TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu> (06/01/90)
According to the {Washington Post}, Mitchell Kapor, inventor of Lotus
1-2-3, is considering backing a national effort to defend computer
hackers against prosecution resulting from Operation Sun Devil, a
two-year investigation of potential computer fraud. The Secret
Service said the hackers who were the target of the probe are
individuals who had gained unauthorized access to company computer
systems -- including one at AT&T -- or had stolen and distributed
software programs that belonged to major corporations. Kapor said he
thinks the government probe has been misdirected and damaging to
technological innovation and to dissemination of information. Gary J.
Jenkins, assistant director of the Secret Service, said, "We will
continue to investigate aggressively those crimes which threaten to
disrupt our nation's business and government services."
Maybe if Mr. Kapor had his Lotus 1-2-3 ripped off good he might change
his tune. Anyone know other projects of his we might steal and start
handing out freely around the net? After all, we wouldn't want to
'damage technological innovation or dissemination of information' now
would we? Please keep his attitude on this serious problem in mind the
next time you use or consider purchasing his software. If you can't
find a way to steal it outright, then borrow a pirated copy from
someone else.
PTzellich@stl-07sima.army.mil (Rich Zellich) (06/01/90)
Mr. Moderator - Please don't advocate ripping off commercial software, even in sarcastic jest mode. Being somewhat more charitable than PT, I assume two points in Mr. Kapors favor: 1) So far, at least, there has been no monetary loss shown by the various federal prosecutors involved in Sun Devil; they have alleged much in their self-serving statements to the media but, as has been pointed out in this forum, no actual damage of any kind has yet been substantiated. 2) I assume Mitch Kapor is reacting to the "witch hunt" atmosphere that seems to be pervading the LoD and Sun Devil busts - as witness the raid on Steve Jackson Games. Clearly, *somebody* needs to help the less-well- funded witch-huntees caught in the government's fuzzily-conceived trap. While it seems clear that there was some serious crackery going on, it seems just as clear that a *lot* of innocent people are being harassed by the authorities for no good reason except ignorance on the part of those authorities, are having their systems seized (to the detriment of some of the rest of us, in the case of e-mail relay systems), and are going to have to spend a lot of their hard-earned dollars on attorney fees just to point out the obvious in court. [Moderator's Note: Whether or not there is a monetary loss is of absolutely no relevance. If you don't think this is the case, then kindly leave your door unlocked tomorrow while you are gone, so I can come in and snoop around. I won't steal anything! I will just read through your personal papers, etc. Ah, you say, that is different! Not a bit. Why are AT&T, Sprint, MCI and similar fair game for the crackers and your home system -- or Mr. K's software is not? Now you go on to say a *lot* (your emphasis) of people are 'being harassed'. Name two or three; go ahead, I'll wait. You want to use Steve Jackson Games as one example? Ha! That's rich ... more and more news is coming out of that every day ... i.e. a little blurb in news yesterday alleging a cracker (I think previously convicted) was/is on his payroll. And you complain that innocent users on the net are being harmed by the disruption in mail: why is that the government's fault? Your complaint should be with the administrators of e-mail relays who have *violated the trust of the net community* by getting wrapped up in this stinking mess. If I were arrested for something today, would you blame the government because TELECOM Digest did not get published tomorrow? PT]
nickless@flash.ras.anl.gov (Bill Nickless) (06/01/90)
I can't believe it. Our Moderator writes that Mitchell Kapor, in
offering to help some defendants in a court of law, is deserving of a
boycott against his well-designed and written software package.
Whether or not Mr. Kapor agrees with the actions of the people he
defends should not be an issue. I have worked for a legal aid
society, funded primarily by the United Way. Most of their casework
involved defending homemakers who were being divorced by their
breadwinning spouses and were in danger of losing everything,
including their children. This is not because they were right or
wrong, it was because they didn't have the money to fight the spouse
with a job to pay the attornies.
I believe Mr. Kapor has seen that there are some dangers inherent in
the government's tactics in Operation Sun Devil. These dangers
include the lack of common carrier protections for electronic mail and
bulletin board operators. He has been (moderately :-) ) successful
with 1-2-3 and would like to use some of his well-earned resources to
ensure that the nationwide infrastructure of electronic mail and
bulletin boards is not horribly disrupted, especially in a court case
where the defendants do not have sufficient financial resources to
counter the government's nearly infinite capability to pursue the
matter.
Whether or not the defendants did anything wrong should be irrelevant
to this discussion. That is for the courts to decide. Mr. Kapor is
simply trying to ensure that these defendants receive a fair trial.
Bill Nickless
[Moderator's Note: He said nothing at all in the {Washington Post}
article about 'helping them get a fair trial' ... he said they did not
belong on trial at all! Go back and read the article again. And
whether or not they 'did anything wrong' is most certainly relevant to
this discussion. It is what this whole discussion is about: whether or
not you can take activities like cracking and twist it around into a
wholesome, legitimate activity as Mr. Kapor suggests. PT]rfarris@rfengr.com (Rick Farris) (06/01/90)
In article <8473@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Maybe if Mr. Kapor had his Lotus 1-2-3 ripped off good he > might change his tune. Although Wordstar used to have the dubious distinction of 'the most ripped off software in the world,' I suspect that in this day and age, Lotus 1-2-3 holds that title. At any rate, Mitch Kapor certainly has first-hand experience at losing money to intellectual property thieves. I wonder why he sees this case differently. Rick Farris RF Engineering POB M Del Mar, CA 92014 voice (619) 259-6793 rfarris@rfengr.com ...!ucsd!serene!rfarris serene.UUCP 259-7757
steve@horizon.com (Steve Flaherty) (06/01/90)
In comp.dcom.telecom you write: >next time you use or consider purchasing his software. If you can't ------------ > find a way to steal it outright, then borrow a pirated copy from ----------------------------------------------------------------- > someone else. -------------- Is this a serious suggestion, or are you poking fun at the situation? If you are indeed serious about condoning piracy against a person or organization that you personaly happen to disaprove, you deserve to be right there in the defendants' seat the the so-called "crackers" that you seem to abhor so vehemntly. What seperates your call to steal software on disk from the piracy of software (and other information) via the phone system? Is your moral ground so high? Personally, I hope that your article was in jest, and that I am missing the clues to its satirical intent. Steve Flaherty [Moderator's Note: What do you *really* see different about my article versus the one in my competitor's rag other than the hoity-toity language issued by some $50,000 a year reporter who probably knows nothing about computers anyway? They quote the divine Mr. K. saying that the present government prosecution *of people who burglarize computers and steal things therein* is 'damaging to technological innovation and to dissemination of information'. Now either that is a true statement or it is bologna. All I suggested was let's take Super K at his word ... and let his double-speak stand on its own merits. Was *he* serious when he made the quote attributed to him? PT]
chris@eecs.nwu.edu (06/02/90)
In article <8473@accuvax.nwu.edu> you write:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 401, Message 5 of 13
[Moderator's Note: Quotes removed to conserve space. PT]
After all the discussion on this, I can't believe you have such a
bigoted, narrow-minded and short-sighted viewpoint! I'm absolutely
astounded that you made such remarks, from many points of perspective.
For example, you seem to imply that Kapor is supporting the theft from
businesses, yet as we have seen, the Secret Service _ITSELF_ is guilty
of completely disrupting the business of Steve Jackson Games. That
really makes Jenkins' remarks look like the self-serving lies that
they are. "...Threaten to disrupt our nation's business and
government services"? Give me a break.
If the situation was really that bad, and I honestly do not think it
is, then I still would _NOT_ support abridging the Bill of Rights to
crackdown on the criminals! Yet that is exactly what the Secret
Service is engaged in doing. (And even more horrifying is that this
sort of abuse of citizen rights and ignoring the laws of the land _by
government employees_ is becoming so damn commonplace, what with the
hysteria about "drugs" and the gross misapplication of RICO laws that
every DA and his brother is trying out.) Furthermore, if there is a
real nationwide telecommunications problem with vulnerability to
criminals, it is most likely the lack of a good, national
telecommunications policy that is most at fault! And that of course,
once again, falls onto the shoulders of our elected officials. It may
well be, though, that we are getting all the government we deserve, as
someone so aptly put it -- electorate ignorance and apathy is so high
that we get morons and crooks for elected representatives.
To end that digression, though it is important, and to get back to
your comments: it's obvious that the Secret Service and whoever else
is involved is on a witch-hunt of the scale of that by the FBI during
the late 60's and early 70's against those damn anti-war hippies.
Even if the SS has caught up a number of extremely minor criminals in
its huge fishing net, it still doesn't justify what they are doing.
And this is` particularly true when the law regarding electronic
communications networks such as BITNET, Usenet, and Bulletin Board
Systems is so vaguely undefined at the moment.
Is the administrator/operator of some carrier of electronic
information completely responsible for every bit of data contained or
passing through his system? The present legal answer is "No, well
maybe, we don't know yet." We know the Phone Co. is not responsible.
They're a Common Carrier. Are all Common Carriers exempt? I don't
think so. Where do we draw the line? And here's where we run into a
lot of problems, again, regarding` policy. Do we want to squeeze
BBS's and Usenet right out of existence? We will, if we make the
operators of the involved hardware responsible for everything passing
through their system. Or do we want to promote a global electronic
community with free speech and exchange of ideas and information? Or
what?
And then your suggestion that we steal software from Lotus or anything
else which benefits Kapor financially is really a inflammatory
strawman argument. Or a bad suggestion classing you with the worst of
the criminals and hypocrits if you were serious. After all, there is
_NO_ evidence in your remarks that Kapor is supporting criminal
activity. Rather it seems he is against a campaign of terror
orchestrated by the SS and AT&T and who knows who else directed at a
lot of mostly innocent technophiles. Are you lily-white, impeccably
honest, Mr. Moderator? I doubt it. And even if you were, you ought
to be worried about the abuse of power that is taking place.
Ever heard this parable? [paraphrased for brevity] A Methodist living
in Berlin just prior to WWII watches as first his Jewish, then Polish,
then non-Caucasian, then communist neighbors are rounded up and taken
away in the middle of the night by the Nazis. Each time it happens,
he does nothing, since the Nazis leave him alone. But when they
finally come for him, there is no one to help him or protest his
treatment, because they've already been taken.
Do I need to spell this out for you? I hope not. There's a couple
little clauses in the Bill of Rights regarding: innocence until proven
guilt, freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures, freedom of
speech, freedom to pursue happiness. Surely you are familiar with
these. Having the Secret Service show up at your house, confiscate
your computer, your media and what-not, and _NOT_ charge you with any
crime is ridiculous!
I'm not advocating theft. I'm not advocating that phreaker/cracker
criminals go free. But how about the law enforcement officials stick
to 2 simple rules: 1) follow the laws themselves, and 2) fit the
punishment and enforcement efforts to the crime. Giving somebody a
felony conviction, a 10 year jail sentence and a $10,000 fine for
stealing something electronically (eg. the E911 operations manual)
that would have been petty theft, had they just walked into someone's
office at an RBOC and taken a printed copy off their desk, is
seriously deranged.
There seems to be a lot of hysteria involved here, and the popular
press is responsible for a lot of it. But so are the ignoramuses, or
are they fascists?, in the law enforcement agencies. We here
certainly don't need to add fuel to the fire. How about level-headed
objective consideration of the problem in its broadest and narrowest
scopes? (I say that because everyone deserves to be treated as an
individual, yet there is national telecommunication policy at issue
here.)
Oh, and incidentally: maybe it's a forgone issue now, but "hacker" is
not a criminal or delinquint by definition, or at least, not
originally, and not by most people who have pride in being one. But
maybe the hysterics and popular press have abused this word for so
long that it no longer has its original meaning. I regret that Mr.
Moderator saw fit to use it as he did, unless it was merely a result
of paraphrasing without thought some press release.
...Chris Johnson chris@c2s.mn.org ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris
Com Squared Systems, Inc. St. Paul, MN USA +1 612 452 9522
[Moderator's Note: I am not ignoring you -- we are simply out of space
in this already oversize issue of the Digest. I'll reply soon. PT]ac08@cs.utexas.edu (06/02/90)
"The Moderator" notes: >[ Now you go on to say a *lot* (your emphasis) of people are 'being > harassed'. Name two or three; go ahead, I'll wait. You want to use > Steve Jackson Games as one example? Ha! That's rich ... more and more > news is coming out of that every day ... i.e. a little blurb in news > yesterday alleging a cracker (I think previously convicted) was/is on > his payroll. Oh. "Hire a hacker, lose your business?" They have a cracker (ex-cracker, supposedly) on the payroll to help give the game a little bit of realism, so they should have their equipment taken away? So if it turned out that *you* had hired, say, a drug user, you should go to jail for dealing? :) More and more news every day? Sorry... the only "news" there is that the Feds are refusing to return the equipment, and they won't even make a backup of the hard drives to allow the company to function... to a *big* monetary loss... and there's your "two or three..." they had to lay off half their staff... 7 or 8 people... > And you complain that innocent users on the net are being > harmed by the disruption in mail: why is that the government's fault? > Your complaint should be with the administrators of e-mail relays who > have *violated the trust of the net community* by getting wrapped up > in this stinking mess. If I were arrested for something today, would > you blame the government because TELECOM Digest did not get published > tomorrow? PT] Naah... I think we ought to blame the government *if they blatantly broke the law* in arresting you... for something you didn't do... or if they confiscated your server because your organization had allowed a cracker into its sacred ranks... If they Feds are breaking their own rules, how can we trust them any more? C Irby ac08@vaxa.acs.unt.edu ac08@untvax
tanner@ki4pv.uucp (06/03/90)
pt-) [Mr. Kapor offers legal assistance to accused e-burglars. Pirate pt-) his software.] I was not aware that there had been any convictions in the case. I also was not aware that Mr. Kapor had advocated illegal activities. Would that the latter were true of our moderator as well! In article <8534@accuvax.nwu.edu> you write: > Was *he* serious when he made the quote attributed to him? PT] As a recent victim of a made-up quote in the paper, I can assure you that there are times when newspapers are not entirely accurate. ...!{bikini.cis.ufl.edu allegra bpa uunet!cdin-1}!ki4pv!tanner [Moderator's Note: Well, that is a very real consideration, and if Mr. Kapor did not say what the newspaper claims he said, then he ought to sue them, or at least force them to quote him correctly. PT]
TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu> (06/03/90)
In one of the replies to mine, bungia!chris@eecs.nwu.edu writes: >After all the discussion on this, I can't believe you have such a >bigoted, narrow-minded and short-sighted viewpoint! I'm absolutely >astounded that you made such remarks, from many points of perspective. >For example, you seem to imply that Kapor is supporting the theft from >businesses, That is what he said, assuming the Post quoted him correctly. He said that these fellows were being hindered in their free exchange of information. He does not think it was theft. He thinks their presence on those computers was legitimate. >yet as we have seen, the Secret Service _ITSELF_ is guilty >of completely disrupting the business of Steve Jackson Games. That >really makes Jenkins' remarks look like the self-serving lies that >they are. "...Threaten to disrupt our nation's business and >government services"? Give me a break. How come you want the crackers to be sure and have a fair trial before anyone pronounces them guilty, yet you are happy to pronounce guilt upon the Secret Service without any further ado? I don't know if the Secret Service is guilty of anything or not, but what does that have to do with the acts attributed to the crackers? ..... >It's obvious that the Secret Service and whoever else is involved is >on a witch-hunt of the scale of that by the FBI during the late 60's >and early 70's against those damn anti-war hippies. Even if the SS >has caught up a number of extremely minor criminals in its huge >fishing net, it still doesn't justify what they are doing. And this >is particularly true when the law regarding electronic communications >networks such as BITNET, Usenet, and Bulletin Board Systems is so >vaguely undefined at the moment. How defined do you want things to be? Just what would, in your estimation, ever justify stopping people who break into computers? You know, all the old cliches, i.e. witch-hunt, are getting pretty tiresome in my estimation. I don't think you would ever be satisfied, frankly, because I see in your message a considerable anti-government, pro-cracker bias that no one would ever be able to overcome. We could spend much bandwidth rehashing all the same, tired old issues. >Is the administrator/operator of some carrier of electronic >information completely responsible for every bit of data contained or >passing through his system? The present legal answer is "No, well >maybe, we don't know yet." That's right, he is. Either you have control over your computer(s) and your telephone lines or you do not. Which is it? I thought blaming the computer for what went wrong went out of favor twenty years ago. Do you remember when clerks in all big business places used to say the computer had 'made an error' in something? If you are not in a position to run a big site responsibly, then don't do it. And where I might have some sympathy for really huge sites, I don't buy the excuse of some two-bit BBS sysop that he "can't possibly read everything on his board ..." No one is asking him to read it all ... just to cultivate a responsible class of users and respond to problem postings. >And then your suggestion that we steal software from Lotus or anything >else which benefits Kapor financially is really a inflammatory >strawman argument. Or a bad suggestion classing you with the worst of >the criminals and hypocrits if you were serious. Uh, do I get a chance for a fair trial also, or is that out of the question where you are concerned? Kapor says its not really burglary or theft, it is the dissemination of information. Townson says it is burglarly and theft, but as long as Kapor says its okay, then go ahead and steal from him. >After all, there is >_NO_ evidence in your remarks that Kapor is supporting criminal >activity. Rather it seems he is against a campaign of terror >orchestrated by the SS and AT&T and who knows who else directed at a >lot of mostly innocent technophiles. Well, I would hope someone could successfully terrorize the little snot-noses who like breaking into computers. And I have yet to see any 'innocent technophiles' get arrested for anything, or terrorized, for that matter, unless it is someone who gets frightened easily, or something. And yes, he is supporting criminal activity, but doing so by cleverly trying to redefine *what is, and is not crime*. Repeat: He said they should not be on trial. He thinks activities like the alleged are 'harmless' ... how many times must I repeat this? >Are you lily-white, impeccably >honest, Mr. Moderator? I doubt it. And even if you were, you ought >to be worried about the abuse of power that is taking place. Of course not. Whatever gave you the impression I said or thought I was? And as for the so-called abuse of power that occurs, there are plenty of people like yourself to worry about it. >Ever heard this parable? [paraphrased for brevity] A Methodist living >in Berlin just prior to WWII watches as first his Jewish, then Polish, >then non-Caucasian, then communist neighbors are rounded up and taken >away in the middle of the night by the Nazis. Each time it happens, >he does nothing, since the Nazis leave him alone. But when they >finally come for him, there is no one to help him or protest his >treatment, because they've already been taken. Ah yes ... Martin Niemoller; but it was Lutheran, not Methodist; and you forgot to include the step where the Catholics all get taken away. I heard the 'parable' originally, when he first used it in a sermon back in the middle fifties. He was invited to preach at the Chapel once a year or so. By the by, there were not any 'non-Caucasians' mentioned in the story ... did you just make that part up? That poor story is so abused, so mis-used for everything under the sun. I suspect Martin is sorry he ever brought it up. >Do I need to spell this out for you? I hope not. There's a couple >little clauses in the Bill of Rights regarding: innocence until proven >guilt, freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures, freedom of >speech, freedom to pursue happiness. Surely you are familiar with >these. Uh, no, I never heard of those things. I'm only an iggorant moderator. >I'm not advocating theft. I'm not advocating that phreaker/cracker >criminals go free. But how about the law enforcement officials stick >to 2 simple rules: 1) follow the laws themselves, and 2) fit the >punishment and enforcement efforts to the crime. You may not be advocating theft, but you are trying to make one set of circumstances offset another. There are ways to deal with errant government officials just as there are ways to deal with crackers. >Oh, and incidentally: maybe it's a forgone issue now, but "hacker" is >not a criminal or delinquint by definition, or at least, not >originally, and not by most people who have pride in being one. But >maybe the hysterics and popular press have abused this word for so >long that it no longer has its original meaning. I regret that Mr. >Moderator saw fit to use it as he did, unless it was merely a result >of paraphrasing without thought some press release. I think I said 'cracker' -- not 'hacker' in my report when I used the word myself. The newspaper article may have mis-used it. To summarize my complaint, Mitch Kapor and I would disagree as to the nature of the alleged acts. I call them theft and burglary. He calls them otherwise. We both agree that everyone should have a fair trial; and that no one is officially guilty until the court has so ruled. I beleive that people who are found guilty of theft and/or burglary should be treated like any convicted felon. Chris Johnson seems to think the government should be punished instead for starting a witch-hunt. > ...Chris Johnson chris@c2s.mn.org ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris > Com Squared Systems, Inc. St. Paul, MN USA +1 612 452 9522 Patrick Townson