Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP (Human-Nets-Request@rutgers) (01/02/84)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Thursday, 22 Dec 1983 Volume 6 : Issue 85
Today's Topics:
Humor - Passworking in BLOOM COUNTY,
Computer Networks - Gateways to USENET,
Computers and the Law - Wiretap loophole concerns
Information - ZIP + 4,
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Date: Thu 22 Dec 83 07:00:32-CST
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: latest on Password-security in BLOOM COUNTY strip, Wed Dec 21
If you have missed it, you may want to dig for yesterdays paper, and
for those who don't know BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breathed, former
cartoonist of the Daily Texan, UT-Austin's campus paper, or don't have
access to a paper, below comes attempt of describing in words what
can't be without loosing the "tickler":
FRAME 1: Our black hero hacker/cracker, made famous in earlier
strips for his attempts (and successes) to break into
computer systems from his terminal, is once again
glued to his CRT, fingers flying over the keyboard....
"BEEP" Password INCORRECT. Entry Prohibited.
tiptap, tipe-di-tap, (sound of touch-typist skills) ...
FRAME 2: Hero's hands on his knees, slouched shoulders, head
hanging slightly forward, glued to the screen,
following the display with growing disgust ......
"BEEP" Password INCORRECT. Entry Prohibited.
FRAME 3: The inspired hero is standing on the table next to the
CRT, his "powerful" fist comes flying down in a
surprising move of which only "THE FEW" seemed to be
capable of ..........
WHAM!!! the sound of shattering contact of fist and CRT body
FRAME 4: The hero sits in a relaxed and satisfied posture,
hands in his lap, face indicates concentration on his
next steps, while his eyes follow the characters as
they are displayed ....
APPROVED. Good Morning, Secretary WEINBERGER !!!
[ hey , that wasn't that bad now, was it ?? ]
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Date: Sat, 17 Dec 83 03:29:02 EST
From: seismo!rlgvax!allegra!hou3c!ka@BRL-BMD.ARPA
Subject: Gateways to USENET
Human-nets is still making it to USENET. (Thank you, BRL!)
Robert Elton Maas talks about the problem of "dumb" messages appearing
on the SPACE mailing list from USENET. This is a general problem with
USENET. I get the impression that on the ARPANET, people who don't
know much about a subject are unlikely to subscribe to a mailing list
on that subject. On the other hand, USENET users are likely to post
to any group with an appropriate sounding name. We are currently
experimenting with dividing the discussion of astronomy between
net.astro.expert (for professional astronomers) and net.astro (for
everybody else), but it is not clear that users will follow the rules.
The reason that you don't see many submissions (good or bad) from
USENET on human-nets is that human-nets is gatewayed into a readonly
newsgroup. While it is possible to respond by mailing to
...!brl-bmd!human-nets, most people discuss issues relevant to human-
nets in other newsgroups. SPACE, on the other hand, appears as a
normal (writeable) newsgroup, and there is no way for USENET users
to know that it is gatewayed into an ARPANET mailing list unless
they happen to see this fact mentioned somewhere.
Kenneth Almquist
ka@hou3c.uucp
ihnp4!hou3c!ka@Berkeley
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Date: 20 Dec 1983 11:01-PST
Subject: Wiretap loophole concerns.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff @ SRI-CSL>
n089 1907 18 Dec 83
BC-TAP 2takes
(EXCLUSIVE: 10 p.m. EST Embargo)
A Loophole Raises Concern About Privacy in Computer Age
By DAVID BURNHAM
c.1983 N.Y. Times News Service
WASHINGTON - Telecommunications experts are expressing concern
that the federal wiretap law does not make it a crime for anyone,
whether private citizen, law enforcement officer or foreign spy, to
intercept the millions of messages transmitted around the United
States each day by computer.
The experts, who are in Congress, the American Telephone and
Telegraph Co., and the American Civil Liberties Union, say the
importance of the loophole in the 1968 law has been greatly magnified
in recent years with the increasing use of computers for storing and
transmitting personal, business, and government information.
Three congressional panels are considering whether the law should
be rewritten to reflect the computer age. A major concern, both in
Congress and among the experts, is whether the loophole gives local,
state, and federal law enforcement officers an opportunity to conduct
computerized electronic surveillance without the court approval
required for wiretaps.
There is no evidence of widespread exploitation of the law by
officers. But John Shattock, director of the national office of the
civil liberties union, said: ''The issue here is the privacy of
communications against secret government surveillance. The threat here
truly is Big Brother, not a group of little kids.''
Some fear that any change in the current law, unless it is done
carefully, could inadvertently increase or decrease the power of law
enforcement officers.
The wiretap law forbids the monitoring of conversations except for
law enforcement officers who have obtained a warrant from a judge. In
the age of the computer, however, more and more messages, including
those expressed by the human voice, are broken down into ''digital
bits'' in their transmission.
But because of the way the 1968 law is written, the interception
of these bits is not a crime and the police are free to intercept them
without warrants.
Most electronic surveillance is passive, making it impossible to
measure how much the loophole is being exploited, whether by the
authorities, by industrial spies, by organized crime figures trying to
make a killing in the stock market, by international spies seeking
government data, or by curious individuals with a personal computer.
But in recent months a number of computerized data banks in
government and industry have become the targets of long-distance
telephone attacks by amateur computer experts working from their home
computers. In addition, indictments have charged foreign computer
concerns with attempting to purchase sensitive details about the
products of American companies.
More seriously, perhaps, several years ago the Carter
administration announced that it believed the Soviet Union was using
antennas believed to have been set up on its grounds in Washington,
New York, and San Francisco to intercept digital information being
transmitted in microwaves by businesses and government agencies.
The Carter administration took limited technical steps to prevent
the Russians from obtaining sensitive government data and ordered the
National Security Agency to help private corporations improve their
security. But it never took any formal legal action against the
Russians or formally asked Congress to amend the law.
H.W. William Caming oversees privacy and corporate security
matters at AT&T. ''As we enter the year made famous by George Orwell's
book, 'Nineteen-Eighty-four,' computer crime is on the rise and may
well constitute a major crime threat of the 1980s,'' he said in a
recent interview. ''We therefore are encouraged by and vigorously
support current efforts in Congress and the states to enact suitable
legislation concerning computer crime. We believe that such
legislation should include provisions making it a crime to secretly
intercept non-voice communications.''
AT&T is not the only company concerned about the wiretap law. In
response to an inquiry, Satellite Business Systems, a major new data
communications company jointly owned by International Business
Machines, the Aetna Life and Casualty Co., and Comsat, agreed that
some experts believed there was a ''potential loophole'' in current
law and that, to the extent this was so, ''legislation to make clear
that such unauthorized interception is prohibited would be useful.''
The 1968 wiretap law makes it a federal felony for a third party
to intercept the conversations of others by placing an electronic
listening device, or a ''bug,'' in a telephone or other place such as
an office.
The only exception is that federal, state, and local law
enforcement officers may use wiretaps in the investigation of certain
crimes but only with the approval of the senior prosecutor of a
particular jurisdiction and a special warrant from a judge.
The law does not apply to computer tapping because Congress
defined the word ''intercept'' as the ''aural acquisition'' of
information. In the opinion of a federal appeals court, the General
Accounting Office, and privacy experts such as Alan F. Westin of
Columbia University, this wording means that the wiretap law does not
prohibit the interception of computer transmissions because no sounds
are involved.
''Advancing telecommunications technologies which involve
non-aural interception techniques are being used more and more,'' the
GAO said in a report to the Senate in 1980. ''Therefore, modern
telecommunications are becoming less likely to be protected against
unauthorized interception by current statutory provisions.''
In an age when more than a third of the nation's households are
hooked into cable television systems, when millions of people are
doing their banking by computerized tellers and their mailing
electronically as well, the limitations of the current law have become
increasingly obvious.
David Watters, a telecommunications engineer who has served as a
consultant in both government and private industry, said the changing
technology may mean it is also not a crime to record certain telephone
calls secretly. ''There hasn't been a test case brought to court on
this question yet,'' he said, ''but increasing numbers of telephone
calls are being transmitted from point to point in the digital
language of computers, and the logic of the 1968 law would suggest
that such calls could be intercepted without penalty.''
Two House Judiciary subcommittees, one headed by Rep. Don Edwards,
D-Calif., the other by Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier, D-Wis., and a
Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr.,
R-Md., are considering the possibility of rewriting the wiretap law.
Kastenmeier, whose subcommittee on courts, civil liberties, and
the administration of justice is to hold hearings on the question next
month, said such matters as how much statutes should protect against
actions like the unauthorized interception of electronic mail take on
great importance in this modern technological age.
''The implications of the ability of the new technology to go
beyond such definitions in terms of invading personal privacy make
consideration of this important issue by the subcommittee most
urgent,'' he said.
Drafting a new law to close the gap in the old one, however,
presents complex legal and philosophical problems.
In the past, when Congress has sought to limit the access of law
enforcement to banking and medical records, the Justice Department has
fought for the widest possible access.
A congressional change in the law to require a warrant from a
judge for interception of computerized information, would represent a
diminution of officers' independent authority.
In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that local authorities in Maryland
did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of Michael Lee Smith, a
Maryland resident, when they did not obtain a search warrant before
placing a device on his telephone to record the numbers he dialed.
A majority of the Supreme Court held that such information could
be collected by the police without a warrant because Smith could not
have a reasonable expectation that the numbers he dialed were private.
But three justices dissented, arguing that the numbers were just as
deserving of legal protection as the substance of what Smith said.
Electronic mail systems offer similar opportunity to gain
information about a person's dealings with others, according to
testimony before a House subcommittee in October by Willis H. Ware, a
member of the Rand Corp. and a leading privacy expert.
As opposed to traditional mail, electronic mail systems, ''in
addition to the message content,'' he said, contain ''information
relating the addressee to the sender.
In principle, such information could be used to establish
relationships among people, such as organized groups or circles of
acquaintance. Obviously, such information could be of high interest to
the law enforcement community, but the legal umbrella of protection
over such information is confused and probably incomplete.''
Experts agree that, depending on how Congress revised the wiretap
law, it could lead to significant broadening in the mandate of federal
law enforcement agencies and possible changes in the expectation of
confidentiality in such broad areas of concern as medical records.
''The privacy questions raised by the new telecommunication age
represent the single most important issue facing Congress today,''
said Shattuck. ''Because computers are now essential to the operations
of hospitals, of law firms, and even of newspapers, a sloppily drafted
law could give the federal government greater search powers that it
ever has had in our history.''
John Keeney, the deputy attorney general in the Justice
Department's Criminal Division, said Justice Department officials
believed changing the wiretap law was not the way to attack computer
crime.
''Our current feeling is that the 1968 wiretap law should not be
changed, that there would be simpler ways to take on computer crime,''
he said. He added that study groups in the Justice Department, the
Commerce Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services
currently were working on drafting a law to control computer crime.
nyt-12-18-83 2245est
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Date: 14 Dec 1983 1700-EST
From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: ZIP + 4 (If anyone uses snail-mail anymore)
You can obtain ZIP + 4 information from 800 228-8777. The number is
staffed from 7-7 Central Time.
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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