telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/12/90)
TELECOM Digest Wed, 11 Jul 90 20:55:00 CDT Electronic Frontier 1 of 2
Inside This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson
New Foundation Established To Encourage Computer Based Communications
CPSR To Undertake Expanded Civil Liberties Program
Electronic Frontier Foundation - Mission Statement
Across the Electronic Frontier [Statement by Mssrs. Kapor and Barlow]
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Sub: New Foundation Established to Encourage Computer Based Communications
Reply-To: eff@well.sf.ca.us
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 07:21:31 BST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
Contact: Cathy Cook (415) 759-5578
Washington, D.C., July 10, 1990 -- Mitchell D. Kapor, founder of
Lotus Development Corporation and ON Technology, today announced that
he, along with colleague John Perry Barlow, has established a
foundation to address social and legal issues arising from the impact
on society of the increasingly pervasive use of computers as a means
of communication and information distribution. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) will support and engage in public education
on current and future developments in computer-based and
telecommunications media. In addition, it will support litigation in
the public interest to preserve, protect and extend First Amendment
rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications
technology.
Initial funding for the Foundation comes from private contributions by
Kapor and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. The
Foundation expects to actively raise contributions from a wide
constituency.
As an initial step to foster public education on these issues, the
Foundation today awarded a grant to the Palo Alto, California-based
public advocacy group Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
(CPSR). The grant will be used by CPSR to expand the scope of its
on-going Computing and Civil Liberties Project (see attached).
Because its mission is to not only increase public awareness about
civil liberties issues arising in the area of computer-based
communications, but also to support litigation in the public interest,
the Foundation has recently intervened on behalf of two legal cases.
The first case concerns Steve Jackson, an Austin-based game
manufacturer who was the target of the Secret Service's Operation Sun
Devil. The EFF has pressed for a full disclosure by the government
regarding the seizure of his company's computer equipment. In the
second action, the Foundation intends to seek amicus curiae (friend of
the court) status in the government's case against Craig Neidorf, a
20-year-old University of Missouri student who is the editor of the
electronic newsletter Phrack World News.
"It is becoming increasingly obvious that the rate of technology
advancement in communications is far outpacing the establishment of
appropriate cultural, legal and political frameworks to handle the
issues that are arising," said Kapor. "And the Steve Jackson and
Neidorf cases dramatically point to the timeliness of the Foundation's
mission. We intend to be instrumental in helping shape a new
framework that embraces these powerful new technologies for the public
good."
The use of new digital media -- in the form of on-line information and
interactive conferencing services, computer networks and electronic
bulletin boards -- is becoming widespread in businesses and homes.
However, the electronic society created by these new forms of digital
communications does not fit neatly into existing, conventional legal
and social structures.
The question of how electronic communications should be accorded the
same political freedoms as newspapers, books, journals and other modes
of discourse is currently the subject of discussion among this
country's lawmakers and members of the computer industry. The EFF
will take an active role in these discussions through its continued
funding of various educational projects and forums.
An important facet of the Foundation's mission is to help both the
public and policy-makers see and understand the opportunities as well
as the challenges posed by developments in computing and
telecommunications. Also, the EFF will encourage and support the
development of new software to enable non-technical users to more
easily use their computers to access the growing number of digital
communications services available.
The Foundation is located in Cambridge, Mass. Requests for
information should be sent to Electronic Frontier Foundation, One
Cambridge Center, Suite 300, Cambridge, MA 02142, 617/577-1385, fax
617/225-2347; or it can be reached at the Internet mail address
eff@well.sf.ca.us.
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Subject: CPSR to Undertake Expanded Civil Liberties Program
Reply-To: eff@well.sf.ca.us
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 07:22:40 BST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
Contact: Marc Rotenberg (202) 775-1588
Washington, D.C., July 10, 1990 -- Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility (CPSR), a national computing organization, announced
today that it would receive a two-year grant in the amount of $275,000
for its Computing and Civil Liberties Project. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF),founded by Mitchell Kapor, made the grant to
expand ongoing CPSR work on civil liberties protections for computer
users.
At a press conference in Washington today, Mr. Kapor praised CPSR's
work, "CPSR plays an important role in the computer community. For
the last several years, it has sought to extend civil liberties
protections to new information technologies. Now we want to help CPSR
expand that work."
Marc Rotenberg, director of the CPSR Washington Office said, "We are
obviously very happy about the grant from the EFF. There is a lot of
work that needs to be done to ensure that our civil liberties
protections are not lost amidst policy confusion about the use of new
computer technologies."
CPSR said that it will host a series of policy round tables in
Washington, DC, during the next two years with lawmakers, computer
users, including (hackers), the FBI, industry representatives, and
members of the computer security community. Mr. Rotenberg said that
the purpose of the meetings will be to "begin a dialogue about the new
uses of electronic media and the protection of the public interest."
CPSR also plans to develop policy papers on computers and civil
liberties, to oversee the Government's handling of computer crime
investigations, and to act as an information resource for
organizations and individuals interested in civil liberties issues.
The CPSR Computing and Civil Liberties project began in 1985 after
President Reagan attempted to restrict access to government computer
systems through the creation of new classification authority. In
1988, CPSR prepared a report on the proposed expansion of the FBI's
computer system, the National Crime Information Center. The report
found serious threats to privacy and civil liberties. Shortly after
the report was issued, the FBI announced that it would drop a proposed
computer feature to track the movements of people across the country
who had not been charged with any crime.
"We need to build bridges between the technical community and the
policy community," said Dr. Eric Roberts, CPSR president and a
research scientist at Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto,
California. "There is simply too much misinformation about how
computer networks operate. This could produce terribly misguided
public policy."
CPSR representatives have testified several times before Congressional
committees on matters involving civil liberties and computer policy.
Last year CPSR urged a House Committee to avoid poorly conceived
computer activity. "In the rush to criminalize the malicious acts of
the few we may discourage the beneficial acts of the many," warned
CPSR. A House subcommittee recently followed CPSR's recommendations
on computer crime amendments.
Dr. Ronni Rosenberg, an expert on the role of computer scientists and
public policy, praised the new initiative. She said, "It's clear that
there is an information gap that needs to be filled. This is an
important opportunity for computer scientists to help fill the gap."
CPSR is a national membership organization of computer professionals,
based in Palo Alto, California. CPSR has over 20,000 members and 21
chapters across the country. In addition to the civil liberties
project, CPSR conducts research, advises policy makers and educates
the public about computers in the workplace, computer risk and
reliability, and international security.
For more information contact:
Marc Rotenberg Gary Chapman
CPSR Washington Office CPSR National Office
1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW P.O. Box 717
Suite 1015 Palo Alto, CA 94302
Washington, DC 20036 415/322-3778
202/775-1588
------------------------------
Subject: Electronic Frontier Foundation - Mission Statement
Reply-To: eff@well.sf.ca.us
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 07:23:49 BST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
A new world is arising in the vast web of digital, electronic media
which connect us. Computer-based communication media like electronic
mail and computer conferencing are becoming the basis of new forms of
community. These communities without a single, fixed geographical
location comprise the first settlements on an electronic frontier.
While well-established legal principles and cultural norms give
structure and coherence to uses of conventional media like newspapers,
books, and telephones, the new digital media do not so easily fit into
existing frameworks. Conflicts come about as the law struggles to
define its application in a context where fundamental notions of
speech, property, and place take profoundly new forms. People sense
both the promise and the threat inherent in new computer and
communications technologies, even as they struggle to master or simply
cope with them in the workplace and the home.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been established to help
civilize the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and
beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do
this in a way which is in keeping with our society's highest
traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication.
To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:
1. Engage in and support educational activities which increase
popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by
developments in computing and telecommunications.
2. Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues
underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of
legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of
these new technologies by society.
3. Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from
the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications
media. Support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect,
and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and
telecommunications technology.
4. Encourage and support the development of new tools which will
endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
telecommunications.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
One Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 577-1385
eff@well.sf.ca.us
------------------------------
Subject: Across the Electronic Frontier
Reply-To: eff@well.sf.ca.us
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 07:29:18 BST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
by: Mitchell Kapor and John Perry Barlow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Washington, D.C.
July 10, 1990
Over the last 50 years, the people of the developed world have begun
to cross into a landscape unlike any which humanity has experienced
before. It is a region without physical shape or form. It exists,
like a standing wave, in the vast web of our electronic communication
systems. It consists of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields,
light pulses and thought itself.
It is familiar to most people as the "place" in which a long-distance
telephone conversation takes place. But it is also the repository for
all digital or electronically transferred information, and, as such,
it is the venue for most of what is now commerce, industry, and
broad-scale human interaction. William Gibson called this Platonic
realm "Cyberspace," a name which has some currency among its present
inhabitants.
Whatever it is eventually called, it is the homeland of the
Information Age, the place where the future is destined to dwell.
In its present condition, Cyberspace is a frontier region, populated
by the few hardy technologists who can tolerate the austerity of its
savage computer interfaces, incompatible communications protocols,
proprietary barricades, cultural and legal ambiguities, and general
lack of useful maps or metaphors.
Certainly, the old concepts of property, expression, identity,
movement, and context, based as they are on physical manifestation, do
not apply succinctly in a world where there can be none.
Sovereignty over this new world is also not well defined. Large
institutions already lay claim to large fiefdoms, but most of the
actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of
sociopathy. It is, therefore, a perfect breeding ground for both
outlaws and vigilantes. Most of society has chosen to ignore the
existence of this arising domain. Every day millions of people use
ATM's and credit cards, place telephone calls, make travel
reservations, and access information of limitless variety. . . all
without any perception of the digital machinations behind these
transactions.
Our financial, legal, and even physical lives are increasingly
dependent on realities of which we have only dimmest awareness. We
have entrusted the basic functions of modern existence to institutions
we cannot name, using tools we've never heard of and could not operate
if we had.
As communications and data technology continues to change and develop
at a pace many times that of society, the inevitable conflicts have
begun to occur on the border between Cyberspace and the physical
world.
These are taking a wide variety of forms, including (but hardly limited
to) the following:
I. Legal and Constitutional Questions
What is free speech and what is merely data? What is a free press
without paper and ink? What is a "place" in a world without tangible
dimensions? How does one protect property which has no physical form
and can be infinitely and easily reproduced? Can the history of one's
personal business affairs properly belong to someone else? Can anyone
morally claim to own knowledge itself?
These are just a few of the questions for which neither law nor custom
can provide concrete answers. In their absence, law enforcement
agencies like the Secret Service and FBI, acting at the disposal of
large information corporations, are seeking to create legal precedents
which would radically limit Constitutional application to digital
media.
The excesses of Operation Sun Devil are only the beginning of what
threatens to become a long, difficult, and philosophically obscure
struggle between institutional control and individual liberty.
II. Future Shock
Information workers, forced to keep pace with rapidly changing
technology, are stuck on "the learning curve of Sisyphus."
Increasingly, they find their hard-acquired skills to be obsolete even
before they've been fully mastered. To a lesser extent, the same
applies to ordinary citizens who correctly feel a lack of control over
their own lives and identities.
One result of this is a neo-Luddite resentment of digital technology
from which little good can come. Another is a decrease in worker
productivity ironically coupled to tools designed to enhance it.
Finally, there is a spreading sense of alienation, dislocation, and
helplessness in the general presence of which no society can expect to
remain healthy.
III. The "Knows" and the "Know-Nots"
Modern economies are increasingly divided between those who are
comfortable and proficient with digital technology and those who
neither understand nor trust it. In essence, this development
disenfranchises the latter group, denying them any possibility of
citizenship in Cyberspace and, thus, participation in the future.
Furthermore, as policy-makers and elected officials remain relatively
ignorant of computers and their uses, they unknowingly abdicate most
of their authority to corporate technocrats whose jobs do not include
general social responsibility. Elected government is thus replaced by
institutions with little real interest beyond their own quarterly
profits.
We are founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation to deal with these
and related challenges. While our agenda is ambitious to the point of
audacity, we don't see much that these issues are being given the
broad social attention they deserve. We were forced to ask, "If not
us, then who?"
In fact, our original objectives were more modest. When we first
heard about Operation Sun Devil and other official adventures into the
digital realm, we thought that remedy could be derived by simply
unleashing a few highly competent Constitutional lawyers upon the
Government. In essence, we were prepared to fight a few civil
libertarian brush fires and go on about our private work.
However, examination of the issues surrounding these government
actions revealed that we were dealing with the symptoms of a much
larger malady, the collision between Society and Cyberspace.
We have concluded that a cure can lie only in bringing civilization to
Cyberspace. Unless a successful effort is made to render that harsh
and mysterious terrain suitable for ordinary inhabitants, friction
between the two worlds will worsen. Constitutional protections,
indeed the perceived legitimacy of representative government itself,
might gradually disappear.
We could not allow this to happen unchallenged, and so arises the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. In addition to our legal
interventions on behalf of those whose rights are threatened, we will:
% Engage in and support efforts to educate both the general public and
policymakers about the opportunities and challenges posed by
developments in computing and telecommunications.
% Encourage communication between the developers of technology,
government, corporate officials, and the general public in which we
might define the appropriate metaphors and legal concepts for life in
Cyberspace.
% And, finally, foster the development of new tools which will endow
non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
telecommunications.
One of us, Mitch Kapor, had already been a vocal advocate of more
accessible software design and had given considerable thought to some
of the challenges we now intend to meet.
The other, John Perry Barlow, is a relative newcomer to the world of
computing (though not to the world of politics) and is therefore
well-equipped to act as an emissary between the magicians of
technology and the wary populace who must incorporate this magic into
their daily lives.
While we expect the Electronic Frontier Foundation to be a creation of
some longevity, we hope to avoid the sclerosis which organizations
usually develop in their efforts to exist over time. For this reason
we will endeavor to remain light and flexible, marshalling
intellectual and financial resources to meet specific purposes rather
than finding purposes to match our resources. As is appropriate, we
will communicate between ourselves and with our constituents largely
over the electronic Net, trusting self-distribution and
self-organization to a much greater extent than would be possible for
a more traditional organization.
We readily admit that we have our work cut out for us. However, we
are greatly encouraged by the overwhelming and positive response which
we have received so far. We hope the Electronic Frontier Foundation
can function as a focal point for the many people of good will who
wish to settle in a future as abundant and free as the present.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
One Cambridge Center, Suite 300
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 577-1385
eff@well.sf.ca.us
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End of TELECOM Digest Special: Electronic Frontier
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