requirements; * contained no privacy protections; * contained no public process for determining the capacity requirements; * contained no government reimbursement (carriers were responsible for meeting all costs); * would have allowed remote access to communications by law enforcement, and; * granted telecommunications carriers only 18 months to comply. The Bush Administration proposal was offered on capitol hill for almost a year, but did attract any congressional sponsors. The proposal was again offered under the Clinton Administration's FBI in March of 1993. The Clinton Administration's bill was a moderated version of the original 1992 proposal: * It required the government to pay all reasonable costs incurred by telecommunications carriers in retrofitting their facilities in order to correct existing problems; * It encouraged (but did not require), the Attorney General to consult with telecommunications industry representatives and standards bodies to facilitate compliance, * It narrowed the scope of the legislation to common carriers, rather than all providers of electronic communications services. Although the Clinton Administration version was an improvement over the Bush Administration proposal, it did not address the larger concerns of public interest organizations or the telecommunications industry. The Clinton Administration version: * did not contain any protections for access to transactional information; * did not contain any public process for determining the capability requirements or public notice of law enforcement's capacity needs; * would have allowed law enforcement to dictate system design and bar the introduction of features and services which did not meet the requirements, and; * would have allowed law enforcement to use pen registers and trap and trace devices to obtain tracking or physical location information. Locating Relevant Documents =========================== ** Original 1992 Bush-era draft ** ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/Old/digtel92_old_bill.draft gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Policy/FBI/Old, digtel92_old_bill.draft http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/Old/digtel92_old_bill.draft bbs: +1 202 638 6120 (8N1, 300-14400bps), file area: Privacy - Digital Telephony; file: digtel92.old ** 1993/1994 Clinton-era draft ** ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94_bill.draft gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Policy/FBI, digtel94_bill.draft http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94_bill.draft bbs: +1 202 638 6120 (8N1, 300-14400bps), file area: Privacy - Digital Telephony; file: digtel94.dft ** 1994 final draft, as sponsored ** ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94.bill gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Policy/FBI, digtel94.bill http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94.bill bbs: +1 202 638 6120 (8N1, 300-14400bps), file area: Privacy - Digital Telephony; file: digtel94.bil ** EFF Statement on sponsored version ** ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94_statement.eff gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Policy/FBI, digtel94_statement.eff http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/FBI/digtel94_statement.eff bbs: +1 202 638 6120 (8N1, 300-14400bps), file area: Privacy - Digital Telephony; file: digtel94.eff %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 'ZINE FAQ By Jerod Pore (jerod23@well.sf.ca.us) This file is Shareright 1994 by Jerod Pore; you may (and please do) copy, reproduce, replicate and distribute this information however, whereever and in whatever format, and as often as you wish, as long as this sentence is included. Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. What are zines? Zines are small press publications with a press run of 15 - 5,000. They often deal with obscure or controversial subjects, or they're about the life of the publisher, or they're about the latest underground muzak sensation. How does one find out about zines? The best place to start is with Factsheet Five or Factsheet Five-Electric. We review 1,000 - 1,500 zines every three months (more or less). We provide ordering information, size, quality of reproduction, contents and what we think about a zine. Once you get a few zines that sound interesting, you'll notice other zines referred to. Pretty soon you'll have more reading material then you know what to do with. How does one produce a zine? That's beyond the scope of this document. But my stock answer is go to lunch at 11:30 am, get back by 12:15 and you should have plenty of time to use the equipment at school or at work. Write down your thoughts (I suggest doing artwork on your own time), photocopy 40 or 50 copies, send one to us and to a few zines you think would be interested in yours. You may want to get the Zine Publishers' Resource guide, either $3.00 from Seth at the address below, or the prior version is available from the ftp and gopher sites. How does one get the zines? When ordering zines, cash is the best medium of exchange. Forget what your mother told you about evil thieves stealing one dollar bills out of mail boxes. If you absolutely must send a check or money order (and a money order is preferred over a check), then make it out to the name in the address portion of the reviews. However, many people publish zines under pseudonyms. Unless available only for a ridiculous amount of money, just send cash. Many zines, especially personal zines, science fiction fanzines and anarchist zines are available for what is quaintly known as "The Usual." "The Usual" is your zine or tape or record or calendar in trade, or a well-written Letter of Comment on the subject of the zine, or $2 - $3. Be warned about a few things. There are no guarantees. Checks are likely to be thrown away. Some zine names with especially offensive titles have often had their mail thrown away by self-righteous born- again postal workers, I kid you not! If the name of the zine is apt to offend your third-grade teacher, don't put it on the envelope. Some zines published in rather provincial parts of the world won't get their mail if the publisher's name isn't on the envelope, so whatever the name is in address, that's the name that should go on the envelope. I can work only with what information is provided me. I'll post any special requirements that are conveyed to me. If a zine is free, you may want to help out with some stamps. Free often translates as "The Usual," and many anarchists will accept food stamps. How to contact us with questions, etc. regarding F5 - either the paper or electronic versions. The email address for Factsheet Five and Factsheet Five - Electric is: jerod23@well.sf.ca.us Once upon a time, Seth had an email address. It may be reactivated in the future. The phone number for Factsheet Five (paper only) is +1-415-668-1781 Where should stuff be sent? For anything that can't be sent electronically, which is most of the stuff we deal with; comments, questions, feedback, donations, zines and other contributions to the defense of free expression rights around the world should be sent to either of these addresses: Factsheet Five Seth Friedman PO Box 170099 San Francisco CA 94117-0099 (This is the *only* address for subscriptions to the paper version) Factsheet Five Jerod Pore 1800 Market St. San Francisco CA 94102-6297 (This address is good for items that can't be sent to a PO Box) If you have a preference of reviewers, then send your zine to either of the above addresses as you see fit. Please, though, send your zine to just *ONE* address. Multiple copies just slow us down. I do most of the Fringe, Hate, Rant, SubGenius and Science Fiction/Fantasy zines. Seth either reviews or distributes the rest. We have a couple of long-time reviewers for two niches. They publish their own review zines so you get twice the coverage. We must stress that you send poetry to Luigi-Bob, because poetry sent to San Francisco won't be reviewed for a couple of issues. Send your queer, bi or especially prurient zines to: Larry-bob Queer Zine Explosion PO Box 591275 San Francisco CA 94159-1275 Send all poetry or prose/poetry zines with lots of poetry to: Luigi-Bob Drake Burning Press PO Box 585 Lakewood OH 44107 How does one obtain the reviews of zines? The files that comprise Factsheet Five - Electric are available for online reading or downloading from WELL or with a gopher client with gopher gopher.well.sf.ca.us. The files are also available via anonymous ftp from etext.archive.umich.edu in /pub/Factsheet.Five. The prior issue is in /pub/Factsheet.Five/Last.Issue. The WWW site is http://www.well.com/ You may subscribe to Factsheet Five - Electric by emailing me with "subscribe" in the subject line and your email address as the *entire* text. The files are sent out as they become available. Email subscriptions are sent out *last*, as it's a real pain in the ass for me to deal with. F5-E is available from other ftp and gopher sites, as well as BBS's around the world, but I don't track other locations. What is the best method of receiving the review files? The WELL is the "best" place. Not only is The WELL the greatest BBS in CyberSpace (no, I don't get a kickback; I pay $30-50 a month to be on WELL) it's the homebase for F5 - Electric. The most recent files are there. Online zines that are sent to me are there. News, gossip and rumours about zines and other underground media are there. 2600, Full Disclosure, bOING-bOING and other zinesters are there. The WELL is, however, somewhat expensive at $15.00 a month and $2.00 an hour. After WELL, ftp, gopher or WWW are the next best ways of getting the files. Our ftp sites accept anonymous as a login and your return address as a password. For some people, especially those of you on FidoNet, Compu$erve and other services with email-only gateways to The Internet, email is the *only* way to get the files. Unfornuately, the large file sizes (files range from 8 - 100k) prevent many locations from receiving them through email, especially uunet and uucp sites. How do ftp, gopher and WWW users know when new or updated files are available? For now, updates to F5-E will be announced in the newsgroups that attract people interested in zines: alt.zines and rec.mag An excellent suggestion was made about having an email service that announces just the names of the new or updated files to ftp users. I've juggled two email subscription lists, so this idea will be too much of a hassle to implement. I don't know if the zines-list is still active. If it is, I might send announcements out that way. What is alt.zines? alt.zines is a Usenet newsgroup about zines. It's where we discuss zine publishing, hype our zines, bitch about mainstream publications trying to coopt zines and so forth. It's unmoderated, but there's a few of us there most of the time to answer these questions over&over&over and to point out that your slick publication about Christian technology with a circulation of over 150,000 is *not* a zine. Much of the posts in alt.zines are xposted to rec.mag, to benefit people at sites where the anal-retentive administrators refuse to carry the alt. hierarchy. May the files be reprinted or posted elsewhere? All files (just like this one) are shareright. You may reproduce the information contained within them freely as long as others may reproduce that same information. In other words, you may use but not copyright these files. Shareright does not prevent you from charging money (or whatever your preferred medium of exchange is) for distribution. Including pertinent parts of this file, and giving credit to the reviewers is especially good for your karma, but not absolutely required to use what you wish of the review files. We're more interested in the widespread dissemination of the information. BBS operators are especially encouraged to make whatever files you deem appropriate available to your users. How does one submit reviews? For now, email the reviews to me. This could be subject to change, once we work out everything. Each file will have reviews of one or more zines that are somehow categorized together by subject matter or by reviewer. Also feel free to post to alt.zines reviews of zines you have come across or to hype your own zines. I've adopted the nerdy HTML format that is used for WWW browsing. While sticking to the format is nice, it is not necessary, as long as all pertinent information is included. However if the reviews are to be accessible by the Web, then you had better do them this way. Please keep all reviews in vanilla ASCII format. Also keep them shareright. We are especially in need of reviews ezines and of zines that are published outside of North America. Now, I get zines from Australia and, since I used to live there, I understand the dialect and cultural references. We don't have the resources to review zines that aren't published in English. I'd rather that F5-Electic not be an English only publication. If you get zines from other parts of the world and are willing to review them, please send the reviews to me. We are carrying a listing of ezines, thanks to johnl@netcom.com, but we would like to get more reviews of ezines, too. What are the subscription rates and/or sample copy prices for the print version of Factsheet Five? Single issues: US Newsstand Cover Price: $3.95 (Marketing sucks!) US via 1st Class: $6.00 Canada, Mexico: $6.00 Elsewhere in the world: $9.00 Six issue Subscription: US 3rd Class: $20.00 Friend Rate* $40.00 * First class, in an envelope, with the publisher's eternal gratitude AND the occassional subscriber goodie, like the Zine Publisher's Guide, or 2 pounds of zines for $3.00. Canada, Mexico: $35.00 UK, Europe, Latin America $45.00 Asia, Africa, Pacific $55.00 "We accept for payment cash (US or otherwise), check or money order drawn in US funds (payable to Factsheet Five), or IRCs (at the rate of $0.50 each). Prisoners may get single issues by paying in stamps." Please foward orders to: R. Seth Friedman P.O. Box 170099 San Francisco, CA 94117-0099 Will the subscription list (for the paper version) be sold? Seth plans making the list available to lots of cool companies like Archie McPhee, Blue Ryder, Co-Op America, and Kitchen Sink Press. If you have an aversion to receiving cool catalogs and other neat stuff in the mail, just mention it with your order. We'll be sure to keep your address private. What about the subscription list to the electronic version? The only thing I'll do with the email list is dump it when I get fed up with emailling huge files. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% LEGION OF DOOM T-SHIRTS!! Get 'em By Chris Goggans After a complete sellout at HoHo Con 1993 in Austin, TX this past December, the official Legion of Doom t-shirts are available once again. Join the net luminaries world-wide in owning one of these amazing shirts. Impress members of the opposite sex, increase your IQ, annoy system administrators, get raided by the government and lose your wardrobe! Can a t-shirt really do all this? Of course it can! "THE HACKER WAR -- LOD vs MOD" This t-shirt chronicles the infamous "Hacker War" between rival groups The Legion of Doom and The Masters of Destruction. The front of the shirt displays a flight map of the various battle-sites hit by MOD and tracked by LOD. The back of the shirt has a detailed timeline of the key dates in the conflict, and a rather ironic quote from an MOD member. (For a limited time, the original is back!) "LEGION OF DOOM -- INTERNET WORLD TOUR" The front of this classic shirt displays "Legion of Doom Internet World Tour" as well as a sword and telephone intersecting the planet earth, skull-and-crossbones style. The back displays the words "Hacking for Jesus" as well as a substantial list of "tour-stops" (internet sites) and a quote from Aleister Crowley. All t-shirts are sized XL, and are 100% cotton. Cost is $15.00 (US) per shirt. International orders add $5.00 per shirt for postage. Send checks or money orders. Please, no credit cards, even if it's really your card. Name: __________________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________________ City, State, Zip: __________________________________________ I want ____ "Hacker War" shirt(s) I want ____ "Internet World Tour" shirt(s) Enclosed is $______ for the total cost. Mail to: Chris Goggans 603 W. 13th #1A-278 Austin, TX 78701 These T-shirts are sold only as a novelty items, and are in no way attempting to glorify computer crime. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% A POINT AND CLICK SOCIETY LEARN TO DRIVE, OR GET OFF THE ROAD An Editorial By Scott Davis (dfox@fc.net) As a computer support professional, I am unfortunate enough to see some of the developments pertaining to the Internet as they occur. I say "unfortunate" not because what I see is so terrible, but what I see never ceases to knock me off of my feet. What I am referring to is the massive wave of new people coming on to the "Inpho-s00per Highway" who if not for icons to click on and a mouse to click with, would not be able to use a personal computer...much less some global network. Uhh..uhh I thank I'm referrin' to that "Inter-Net" thang... People are being sucked into a revolution of digital "Everything". Computers do their taxes, balance their books, order groceries and other products, and deliver electronic mail...among other things. But, it bugs me to no end to see somebody with an e-mail address from AOL. It makes me want to mail them back and tell them "HEY! Did you know that you are on the dirt road that runs beside the Internet?" Or tell them to "Get out of the ghetto of the Internet." "Do you know what you're doing?" What the big companies have done is give the masses a loaded gun... and the masses have never fired a weapon in their life! They've given them a Porsche 944...and they've never driven a car. But I also question the common sense of the average computer user. "Do you know what this computer does?" The bottom line is that there are more things to do with this thing than point and click on all of your pretty applications. Services such as AOL promote things like "electronic mail" and "Access to the Internet". But how many people who purchased the software did any reading or research as to WHAT the Internet is. WHAT is electronic mail? I know that I'll probably get a thousand flames for this article, and they'll say 'We were all newbies once!" I am completely aware of that, but when we (people who have been on the Net for 5+ years) were new, we had to learn every aspect of what we were getting into. There was no point-and-click options. If we did not know command line operations, we didn't surf! One problem can be contributed to the press. This is the fact that they have made "The Internet" and Info-SuperHighway" buzz-phrases that people are going to be attracted to because they sound "cool". There are no PC-based computers being marketed without Dos and Windows to this editor's knowledge. When the customer sees "Dos and Windows", how many people do you think say, "Hey Look...it's got Dos too!" It simply does not happen. Who cares what an operating system is, right? Well, the fact is...you better care. Because without an operating system, you wouldn't be able to point and click on you pretty little icons. I commend AOL, Compuserve, Microsoft and others who develop software for the masses. They do a fine job and a great service to the world. Computing just would not be the same without them (I guess). Computers are being mass-marketed and distributed to the public like social security cards. For the big-boys in the industry, this is good. It means profit, jobs, and market-share...and that sometime soon, every household in America will have at least one computer (or doorstop) and the owner will not know the first thing about it. Commercial software manufacturers and Internet service providers are looking at this as a slaughter. Rounding up the cattle, as it were. This is fine with me, but it is the end-user's responsibility to do work on his/her own to know what this "Hi-Tek-Hiway" is. There are ways not to become sheep. And if you don't do your homework, you don't deserve better. I think that people should be required to attend some in-depth computer courses before being able to buy one. * Computer Basics: This class would last a total of 100 hours. Two hours a night, three nights a week. Windows and other applications would not be discussed. The students would have to prove that they are proficient in Dos, Unix, or whatever command-line operating system their PC used. At the end of the 100 hour course, if they passed the command-line stuff, they would be permitted to attend a class that provided instruction on GUI's and other software. * Internet Basics 101: If the sheep are so eager to get on this damn SuperHighway, learn what it is about. Learn where it origninated and what it can do. --- and learn how NOT to be a headache to others. Ethics would be a portion of the instruction. Learn who you are, evaluate your place on the Net, and know that no matter who you are... there are bigger and better hackers out there. * Learn the difference between the Highway and the shoulder. * What is "REAL" access and just a gateway to where you WISH you were. * Hardware Troubleshooting: If my floppy disk drive is not working, I'd kinda like to know what to do to see if it is actually broken. If you purchased a $30,000 car and there were no service centers in the world, wouldn't you like to know how to change your oil? * Telecommunications Instruction: What is a modem? What does it do? Learn how to use non-commercial telecom software. Find some modem software package that does not come from a major service provider or is not used with the most popular GUI in the world...and call up a few local bulletin board systems. Also, if my modem is not functioning, I'd like to know some of the reasons why, and try to correct them. These are some simple suggestions that I believe everyone should do before purchasing a computer system. Of course, if you have been using computers for an extended period of time and proclaim to know how they work, there would be a CLEP test for you. Answer 5 questions about hardware, three questions on Internet, and answer NO to the question "Do you use Windows?" and you'll be on your way home with that new system. This is certainly not an attempt to hammer commerical services and/or providers, certain software programs designed to make computing easier, or the people who use them. It's simply a statement saying "Know what you're doing, make yourself open to fluctuations in trends, educate yourself on global networking, and have a nice day." There is no excuse for ignorance. Open your documentation, go to the book store, whatever. Do your homework. Otherwise, pull over...you're going to jail for driving without a license. There are political fights going on right now over different aspects of this "SuperHighway" that you're so eager to get on. The decisions made will ultimately affect you. Do you care? You should. There are lawyers, lobbyists, organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and many individuals fighting for your right to use the services that you use. They are fighting to keep it "usable." In closing, be alert, be aware...and get educated. The light at the end of the tunnel to success might be a locomotive! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO SEND MAIL TO YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS ASKING THEM IF THEY OFFER THEIR SYSTEM LOGS TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES - ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS. ACTIONS SUCH AS THIS MAY BE A VIOLATION OF YOUR PRIVACY. IF YOU DISCOVER THIS TO BE THE CASE, MAIL US! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% KEYNOTE ADDRESS : CRYPTOGRAPHY CONFERENCE By Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.sf.ca.us) Hello everybody. It's quite an honor to be delivering the keynote address -- a *thankfully brief* keynote address -- at this conference. I hope to clear the decks in short order, and let you spend an engrossing afternoon, listening to an intense discussion of complex and important public issues, by highly qualified people, who fully understand what they're talking about. Unlike myself. Before all this begins, though, I do want to establish a context for this conference. Let me briefly put on my professional dunce-hat, as a popular-science writer, and try to make it clear to you exactly what the heck is going on here today. Cryptography. The science and study of secret writing, especially codes and cypher systems. The procedures, processes, measures and algorithms for making and using secret exchanges of information. *Secret* exchanges, done, made and conducted without the knowledge of others, whether those others be governments, competitors, local, state or federal police, private investigators, wiretappers, cellular scanners, corporate security people, marketers, merchandisers, journalists, public health officials, squads for public decency, snoopy neighbors, or even your own spouse, your own parents, or your own children. Cryptography is a way to confine knowledge to the initiated and the privileged in your circle, whatever that circle might be: corporate co-workers, fellow bureaucrats, fellow citizens, fellow modem-users, fellow artists, fellow writers, fellow influence-peddlers, fellow criminals, fellow software pirates, fellow child pornographers. Cryptography is a way to assure the privacy of digital way to help control the ways in which you reveal yourself to the world. It is also a way to turn everything inside a computer, even a computer seized or stolen by experts, into an utterly scrambled Sanskrit that no one but the holder of the key can read. It is a swift, powerful, portable method of high-level computer security. Electronic cryptography is potentially, perhaps, even a new form of information economics. Cryptography is a very hot issue in electronic civil liberties circles at the moment. After years of the deepest, darkest, never-say-anything, military spook obscurity, cryptography is out of the closet and openly flaunting itself in the street. Cryptography is attracting serious press coverage. The federal administration has offered its own cryptographic cure-all, the Clipper Chip. Cryptography is being discussed openly and publicly, and practiced openly and publicly. It is passing from the hands of giant secretive bureaucracies, to the desktop of the individual. Public-key cryptography, in particular, is a strange and novel form of cryptography which has some very powerful collateral applications and possibilities, which can only be described as bizarre, and possibly revolutionary. Cryptography is happening, and happening now. It often seems a truism in science and technology that it takes twenty years for anything really important to happen: well, Whitfield Diffie was publishing about public-key cryptography in 1975. The idea, the theory for much of what will be discussed today was already in place, theoretically, in 1975. This would suggest a target date of 1995 for this issue to break permanently out of the arid world of theory, and into the juicy, down-and-dirty real world of politics, lawsuits, and money. I rather think that this is a likely scenario. Personally, I think the situation's gonna blow a seam. And by choosing to attend this EFF and EFF-Austin conference in September 1993, you are still a handy two years ahead of the curve. You can congratulate yourself! Why do I say blow a seam? Because at this very moment, ladies and gentlemen, today, there is a grand jury meeting in Silicon Valley, under the auspices of two US federal attorneys and the US Customs Service. That grand jury is mulling over possible illegality, possible indictments, possible heaven-knows-what, relating to supposed export-law violations concerning this powerful cryptography technology. A technology so powerful that exporting cryptographic algorithms requires the same license that our government would grant to a professional armaments dealer. We can envision this federal grand jury meeting, in San Jose California, as a kind of dark salute to our conference here in Austin, a dark salute from the forces of the cryptographic status quo. I can guarantee you that whatever you hear at this conference today, is not gonna be the last you hear about this subject. I can also guarantee you that the people you'll be hearing from today are ideal people to tell you about these issues. I wrote a book once, partly about some of these people, so I've come to know some of them personally. I hope you'll forgive me, if I briefly wax all sentimental in public about how wonderful they are. There will be plenty of time for us to get all hardened and dark and cynical later. I'll be glad to help do that, because I'm pretty good at that when I put my mind to it, but in the meantime, today, we should feel lucky. We are lucky enough to have some people here who can actually tell us something useful about our future. Our real future, the future we can actually have, the future we'll be living in, the future that we can actually do something about. We have among us today the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are meeting in Austin in order to pursue strategy for their own national organization, but in the meantime, they also have graciously agreed to appear publicly and share their expertise and their opinions with us Austinites. Furthermore, they are not getting a dime out of this; they are doing it, amazingly, out of sheer public-spiritedness. I'm going to introduce each of them and talk about them very briefly. I hope you will reserve your applause until the end. Although these people deserve plenty of applause, we are short on quality applause resources. In fact, today we will be rationing applause care, in order to assure a supply of basic, decent, ego-boosting applause for everyone, including those unable to privately afford top-quality applause care for the health of their own egos. A federal-policy in-joke for the many Washington insiders we have in the room today. Very well, on to the business at hand. Mitch Kapor is a cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a software designer, a very prominent software entrepreneur, a philanthropist, a writer and journalist, and a civil liberties activist. In 1990, when Mr. Kapor co-founded EFF, there was very considerable legal and constitutional trouble in the world of cyberspace. Mitch spoke out on these sometimes-arcane, sometimes-obscure issues, and he spoke loudly, repeatedly, publicly, and very effectively. And when Mitch Kapor finished speaking-out, those issues were no longer obscure or arcane. This is a gift Mitch has, it seems. Mitch Kapor has also quietly done many good deeds for the electronic community, despite his full personal knowledge that no good deed goes unpunished. We very likely wouldn't be meeting here today, if it weren't for Mitch, and anything he says will be well worth your attention. Jerry Berman is the President and Director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is based in Washington DC. He is a longtime electronic civil liberties activist, formerly the founder and director of the Projects on Privacy and Information Technology for the American Civil Liberties Union. Jerry Berman has published widely on the legal and legislative implications of computer security and electronic communications privacy, and his expertise in networks and the law is widely recognized. He is heading EFF's efforts on the national information infrastructure in the very thick of the Clinton-Gore administration, and Mr Berman, as you might imagine, is a very busy man these days, with a lot of digital irons in the virtual fire. Mr. Kapor and Mr Berman will be taking part in our first panel today, on the topic of EFF's current directions in national public policy. This panel will last from 1:45 to 3PM sharp and should be starting about fifteen minutes after I knock it off and leave this podium. We will allow these well-qualified gentlemen to supply their own panel moderation, and simply tell us whatever is on their minds. And I rather imagine that given the circumstances, cryptography is likely to loom large. And, along with the other panels, if they want to throw it open for questions from the floor, that's their decision. There will be a fifteen-minute break between each panel to allow our brains to decompress. Our second panel today, beginning at 3:15, will be on the implications of cryptography for law enforcement and for industry, and the very large and increasingly dangerous areas where police and industry overlap in cyberspace. Our participants will be Esther Dyson and Mike Godwin. Esther Dyson is a prominent computer-industry journalist. Since 1982, she has published a well-known and widely-read industry newsletter called Release 1.0. Her industry symposia are justly famous, and she's also very well-known as an industry-guru in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Ms Dyson is very knowledgeable, exceptionally well-informed, and always a healthy distance ahead of her time. When it comes to the computer industry, Esther Dyson not only knows where the bodies are buried, she has a chalk outline ready-and-waiting for the bodies that are still upright! She's on the Board of EFF as well as the Santa Fe Institute, the Global Business Network, the Women's Forum, and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Mike Godwin is the legal services council for EFF. He is a journalist, writer, attorney, legal theorist, and legal adviser to the electronically distressed. He is a veteran public speaker on these topics, who has conducted many seminars and taken part in many fora all over the United States. He is also a former Austinite, a graduate of the UT School of Law, and a minor character in a William Gibson novel, among his other unique distinctions. Mike Godwin is not only in EFF inside the beltway of Washington, but is on the board of the local group, EFF-Austin. Mike Godwin is a well-known, one might even say beloved, character in the electronic community. Mike Godwin is especially beloved to those among us who have had machinery sucked into the black hole of a federal search-and-seizure process. Our third panel today, beginning at 4:45, will be the uniquely appropriate Cypherpunk Panel. Our three barricade-climbing, torch-waving, veteran manifesto-writers will be John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore and Eric Hughes. Mr Eric Hughes is NOT a member of the EFF Board of Directors. Mr Hughes is the moderator of the well-known, notorious even, Internet cypherpunk mailing list. He is a private citizen and programmer from the Bay Area of California, who has a computer, has a modem, has crypto-code and knows how to use it! Mr Hughes is here today entirely on his own, very considerable, initiative, and we of EFF-Austin are proud to have him here to publicly declare anything and everything that he cares to tell us about this important public issue. Mr John Gilmore *is* a member of the EFF Board. He is a twenty-year veteran programmer, a pioneer in Sun Microsystems and Cygnus Support, a stalwart of the free software movement, and a long-term electronic civil libertarian who is very bold and forthright in his advocacy of privacy, and of private encryption systems. Mr Gilmore is, I must say, remarkable among UNIX and GNU programmers for the elegance and clarity of his prose writings. I believe that even those who may disagree with Mr Gilmore about the complex and important issues of cryptography, will be forced to admit that they actually understand what Mr Gilmore is saying. This alone makes him a national treasure. Furthermore, John Gilmore has never attended college, and has never bought a suit. When John Gilmore speaks his mind in public, people should sit up straight! And our last introductee is the remarkable John Perry Barlow. Journalist, poet, activist, techno-crank, manifesto-writer, WELLbeing, long-time lyricist for the Grateful Dead, co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation, member of the Wyoming Republican Party, a man who at last count had at least ten personal phone numbers, including two faxes, two cellulars and a beeper; bon vivant, legend in his own time, a man with whom superlatives fail, art critic, father of three, contributing editor of MONDO 2000, a man and a brother that I am proud to call truly *my kind of guy:* John Perry Barlow. So these are our panelists today, ladies and gentlemen: a fine group of public-spirited American citizens who, coincidentally, happen to have a collective IQ high enough to boil platinum. Let's give them a round of applause. (((frenzied applause))) Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, EFF-Austin is not the EFF. We are a local group with our own incorporation and our own unique organizational challenges. We are doing things on a local scale, where the National EFF cannot operate. But we know them, and we *like* them, and we are proud to have them here. Furthermore, every time some Austin company, such as Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or the currently unlucky Austin Codeworks, publishers of a program called "Moby Crypto," find themselves in some strange kind of federal hot water, we are not only proud to know the EFF, we are *glad* to know them. Glad, and *grateful!* They have a lot to tell us today, and they are going to tell us things they believe we really need to know. And after these formal panels, this evening from 8 to 10, we are going to indulge in a prolonged informal session of what we Austinites are best at: absorbing alcohol, reminiscing about the Sixties, and making what Mitch Kapor likes to call "valuable personal contacts." We of EFF-Austin are proud and happy to be making information and opinion on important topics and issues available to you, the Austin public, at NO CHARGE!! Of course, it would help us a lot, if you bought some of the unbelievably hip and with-it T-shirts we made up for this gig, plus the other odd and somewhat overpriced, frankly, memorabilia and propaganda items that we of EFF-Austin sell, just like every other not-for-profit organization in the world. Please help yourself to this useful and enlightening stuff, so that the group can make more money and become even more ambitious than we already are. And on a final note, for those of you who are not from Austin, I want to say to you as an Austinite and member of EFF-Austin, welcome to our city. Welcome to the Capital of Texas. The River City. The City of the Violet Crown. Silicon Hills. Berkeley-on-the-Colorado. The Birthplace of Cyberpunk. And the Waterloo of the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force. You are all very welcome here. So today, let's all learn something, and let's all have some fun. Thanks a lot. | Disclaimers : You are encouraged to re-distribute this | | document electronically. Any opinions expressed belong to | | the author and not the organization. (c) 1993. | [From the EFF-Austin online newsletter, _WORD_, Issue #9] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% -Editor's Note: This is a little old...but still good and important reading! =-=-=-=-=-=-Copyright 1993,4 Wired USA Ltd. All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=- JACKBOOTS ON THE INFOBAHN By John Perry Barlow (WIRED 2.04) Clipper is a last ditch attempt by the United States, the last great power from the old Industrial Era, to establish imperial control over cyberspace. [Note: The following article appeared in the April 1994 issue of WIRED. We, the editors of WIRED, are net-casting it now in its pre-published form as a public service. Because of the vital and urgent nature of its message, we believe readers on the Net should hear and take action now. You are free to pass this article on electronically; in fact we urge you to replicate it throughout the net with our blessings. If you do, please keep the copyright statements and this note intact. For a complete listing of Clipper-related resources available through WIRED Online, send email to with the following message: "send clipper.index". - The Editors of WIRED] On January 11, I managed to schmooze myself aboard Air Force 2. It was flying out of LA, where its principal passenger had just outlined his vision of the information superhighway to a suited mob of television, show- biz, and cable types who fervently hoped to own it one day - if they could ever figure out what the hell it was. From the standpoint of the Electronic Frontier Foundation the speech had been wildly encouraging. The administration's program, as announced by Vice President Al Gore, incorporated many of the concepts of open competition, universal access, and deregulated common carriage that we'd been pushing for the previous year. But he had said nothing about the future of privacy, except to cite among the bounties of the NII its ability to "help law enforcement agencies thwart criminals and terrorists who might use advanced telecommunications to commit crimes." On the plane I asked Gore what this implied about administration policy on cryptography. He became as noncommittal as a cigar-store Indian. "We'll be making some announcements.... I can't tell you anything more." He hurried to the front of the plane, leaving me to troubled speculation. Despite its fundamental role in assuring privacy, transaction security, and reliable identity within the NII, the Clinton administration has not demonstrated an enlightenment about cryptography up to par with the rest of its digital vision. The Clipper Chip - which threatens to be either the goofiest waste of federal dollars since President Gerald Ford's great Swine Flu program or, if actually deployed, a surveillance technology of profound malignancy - seemed at first an ugly legacy of the Reagan-Bush modus operandi. "This is going to be our Bay of Pigs," one Clinton White House official told me at the time Clipper was introduced, referring to the disastrous plan to invade Cuba that Kennedy inherited from Eisenhower. (Clipper, in case you're just tuning in, is an encryption chip that the National Security Agency and FBI hope will someday be in every phone and computer in America. It scrambles your communications, making them unintelligible to all but their intended recipients. All, that is, but the government, which would hold the "key" to your chip. The key would separated into two pieces, held in escrow, and joined with the appropriate "legal authority.") Of course, trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds. And, since the folks I've met in this White House seem like extremely smart, conscious freedom-lovers - hell, a lot of them are Deadheads - I was sure that after they were fully moved in, they'd face down the National Security Agency and the FBI, let Clipper die a natural death, and lower the export embargo on reliable encryption products. Furthermore, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the National Security Council have been studying both Clipper and export embargoes since April. Given that the volumes of expert testimony they had collected overwhelmingly opposed both, I expected the final report would give the administration all the support it needed to do the right thing. I was wrong. Instead, there would be no report. Apparently, they couldn't draft one that supported, on the evidence, what they had decided to do instead. THE OTHER SHOE DROPS On Friday, February 4, the other jackboot dropped. A series of announcements from the administration made it clear that cryptography would become their very own "Bosnia of telecommunications" (as one staffer put it). It wasn't just that the old Serbs in the National Security Agency and the FBI were still making the calls. The alarming new reality was that the invertebrates in the White House were only too happy to abide by them. Anything to avoid appearing soft on drugs or terrorism. So, rather than ditching Clipper, they declared it a Federal Data Processing Standard, backing that up with an immediate government order for 50,000 Clipper devices. They appointed the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the Department of Treasury as the "trusted" third parties that would hold the Clipper key pairs. (Treasury, by the way, is also home to such trustworthy agencies as the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.) They reaffirmed the export embargo on robust encryption products, admitting for the first time that its purpose was to stifle competition to Clipper. And they outlined a very porous set of requirements under which the cops might get the keys to your chip. (They would not go into the procedure by which the National Security Agency could get them, though they assured us it was sufficient.) They even signaled the impending return of the dread Digital Telephony, an FBI legislative initiative requiring fundamental reengineering of the information infrastructure; providing wiretapping ability to the FBI would then become the paramount design priority. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS Actually, by the time the announcements thudded down, I wasn't surprised by them. I had spent several days the previous week in and around the White House. I felt like I was in another remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My friends in the administration had been transformed. They'd been subsumed by the vast mindfield on the other side of the security clearance membrane, where dwell the monstrous bureaucratic organisms that feed on fear. They'd been infected by the institutionally paranoid National Security Agency's Weltanschauung. They used all the telltale phrases. Mike Nelson, the White House point man on the NII, told me, "If only I could tell you what I know, you'd feel the same way I do." I told him I'd been inoculated against that argument during Vietnam. (And it does seem to me that if you're going to initiate a process that might end freedom in America, you probably need an argument that isn't classified.) Besides, how does he know what he knows? Where does he get his information? Why, the National Security Agency, of course. Which, given its strong interest in the outcome, seems hardly an unimpeachable source. However they reached it, Clinton and Gore have an astonishingly simple bottom line, to which even the future of American liberty and prosperity is secondary: They believe that it is their responsibility to eliminate, by whatever means, the possibility that some terrorist might get a nuke and use it on, say, the World Trade Center. They have been convinced that such plots are more likely to ripen to hideous fruition behind a shield of encryption. The staffers I talked to were unmoved by the argument that anyone smart enough to steal a nuclear device is probably smart enough to use PGP or some other uncompromised crypto standard. And never mind that the last people who popped a hooter in the World Trade Center were able to get it there without using any cryptography and while under FBI surveillance. We are dealing with religion here. Though only ten American lives have been lost to terrorism in the last two years, the primacy of this threat has become as much an article of faith with these guys as the Catholic conviction that human life begins at conception or the Mormon belief that the Lost Tribe of Israel crossed the Atlantic in submarines. In the spirit of openness and compromise, they invited the Electronic Frontier Foundation to submit other solutions to the "problem" of the nuclear-enabled terrorist than key escrow devices, but they would not admit into discussion the argument that such a threat might, in fact, be some kind of phantasm created by the spooks to ensure their lavish budgets into the post-Cold War era. As to the possibility that good old-fashioned investigative techniques might be more valuable in preventing their show-case catastrophe (as it was after the fact in finding the alleged perpetrators of the last attack on the World Trade Center), they just hunkered down and said that when wiretaps were necessary, they were damned well necessary. When I asked about the business that American companies lose because of their inability to export good encryption products, one staffer essentially dismissed the market, saying that total world trade in crypto goods was still less than a billion dollars. (Well, right. Thanks more to the diligent efforts of the National Security Agency than to dim sales potential.) I suggested that a more immediate and costly real-world effect of their policies would be to reduce national security by isolating American commerce, owing to a lack of international confidence in the security of our data lines. I said that Bruce Sterling's fictional data-enclaves in places like the Turks and Caicos Islands were starting to look real-world inevitable. They had a couple of answers to this, one unsatisfying and the other scary. The unsatisfying answer was that the international banking community could just go on using DES, which still seemed robust enough to them. (DES is the old federal Data Encryption Standard, thought by most cryptologists to be nearing the end of its credibility.) More frightening was their willingness to counter the data-enclave future with one in which no data channels anywhere would be secure from examination by one government or another. Pointing to unnamed other countries that were developing their own mandatory standards and restrictions regarding cryptography, they said words to the effect of, "Hey, it's not like you can't outlaw the stuff. Look at France." Of course, they have also said repeatedly - and for now I believe them - that they have absolutely no plans to outlaw non-Clipper crypto in the US. But that doesn't mean that such plans wouldn't develop in the presence of some pending "emergency." Then there is that White House briefing document, issued at the time Clipper was first announced, which asserts that no US citizen "as a matter of right, is entitled to an unbreakable commercial encryption product." Now why, if it's an ability they have no intention of contesting, do they feel compelled to declare that it's not a right? Could it be that they are preparing us for the laws they'll pass after some bearded fanatic has gotten himself a surplus nuke and used something besides Clipper to conceal his plans for it? If they are thinking about such an eventuality, we should be doing so as well. How will we respond? I believe there is a strong, though currently untested, argument that outlawing unregulated crypto would violate the First Amendment, which surely protects the manner of our speech as clearly as it protects the content. But of course the First Amendment is, like the rest of the Constitution, only as good as the government's willingness to uphold it. And they are, as I say, in the mood to protect our safety over our liberty. This is not a mind-frame against which any argument is going to be very effective. And it appeared that they had already heard and rejected every argument I could possibly offer. In fact, when I drew what I thought was an original comparison between their stand against naturally proliferating crypto and the folly of King Canute (who placed his throne on the beach and commanded the tide to leave him dry), my government opposition looked pained and said he had heard that one almost as often as jokes about roadkill on the information superhighway. I hate to go to war with them. War is always nastier among friends. Furthermore, unless they've decided to let the National Security Agency design the rest of the National Information Infrastructure as well, we need to go on working closely with them on the whole range of issues like access, competition, workplace privacy, common carriage, intellectual property, and such. Besides, the proliferation of strong crypto will probably happen eventually no matter what they do. But then again, it might not. In which case we could shortly find ourselves under a government that would have the automated ability to log the time, origin and recipient of every call we made, could track our physical whereabouts continuously, could keep better account of our financial transactions than we do, and all without a warrant. Talk about crime prevention! Worse, under some vaguely defined and surely mutable "legal authority," they also would be able to listen to our calls and read our e-mail without having to do any backyard rewiring. They wouldn't need any permission at all to monitor overseas calls. If there's going to be a fight, I'd rather it be with this government than the one we'd likely face on that hard day. Hey, I've never been a paranoid before. It's always seemed to me that most governments are too incompetent to keep a good plot strung together all the way from coffee break to quitting time. But I am now very nervous about the government of the United States of America. Because Bill 'n' Al, whatever their other new-paradigm virtues, have allowed the very old-paradigm trogs of the Guardian Class to define as their highest duty the defense of America against an enemy that exists primarily in the imagination - and is therefore capable of anything. To assure absolute safety against such an enemy, there is no limit to the liberties we will eventually be asked to sacrifice. And, with a Clipper Chip in every phone, there will certainly be no technical limit on their ability to enforce those sacrifices. WHAT YOU CAN DO GET CONGRESS TO LIFT THE CRYPTO EMBARGO The administration is trying to impose Clipper on us by manipulating market forces. By purchasing massive numbers of Clipper devices, they intend to induce an economy of scale which will make them cheap while the export embargo renders all competition either expensive or nonexistent. We have to use the market to fight back. While it's unlikely that they'll back down on Clipper deployment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that with sufficient public involvement, we can get Congress to eliminate the export embargo. Rep. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has a bill (H.R. 3627) before the Economic Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that would do exactly that. She will need a lot of help from the public. They may not care much about your privacy in DC, but they still care about your vote. Please signal your support of H.R. 3627, either by writing her directly or e-mailing her at cantwell@eff.org. Messages sent to that address will be printed out and delivered to her office. In the subject header of your message, please include the words "support HR 3627." In the body of your message, express your reasons for supporting the bill. You may also express your sentiments to Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs chair, by e-mailing hamilton@eff.org. Furthermore, since there is nothing quite as powerful as a letter from a constituent, you should check the following list of subcommittee and committee members to see if your congressional representative is among them. If so, please copy them your letter to Rep. Cantwell. > Economic Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee: Democrats: Sam Gejdenson (Chair), D-Connecticut; James Oberstar, D- Minnesota; Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia; Maria Cantwell, D-Washington; Eric Fingerhut, D-Ohio; Albert R. Wynn, D-Maryland; Harry Johnston, D-Florida; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Charles Schumer, D-New York. Republicans: Toby Roth (ranking), R-Wisconsin; Donald Manzullo, R-Illinois; Doug Bereuter, R-Nebraska; Jan Meyers, R-Kansas; Cass Ballenger, R-North Carolina; Dana Rohrabacher, R-California. > House Committee on Foreign Affairs: Democrats: Lee Hamilton (Chair), D-Indiana; Tom Lantos, D-California; Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey; Howard Berman, D-California; Gary Ackerman, D-New York; Eni Faleomavaega, D-Somoa; Matthew Martinez, D- California; Robert Borski, D-Pennsylvania; Donal Payne, D-New Jersey; Robert Andrews, D-New Jersey; Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Alcee Hastings, D-Florida; Peter Deutsch, D-Florida; Don Edwards, D-California; Frank McCloskey, D-Indiana; Thomas Sawyer, D-Ohio; Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois. Republicans: Benjamin Gilman (ranking), R-New York; William Goodling, R- Pennsylvania; Jim Leach, R-Iowa; Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; Henry Hyde, R- Illinois; Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey; Dan Burton, R-Indiana; Elton Gallegly, R-California; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; David Levy, R-New York; Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Florida; Ed Royce, R-California. BOYCOTT CLIPPER DEVICES AND THE COMPANIES WHICH MAKE THEM. Don't buy anything with a Clipper Chip in it. Don't buy any product from a company that manufactures devices with Big Brother inside. It is likely that the government will ask you to use Clipper for communications with the IRS or when doing business with federal agencies. They cannot, as yet, require you to do so. Just say no. LEARN ABOUT ENCRYPTION AND EXPLAIN THE ISSUES TO YOUR UNWIRED FRIENDS The administration is banking on the likelihood that this stuff is too technically obscure to agitate anyone but nerds like us. Prove them wrong by patiently explaining what's going on to all the people you know who have never touched a computer and glaze over at the mention of words like "cryptography." Maybe you glaze over yourself. Don't. It's not that hard. For some hands-on experience, download a copy of PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - a shareware encryption engine which uses the robust RSA encryption algorithm. And learn to use it. GET YOUR COMPANY TO THINK ABOUT EMBEDDING REAL CRYPTOGRAPHY IN ITS PRODUCTS If you work for a company that makes software, computer hardware, or any kind of communications device, work from within to get them to incorporate RSA or some other strong encryption scheme into their products. If they say that they are afraid to violate the export embargo, ask them to consider manufacturing such products overseas and importing them back into the United States. There appears to be no law against that. Yet. You might also lobby your company to join the Digital Privacy and Security Working Group, a coalition of companies and public interest groups - including IBM, Apple, Sun, Microsoft, and, interestingly, Clipper phone manufacturer AT&T - that is working to get the embargo lifted. ENLIST! Self-serving as it sounds coming from me, you can do a lot to help by becoming a member of one of these organizations. In addition to giving you access to the latest information on this subject, every additional member strengthens our credibility with Congress. > Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation by writing membership@eff.org. > Join Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility by e-mailing cpsr.info@cpsr .org. CPSR is also organizing a protest, to which you can lend your support by sending e-mail to clipper.petition@cpsr.org with "I oppose Clipper" in the message body. Ftp/gopher/WAIS to cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/ crypto/clipper for more info. In his LA speech, Gore called the development of the NII "a revolution." And it is a revolutionary war we are engaged in here. Clipper is a last ditch attempt by the United States, the last great power from the old Industrial Era, to establish imperial control over cyberspace. If they win, the most liberating development in the history of humankind could become, instead, the surveillance system which will monitor our grandchildren's morality. We can be better ancestors than that. San Francisco, California Wednesday, February 9, 1994 * * * John Perry Barlow (barlow@eff.org) is co-founder and Vice-Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which defends liberty, both in Cyberspace and the Physical World. He has three daughters. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=WIRED Online Copyright Notice=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Copyright 1993,4 Wired USA Ltd. All rights reserved. This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd. If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com). WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% NOTES FROM CYBERSPACE VOLUME 3 By Jonathan Yarden (jyarden@iglou.iglou.com) Subject: Mosaic on Digital Satellite System Anyone else out there getting a serious hard-on on the Digital Satellite System? From what I have heard this puppy is doing IP via satellite. For that matter, I can't think of any other real way to do what it does. Here is a partial list of 'features:' 1. The DSS system is designed to asychronously receive data. Each DSS receiver has a unique ID allowing it to process packetized wide-band data (which in most cases is MPEG encoded video). This happens *whenever* the unit is operational. 2. The modem in the DSS receiver is for the sending of requests and receipt of data from a local or long distance 'service.' The majority of requests are for 'keys' to decode channels, but could also be used to send subscription requests for other services. 3. There is a magnetic 'card' used to hold information about the types of services currently subscribed to by the DSS user. The card is readable as well as writeable. THE BIG IDEA Knowing that data flow in Mosaic is almost 99% server to client, this opens up a rather fast way to do Mosaic. For that matter, since most of the people who surf are just passing thru or getting data, this is a fast data pipe to just about anything. The only catch would be that the sending speed would be maxed out at about 14.4kbps. But, if you are on the client end of a 2GB FTP session, well you get the picture... 2nd reason: According to TRACEROUTE (unix hamsters, try this at home...) CIX is basically 'metering' data traffic onto their routes. First 16K goes real fast, then you hit the bottom of the process queue (sounds VAXen, doesn't it?) and it's the loser in a snail race. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO SEND MAIL TO YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS ASKING THEM IF THEY OFFER THEIR SYSTEM LOGS TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES - ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS. ACTIONS SUCH AS THIS MAY BE A VIOLATION OF YOUR PRIVACY. IF YOU DISCOVER THIS TO BE THE CASE, MAIL US! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% PORNOGRAPHY FOULS INTERNET By Paul Pihichyn (pihichyn@freepress.mb.ca) There is a river of slime in the gutters of the information highway and it's giving cyberspace a bad name. The virtual community, it appears, has been invaded by the same scum that has slithered into the real communities across the land. We're talking pornography, with a capital P, right there on the Internet. Maybe you caught the report on CNN last week about the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. It seems some sleezeball there had loaded several gigabytes of filth into a server that was connected to the Internet, and promptly made it available to all 20 million-plus 'Netsurfers. It's probably not surprising that in a community of 20 million, you are going to find the same sad mix that you will find in the general population. But, somehow, I though the Internet would attract a better class of humanity. Nevertheless, the Internet has become the largest and most accessable source of pornographic material on the planet - and the real danger is it's accessible to anyone with a PC and modem, even to children. Journalist Erik Lacitis (elak.news@times.com) said it best recently in the Seattle times: "... has there ever been a bigger collection of mean- spirited, emotionally-deficient, just plain-weird, and mostly utterly boring people?" He prefaced the remark by saying he was taking a vacation from the Internet and going back to the real world. Actually, it would make more sense for those 'Net-bound weirdos to be taking a reality check. Hiding behind their cloak of anonymity, these folks hurl hateful insults at those with whom they disagree or feel they can bully by virtue of their perceived superior knowledge of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. It is on the Usenet that these really dumb things often take place. Now tell me, does the world really need a forum called alt.sex.pictures.female, or alt.sex.bondage? Or maybe just plain old alt.sex? I think not. The crap on these forums is pretty crude. Obscene by many community standards. And also pretty silly. Racy stories written by pimply-faced adolescent boys pretending to be ravishingly over-sexed and under-loved young women is hardly the stuff on which to build a world-wide information superhighway. Remember, the Internet is a network of networks, each linked through a host site - often a university or some other educational facility. Some of these host sites have taken steps to clean up their little corner of the Internet. Troll Usenet through the server at the University of Manitoba, and you won't find the newsgroups alt.sex.pictures.female, or alt.sex.bondage. The U of M, along with several other Internet providers, has denied its users access to some of the more blatantly pornographic newsgroups. Though some people may complain that this is censorship, an infringement on the freedom of the Internet, I take my hat off to those who made the decision to try to keep the Internet decent place to work and play. There have been incidents reported of Internet users actually being stalked, electronically, by some of the weirder weirdoes out there. The really scary part is that some of the cyberstalkers have actually slithered into the real world and attempted face-to-face encounters. The 'Net anonymity also give a lot of jerks a chance to be mean. If there is a crude remark that has ever been made about women, you'll find it posted on the 'Net. It seems, as Lacitis wrote, the Internet is populated with men who never grew up. Big as it is, the Internet is still in its infancy. It will take time to gain some maturity, to find a way to weed out the cretins and perverts. Once you get around the crud on the Internet, you will find it a wonderful place to learn, work and do business. By Paul Pihichyn, pihichyn@freepress.mb.ca %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% SECURITY / COAST FTP archive on-line Announcing the COAST Security FTP Archive! The COAST group at Purdue are happy to (finally) announce the availability of our security archive. The archive is currently available via FTP, with extensions to gopher and WWW planned soon. The archive currently contains software, standards, tools, and other material in the following areas: * access control * artificial life * authentication * criminal investigation * cryptography * e-mail privacy enhancement * firewalls * formal methods * general guidelines * genetic algorithms * incident response * institutional policies * intrusion detection * law & ethics * malware (viruses, worms, etc) * network security * password systems * policies * privacy * risk assessment * security related equipment * security tools * social impacts * software forensics * software maintenance * standards * technical tips * the computer underground The collection also contains a large set of site "mirrors" of interesting collections, many of which are linked by topic to the rest of the archive. You can connect to the archive using standard ftp to "coast.cs.purdue.edu". Information about the archive structure and contents is present in "/pub/aux"; we encourage users to look there, and to read the README* files located in the various directories. If you know of material you think should be added, please send mail to security-archive@cs.purdue.edu and tell us what you have and where we can get a copy. In order of preference, we would prefer to get: -- a pointer to the source ftp site for a package -- a pointer to a mirror ftp site for the package -- a uuencoded tar file -- a shar file -- a diskette or QIC tape If you are providing software, we encourage you to "sign" the software with PGP to produce a standalone signature file. This will help to ensure against trojaned versions of the software finding their way into the archive. Any comments or suggestions about the archive should be directed to "security-archive@cs.purdue.edu" -- please let us know what you think! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ON THE SUBJECT OF CYBERCULTURE By George Phillips (ice9@fennec.com) I hate to be an asshole, but my friends will tell you I'm pretty good at it. I usually try to keep an open mind about a lot of things, but some things just get under my skin. Today, it's this damn cyberculture thingy! I thought the hype was subsiding, but now it seems to have sprouted back up like a festering pustule on the mouths of everyone. Let's just ask the question: What is cyberculture? Is it some coffee-shop hallucination romance dreamed up by some art-school boy with no social outlet? Is it some third-rate term developed by the editors of certain magazines to justify their existance? Was it created from a desperate attempt at giving a name to people who just don't fit in? ...or is there something real to all this fantasy? Let's take a closer look. I went out and looked for anything "cyber." Magazines, books, people, places, clothes, and things. I started out by picking up a magazine called "Mondo-2000". I'm sure I heard somewhere that this was a "cyber-oriented" magazine. The cover art did nothing for me as far as helping define what "cyber" was. After a time, I quickly realized that this magazine caters to junior/highschool children with Nintendos and acne. I saw nothing "cyber" about it. In fact, I really saw no real culture. Sure it had art, music, graphics, features, etc...but doesn't every magazine? What is keeping me from calling Time or Newsweek "Cyber-mags"? Could it be? Is "cyber" just another buzz-word like "virtual?" No! William Gibson writes about people in the future accessing a matrix called cyberspace. This is the "virtual" area between computer systems. No doubt one can see the parallels between his matrix and our Internet. But is this all there is to it? No. There are people called "cyberpunks" that access this matrix and exploit it to their own ends. These are very good books, by the way. I enjoyed reading them. There has got to be a parallel between his cyberpunks and the hackers of today. Although the books are excellent, I have yet to see what "Cyber-Culture" is. (Hearing theme song from Jeopardy in my head...) Billy Idol recorded an album called CyberPunk. Chained to my chair and threatened with death if I did not listen to this "K-Rad" CD, I formed the opinion that Billy Idol has too much free time on his hands. The makeup of this album has absolutely nothing to do with the title, or subjects in any William Gibson book. Thats not to say its not a good album. I'm sure there are many out there who like his work, but as far as my quest was concerned, this was a dead end. I just don't comprehend the reasoning behind such a venture. Exhausted with my household search for the eternal answer, I decided to hit the streets and find some real, live, cyber-people. I heard that this culture usually hangs out in clubs or raves that play loud alternative industrial dance music. I found a couple places like that in Houston and Austin, so I decided to give it a try. I chose a club in Houston, Texas. The lights were hypnotic. The smart-drinks were flowing. The people were dancing and zoning on the special effects of the club. I picked out the most "cyber-looking" people I could find. I knew what to look for because I just recently picked through a Mondo-2000 magazine to see what their be-all end-all definition of a cyber-person was. These people could barely figure out how to turn on a computer! How could they call themselves "cyber?" Am I wrong when I say that the whole term "Cyber" has at least SOMETHING to do with computers? Needless to say, I was rather disappointed in the ignorance of these lifeless wanna-bees and misled by all of the advertising of this ever-elusive "Cyber-Culture". Color me confused. Well, I figured that if anyone knew about "Cyber-Culture," it would have to be the computer underground. This is supposed to be one of the smartest, most alternitive, techno-literate group around. There was a convention going on in Las Vegas called DefCon II. Played-up to be one of the largest gatherings of computer underground enthusiasts, I had to go. Although it is sad that this term "Cyber", while used so widely today, is hard to define. I am sad that I had to go to Las Vegas to find "Cyber"...if it was even there. This was obviously a place where "cyber-culture" came together! I decided to attend and look around. What I found was a large group of people drinking, smoking, viewing porn and talking about the latest security holes. These people were nothing like the people in Mondo-2000 or any other Cyber-rags. Where was their strange, multi-color clothing? So this is cyber-culture? I hit a few coffee shops, followed a group that I would bet that I saw in Mondo, tried psudo-virtual-reality hangouts, tried their smart drinks, smoked their tobacco, attempted being "trendy", and contemplated art in the most cyber-sense. My return: ZIP! NADA! NOTHING! From all of my travels and studies, I came up with a few theories. Although possibly distorted, I feel they are, for the most part true. Cyberculture is: 1) A bunch of burn-outs in a coffee shop, reading trendy "alternative" magazines, analyzing "alternative" music, and going to raves. 2) A bunch of kids doing large amounts of drugs, drinking smart-drinks, wearing flanel, attending "alternative" concerts like Woodstock '94 hopelessly babbling on about topics that they know nothing about. 3) Cigarettes and alcohol. I find none of these interesting and frankly, I don't see whats so damn fascinating about them! ...and still cannot determine why it is called "Cyber". I am getting to hate this term more each time I have to write or say it...because it means NOTHING! So, if anyone finds "Mr. or Ms. Cyber" please let me know. I am not claiming to be a know-it-all, but when the press, the public, and society in general latches on to a term which evidently globally-defines a people or attitude, and THEN rams it down my throat on the front page of the newspaper and on the six o' clock news, I have the RIGHT to know what in the hell it means. Have a virtual-cyber-underground-mondo-networkable-fiber-opticable day! Alternative viewpoints are not welcome because this is my cyber-column. Get your own! Take a pill and get a life. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% A COMMENT ON CLIPPER By Azrael (reinoa@ccaix3.unican.es) Greetings to all fellow cyberpunks, hackers, modem enthusiasts, programmers, viri-coders, civil-rights activists, anarchists, crypto- mathematicians and all. The echoes of the Clipper polemics are heard even here in Spain, mainly thru a distorted view given by the pre-net mass media, and the very few people hooked to some kind of comms net. The way I see it, it is NOT that awful that the government of the USA is trying (in its best tradition) to limit liberty and privacy through the implantation of mandatory 'crippled' encryption or 'key escrows' or secure-phones or what have you. Remember the good old theory of the shield and the sword. If there is no enemy, there is no battle, and if there's no battle, there's no point in hacking, anarchism, sabotage, and public opinion campaigns. If there's no threat to our freedom or privacy, our skills will decay, weaken, and we'll submit in the end to the exigences of those in power. Security in computer systems should be improved upon, so that hackers have to keep up to it. Anti-virus packages have to get better, so that virus makers develop new techniques. In the same way, threatened privacy in electronic communications will be an incentive for enterprising people to create new methods of avoiding eavesdropping, by the development of new, better and faster cryptographic algorithms. As long as we keep 'en garde', they can't beat us. They just can't. But if they leave us alone for a time, we'll grow in pride and self-confidence and a false sense of security, while they have time to re-arm. In that way, they'll have us in the end. Fight the power! (and be glad you need to) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% SEX, THE INTERNET AND THE IDIOTS By K.K. Campbell (eye@io.org) There are two breeds of moron attracted to the Internet's relation to sex -- reporters and wankers. These categories may overlap, but that's beside the point. Canadian newsmedia owe a great deal of Internet education to Judge Francis Kovacs and his infamous Karla Homolka trial publication ban. That elevated the Internet to headline material. It is humorous to watch reporters/ editors grope for net.literacy. Talk with Justin Wells (stem@sizone.pci.on.ca) and Ken Chasse (root@sizone.pci.on.ca), the chaps who created alt.fan.karla-homolka as a lark, then found themselves hounded by reporters asking for "banned information, please." Or check out The Star's early stories, where Usenet newsgroups are called "computer billboards" -- whatever the hell those are. MEDIA MORONS Mainstream journalists without a rallying issue like a trial ban invariably end up with nothing better to do then bang the drum about the 3 Ps: pedophilia, piracy and pornography. Take the recent Internet "child molesters" silliness. Some teen somewhere is enticed into sex with an adult -- through America On Line, not the Internet -- and we have an "epidemic." Chicago's Harlan Wallach (wallach@mcs.com) reported in alt.internet.media-coverage how some dink named James Coates wrote a column for the July 15 Chicago Tribune called "Beware cybercreeps lurking on the Internet." True enough. But Coates' purpose is to frighten the middle class with some probably made-up story about "Vito," who cruises the net hoping "to have sex with children in wheelchairs." I understand Coates' pain. I can't spend 10 minutes in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) before someone asks if I'm a child in a wheelchair looking for a sex partner. Wallach told eye Coates has been going like this for months now -- "a master at work." Couple of weeks ago, California nuclear research facility Lawrence Livermore Labs discovered one computer held some dirty pictures. An employee gave away a password. Someone used that access to store the images. People could connect and get them. Nothing was hacked. Big deal. But on July 13, CNN reporter Don Knapp swooped in to whip up hysteria. Doom was clearly imminent. "Computer security specialists were surprised to find what may be the largest computer collection ever of hardcore pornography at the nation's top nuclear weapons and research laboratory," Knapp intoned ominously. Almost 2000 megs! Gol-ly! (Incidentally, 99 per cent of it was individual shots of nude/semi-nude women, no sexually explicit acts. Playboy stuff.) CNN rang Wired magazine writer Brian Behlendorf (brian@wired.com) and woke him at home, excited about "a big break-in at Laurence Livermore." Hackers and porno! If CNN was lucky, the hacker was a child molester. Behlendorf consented to an interview. CNN immediately asked him to "find some pictures of naked women on the Net for us." Behlendorf recounted the incident: "I really wasn't interested in doing that. I don't know of any FSP/FTP sites off hand anyways, and really didn't want to be associated with pictures of NEKKID GRRLS."* But amiable Behlendorf slid over to alt.binaries.pictures.supermodels and grabbed a picture of a model in a swimsuit. He also picked up a landscape, a race car and a Beatles album cover "to show that other images get sent over Usenet as well," naively thinking this point would be made -- though he stresses he by no means condones distributing copyrighted images, "clean" or otherwise. Behlendorf was then made to sit beside a terminal displaying Ms String-Bikini throughout all his comments. "They made me keep returning to that damn bikini image ... over and over." But intrepid reporter Don Knapp assured us all is well -- for now. "Spokespeople for the national laboratories insist that at no time were the pornographers, nor the software pirates, able to cross over from the research network into the classified network. The labs say that, while they are embarrassed, national security was not breached." Whew. YOU'RE GETTING VERY STUP- ERR, SLEEPY... Then you have regular net.wankers. Whoever said, "Never underestimate the intelligence of the American public," must read alt.sex.* newsgroups. For instance, the charismatic Aabid (aabid@elm.circa.ufl.edu) wrote a touching post called "I would like an enema myself!" to newsgroup sci.chem (science: chemistry). "Looking for a Middle Eastern M or F to help me with my enema desires. If you can be of assistance please email me." Readers of sci.chem were very intrigued and Aabid has made many interesting new friends. The greatest example of alt.sex stupidity is: The Hypnosis Program. As a joke, Indiana's Steve Salter (ssalter@silver.ucs.indiana.edu) posted to alt.sex.stories that he had a "hypnosis program" -- which you cleverly slip onto another person's computer where it will so mesmerize the unsuspecting target, he/she becomes your SEXUAL PLAYTHING, BENDING TO YOUR EVERY WHIM! For weeks after, global village idiots pestered him for copies. "I must have received over a hundred requests via private email or in alt.sex.stories for a copy of the program," Salter told eye. He had to publicly post a reply to stem the tide: "No offense, but get a rather large clue. There is no such animal. That was a joke. I thought it was obvious. How many people out there really want to hypnotize someone secretly? What the fuck is wrong with all of you?! What age group are we dealing with here? There is no such program!!! Sheesh..." Personally, I'm in agreement with David Romm (71443.1447@compuserve.com) who wrote: "I really liked the hypnosis program. It was much better than Cats." MASSAGE MY MEDIUM To get your own porn, there are lots of sites. Ask for the latest in the alt.sex groups. Check out alt.binaries.pictures.erotica to grab a few images. For text erotica, read in alt.sex.stories . If you can't access alt.sex groups because, say, your university is run by prudes, write (ahem) "Hot Stuff" (anon1ea3@nyx10.cs.du.edu) for details about his mail-server. He makes available hundreds of stories. We at eye have yet to sample this collection but are intrigued by two items: "Perils of Red Tape," which we assume reveals the lust-riddled world of civil service, and "Tales from the Network," the story of lonely boys sitting around Friday nights fingering their groins in IRC, praying someone with a female-sounding alias drops by. * FootNote: NEKKID GRRLS is idiomatic fresh-off-the-BBS net.wanker- speak. This language can be learned by hanging around newsgroups like alt.2600 . To convince others you are a deadly cool net.cruiser, write: "HEY, elite pir-8 d00ds! I got more NEKKID GRRLS philes than ANY OF U!!!! And U censorship loosers can SUCK MY DICK!!!!!" Send it to alt.sex . Make sure to cross-post to the comp.sys.ibm.* hierarchy because PCs are the most common computer and you will reach a wider audience. If you can manage it, post through an anonymous account and leave your personal signature with real address in the text of the message. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Retransmit freely in cyberspace Author holds standard copyright Full issue of eye available in archive ==> gopher.io.org or ftp.io.org Mailing list available http://www.io.org/eye eye@io.org "Break the Gutenberg Lock..." 416-971-8421 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% JAUC For Windows Project SCHEDULED FOR JANUARY RELEASE By Scott Davis (dfox@fc.net) The development team at Fennec Information systems is currently working on a project called "JAUC for Windows". This software will be a large Windows-based help file with ALL the issues of The Journal Of American Underground Computing, Editor's page with tons of info on the editorial staff, as well as a LOT of other information regarding the Internet... all accessible with the click of a mouse in Windows. The scheduled release date for this piece of software is sometime in January. A furious effort is underway to provide you with this file as soon as possible. You will be required to have Windows 3.0, 3.1, or some other Windows-based product. It will work with Windows For Workgroups, NT, Chicago, Daytona, etc... The file will be available for FTP from TWO sites on the Internet. Those sites will more than likely be FC.NET and ETEXT.ARCHIVE.UMICH.EDU. You will be sent a small note (if you are on our mailing list) when this product becomes available. At this time, the only method of distribution is FTP. We are working on other ways to get this out. We will update you. If you have any questions regarding this product, please mail: jauc-win@fennec.com You will be mailed any updates automatically. Editor. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% NBC's ANTI-NET CAMPAIGN By Alaric (Alaric@f111.n106.z1.fidonet.org) A most heinous act of info-terrorism has beem committed against the net community by "Dateline", NBC's pseudo-news propaganda ministry. To further the government's need to destroy the haven of free speech known as cyberspace, NBC has successfully deluded much of their reactionary brain-dead audience into beleiving that NETWORKS ARE DANGEROUS - BBS's ARE CRIMINAL. Something must be done! (Something will be done - read on...) The September 1 episode of Dateline paraded adventursome youths who had lost the occasional finger while honing their pyrotechnical skills with anarcho-terrorist data gleaned from BBSs and the net. Forrest "Goebbels" Sawyer whined that the young and restless data-seekers of the 90's have easy access to exciting netware titles such as "Bomb Making For Fun and Profit" and "Anarchist's Cookbook" with no governmental interference of any kind! The existence of such networks and their accessibility by Gen-X misfits poses a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. You may recall the first such attempt at an anti-net freedom propaganda campaign failed miserably and was aborted. Not enough concerned citizens fell for the ruse of nets being an unfettered sanctuary for child porn mongers, NAMBLA dating services and wily molesters. Since the first trial balloon was floated and quickly transpired, Plan-B has been put into action. Let's see how many suckers will fall for this one, "Computer networks are a dangerous source of subversive terrorist information and the children must be protected." (Janet Reno was conspicuously absent from said broadcast) A CongressMan-ic Oppresive named Ed Markey (Dem. Mass 7th Dist) is trying to hold hearings on the dangers of computer networking and supposedly try to draft some legislation that would allow the governmnet to regulate the nets or BBSs. Undoubtedly the legislation if passed will have a chilling effect on net traffic, which frankly is getting way out of hand if you ask any bureaucrat with something to hide. Severe penalties will be brought against any sysop who allows minors to access anything that might be contrued as dangerous. No doubt this definition will eventually receive a broad enough interpretation to forbid instructions on the manufacture of smoke bombs, casting of all lead ammunition, cleaning a .22 rifle, and even slingshot repair. The true goal of such legislation of course is not to "protect the children", but to stifle the grassroots organizing of anti- statist groups and to squash the tide of truth that is flooding cyberspace and often embarrassing government and corporate interests. Look for a "Child Protection Act" subtitled "concerning minors' access to dangerous information" to come before Congress within 18 months. Sysops will become responsible for what information gets to whom and what they do with it, regardless of the diligence they show in keeping the nets safe. Disclaimers and signed age statements will no longer suffice. You WILL be responsible for the information travelling though your board or newsgroup and you WILL be held accountable. Is the Pen more Powerful than the Sword? This question may never be answered fully, so why not hold on to both? Yet the propaganda forces and strong arm tactics forces that managed to squeak by the ban on assault swords will now be unleashed on the modern-day pamphleteers of the net. Al Gore wants to build a kinder and gentler super-information tollroad to keep your pens in line. Netters will be able to mount a powerful counter-attack that will surprise the hell out of Big Brother and Little Rock Sister. Notify Rep. Markey that we are watching and ready to fight. Fax-blast his office. Dig into his dirt and spread liberally. Likewise show NBC that we are listening. Reach out and touch these folks as follows: dateline@news.nbc.com Representative Edward J. Markey (D-7th) Malden, MA Office phone (in DC): 202-225-2836 Energy and Commerce Markey is the Chairman of the subcomittee on Telecommunications and Finance - under Energy and Commerce 202-226-2424 subcommitee phone 202-226-2447 subcommitee fax This post should be crossposted and distributed. "They can have my net access when they pry the 486 from my dead, carpel tunnel syndrome-infested hands." %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CYBERSPACE, MIAMI, CHAOS, AND CLINTON THE MIAMI DEVICE PROJECT By Marty Cyber (cyb@gate.net) From December 8-11, 1994, Prez Clinton and Veep Gore, the Administration's point-man on the Infobahn will be coming to Miami to host the 35 democratically elected heads of government of every country in the Western Hemisphere from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. The event is called the Summit of The Americas, and you folks who read Wired and ARE wired should plug into this event via the Internet and via any other bit-radiation-receiver-transmitter-device you have access too. I'd like to get your ideas on how Cyberspace and Cybertech could help make the Summit a success from the point-of-view of telecomm and info-technologies --- in a word, to try to begin building and operating a Global Brain and Nervous System for Planet Earth that can help us all in private, public, academic and community sectors use Cyberspace to create some kind of movement toward a New World Order out of the Chaos and Complexity we are now trying to surf on, without a truly functional "cybersurfboard." I'm attaching a couple of files that could stimulate some interesting exchanges --- and hoping to get the likes of Negroponte, Kelly, Kapor, Fields, Minsky, Schank, Bruckman, Clinton, Gore, Mesarovich, Forrester, Shannon, Wiener, Prigogine, Crowley, Castro, Mas Canosa, Irving, Brown, Chiles, Cuomo, Tyson, Simon, Beer, Gleick, --- and YOU --- to all kick in some ideas on how to use the Miami Summit as a kickoff environment for launching a World Summit on The Future via Cyberspace. Do give me some "negative feedback," as the cyberneticians have been known to say. And if any of you would like to warm your cybernetic buns in Miami in December --- real buns or virtual buns --- give me some "bit-radiations." I've got an Art Deco apartment building in the heart of Miami Beach's cyberhip South Beach, and might be able to put you up. Clinton's awareness of, and ability to use, the Principles of Chaos, Complexity, Cybernetics and other modern organizational management and learning techniques may be decisive in determining if his Administration is able to create a New World Order on the Edge of the Current Turbulent ORDER/CHAOS Meridian. Unfortunately, day-to-day decisiomaking and policy selection in the White House frequently has so much noise injected on its channels from Whitewater, Senator Damato-type ignoramus-based partisan-politics, that serious policy problems like Cuba, and other Foreign, Domestic and Economic matters tend toward more chaotic and less orderly states. What the White House could use --- perhaps initially placed within its Office of Science and Technology Policy --- is a National Cybernetics Council. This group would consist of the nation and the world's specialists in Complex Systems Theory, Chaos, Cybernetics, Cyberspace, and a new field which integrates all of the above: CYBERTECTURE: The design, construction, and operation of "cybernetic systems" for government, business, education and city-planning. Pete Nelson is correct in suggesting that we need politicians and polities that can "embrace change, uncertainty, paradox and contradiction," but we also must equip the public, private, academic and community sectors of American (and World) Society to deal with this new level of complexity. In December, if current White House plans stay in place, President Clinton and VP Al Gore, Clinton's point-man in advancing his Administration's high- level policy objective of building a National and Global Information Infrastructure (NII/GII) --- the highly publicized "Information Superhighway" --- both of American Government's top-managers will travel to Miami to host the Summit of The Americas December 8-11, 1994. Although the primary agenda topics for all the invited democratically elected leaders of every coutry in the Western Hemisphere from Canada to the southern tip of Latin America will be Economic Integration, Democratic Political Systems, and extending NAFTA into WHFTA (a Western Hemisperhic Free Trade Agreement), and important sub-topic will be infrastructure -- especially Telecommunications and Information Infratructure. With "the Cybertecture of Cybersystems, policy makers and their politiescan steer through the current chaotic turbulences of today into a new, and hopefully better, world order of tomorrow. Clinton and Gore, with the proper cybertools, may be just what the world needs now. Our non-profit consulting partnership in Miami Beach, "The MIAMI DEVICE PROJECT/RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP, has developed a concept- paper for this December Summit of the Americas that could help Clinton, and the rest of use, develop and use the cybersystems we need to steer into our 21st Century Future. The following text is a summary of our first draft of the Miami Device Project concept. We'd appreciate your feedback, comments, critiques, and suggestions on how to create a World Summit on The Future during December 1994 and January 1995 on the Internet and other related media such as print, broadcast, multimedia, and face-to-face conferences. Also broadening the audiences for the work of the Santa Fe Institute, Bill Gleick, Ilya Prigogine, Mitchell Waldrop, and the other leading theorists and practitioners of Chaos/Complexity theory, and related researchers in Cybernetics and Management of Large Organizations, such as Barry Clemson, Jay Forrester, Stafford Beer, Mike Mesarovic, and the related work at US Government Research Labs as well as the great industrial research labs at IBM and ATT, could also bring the power of science to the problems of public policy and decision-making. THE MIAMI DEVICE PROJECT: AN AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL MISSION-QUEST FOR CYBERSPACE Something important, chaotic and with a hidden sense of latent order is happening in Cyberspace and Real-Space. Nobody who is honest can say they truly know, see, can predict or control what is happening with The Net, also known as: THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY. THE NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE. THE GLOBAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE. THE INFO BAHN. THE ELECTRONIC/DIGITAL SUPERHIGHWAY. CYBERSPACE. America and The World need models, mavens, moxie, methodologies and, last but not least, money --- to design, build, test, market and operate the National and Global Information Infrastructures. But most of all, the emerging Cyberspace Industry will need multimedia forums and discourse, even face-to-face conferences, that will clarify and shape the complex and relevant issues we