len@lsicom2.UU.NET (Len Rose) (10/04/90)
Archive-name: sun-devil/03-Oct-90 Original-posting-by: len@lsicom2.UU.NET (Len Rose) Original-subject: Judge for Yourself Archive-site: athena.ee.msstate.edu [130.18.64.7] Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) This article was pointed out to me by a friend and came from the newsgroup alt.sex.pictures.d ... Can anyone verify this? BEGINNING OF ARTICLE -------------------- >From article <1990Sep29.181306.11316@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, by jstewart@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Ace Stewart): > > If anyone knows, what is the userid of the person/people who maintain > the archives over at MARS? I wanted to send them so email about the > GIFS and some other questions, but ROOT and OPERATOR don't work. Does > anyone happen to know who should I mail to? > Can't help you how here but this is a message that a friend of mine got off of there BBS ============================================================================== = copy of message = ============================================================================== Posted By: lush (Ed Luke) Date: Sat Sep 29 21:54:03 1990 Title: The story about the GIF files. Ok, since everyone has been asking about the gif files, here's the story of what happened with the gifs... It seems that the secret service under direction of Pres. Bush is on a campaign against computer crime. You've read about some of this probably. It's called Operation Sun Devil. Some of the older users will remember when this bbs was called the Pirates Resource BBS and was on athena.ee.mssate.edu. Well we eventually got shut down in a fashion similar to that of the victims of operation sun devil. However, in our case, since we were such an allegedly large center for computer criminal activity, the Secret Service, along with the National Computing Defence Council decided to conduct an ongoing investiation. If you want to catch mice, you don't just plug their holes. You lay traps. Well they allowed us to set up again at mars on the strict requirement that we would do strict accounting. We have been keeping records of every (timestamped) upload and download that's been made to this board. In addition, in hopes of cooperating with the Feds for obvious reasons, I instituted the monitoring system software on mars. When anyone did an ftp it logged the date, did a finger on the system that was connecting and snarfed up the userid via ftp protocol and made a complete record of all files downloaded and uploaded. Also, users that download files from the bbs had the machine name they were connecting to, and any other evidence collected in a similar manner. After enough information was collected, we gave them the reams of data files and removed the gifs, giving yall the bogus NSF story. So there it is. The GIFS and GL's aren't the biggest part of the story, but they are illegal in some states and the FCC has been interested in cracking down on computer obscenity for a long time. I can't say I like it, but that we have to live with it. Later, Ed Luke ============================================================================== any comments? michael packer -- Michael A. Packer DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering PHONE: 304 293-7226 INTERNET : pac@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu -------------- END OF ARTICLE