More Anonymous "Annoyance"

[anonymous@extropia.wimsey.com]

> First of all, the Connecticut case you seem to be referring to is that
> of Michael Elansky (Hartford). See Computer Underground Digest for
> full details. This was *not* email. He had file downloads and kept
> around (uh) "fireworks recipes".

I did not say it was e-mail; I said it was _traffic_.  The uploading and
downloading of files constitutes traffic.

> We've got to track down these supposed cases where boards were seized
> for content.

Elansky was busted for a very juvenile anti-cop rant, according to one
news release I read regarding the case.  As I remember, this was written
by a caller rather than by Elansky.

 >I consider them minor *anomalies*, and I think a rational
 > analysis of statistics will bear that out.

They are anomalies until they happen to you, at which point they become
_major disasters_.  For every bust there must be many more cases of
harassment.

 > Turning a board into a
 > systematic exercise in privacy violation is *not* the proper response
 > to paranoia about law enforcement seizures. This punishes users for
 > the misdeeds of overzealous officers.

Here's a hot message from the real world.  Feel free to print it out and
attach it to the bathroom window so that you may save the personal
expense of buying a clue:

        Ultimately:
        The Law is irrelevant.
        Right and Wrong are irrelevant.
        Your "rights" are irrelevant.
        Ethical niceties are irrelevant.
        Mishnaic wrangling over gored oxes is irrelevant.
        Offended high principle is irrelevant.

        All that is relevant is what _happens_ to you.
        When the cops show up, you've _already_ lost.

I have been watching Law, Office and Power abuse the innocent without
remedy my entire life.  The future promises more rather than less of
this, in not the least of theatres than that of digital information
transfer.

The Elansky case appears to be nonsense from this remove, something no
reasonable Constitutionalist would entertain for five minutes.  Despite
this, Elansky was held on one half million dollars bail.  It is
extremely unlikely that he will find remedy, or that his young life will
return to normal any time soon.  At best, the charges against him will
be dropped, after traumatizing his family and exhausting their finances.
He cannot win and "law enforcement" cannot lose, however absurd the
charges against him actually are.

I wonder how many BBSs were shut down, or began rigorously
"self-censoring," as a result of the Elansky publicity.

Unlike Internet's government and business sites that can hide behind
their size, or institutions of Higher Ignorance that can shield
themselves behind "academic freedom," the hobbyist BBS is a sitting duck
for any ambitious crank with a badge and an axe to grind.

A small California network, "NirvanaNet," that features encryption,
radical political discussion and "dangerous" text files had their home
node visited by the FBI earlier this year and in short order were
libeled in the local press in an inflammatory hatchet-piece as (and I
quote) "a clearinghouse for crime," despite the fact that no charges
were filed nor any criminal activity detected on the part of any
individual caller.

This harassment is probably more common than we guess.  There are a
couple of other cases I know of personally.  The chilling effect it has
is incalculable.  At least one NirvanaNet node went off line almost
immediately, another moved and there was an apparent inventory made of
the filebase with some judicious culling.

The effect - ultimately - is that it is safer for a BBS operator to risk
violating a caller's rights than to face trouble from the authorities
on some fishing expedition.

Check it out:  Earlier this year, the sysop of a BBS affiliated with an
NPR FM station discovered that two users had been using PGP for private
messages for some months.  Despite the fact that the BBS had never had a
policy on encryption, nor had any request been made by the sysop to
cease PGP traffic, both callers discovered their accounts deleted
without notice, their access denied and all public and private messages
ever made to or from either caller erased from the system.  After some
time, the sysop announced that he felt that PGP was a threat to his BBS
(and the radio station) and that he had expelled those users without
notice.  The traffic, as it turned out, consisted of the development and
testing of an e-mail PGP adaptation for QEdit, a popular text editor
used in offline reader programs.  Much of the work resident in the BBS
was destroyed.  In the uproar that followed, the panicked sysop secretly
distributed forged messages alleged to be from one of the parties,
apparently to justify his expulsion.

The fascinating thing was that when all of this came to light and the
offended parties talked of seeking legal remedy, other sysops with
critical knowledge of the affair refused to co-operate, believing that
even though the offending sysop was absolutely in the wrong, bringing
legal action against him _threatened the BBS community at large_.  The
message was clear, "Don't make a big _schande_ out of this..."

"I don't care if he did lift your wallet, don't call the cops and break
up the party."

This is the ultimate effect that meritless law enforcement harassment
has had on the BBS community. 

> Don't these Fidonet operators *understand* that by perpetuating the
> myth that they are responsible for all traffic on their machines, that
> they are actually *playing into* the hands of authorities? they are
> *strengthening* the paranoid atmosphere. And in fact I am quite
> repulsed by their policies, posted here, that seem to cutely
> rationalize systematic invasion of privacy.

Yes, they know it, but they also know that, in the minds of most
lowbrow law-enforcement personnel, encryption is synonymous with
criminal activity.  They don't want heat.  _When the cops come, you've
already lost_.  The only question is how badly.  These sysops are
usually scrimping and saving for a new modem; they can't afford lawyers.

_To law enforcement, snooping around the messagebase looking for criminal
activity is infinitely more civic-minded and responsible than permitting
secure encryption._  Policing your callers shows more good faith (to
Constable Bubba) than permitting them terrorist PGP.

If it comes down to either having a caller pissed off or having the cops
pissed off, the bigger threat is obvious to even a seventeen-year-old
Trekkie with zits and a BBS running on his dad's old XT.

There may be a theoretical application of the ECPA that suggests a right
of some non-paying parasite to use PGP on your personally-owned BBS, but
it doesn't seem to account for much compared to a visit from knuckle-
dragging local cops responding to a busibody mom's hysterical complaint
that her kid is being sucked into a secret ring of computer terrorists
who use "spy codes."  Everyone from the NSA to the Sacramento County
Sheriff's Department has it out for PGP, and the SCSD's public
pronouncements and name-calling at Zimmermann no doubt have been
filtering down through law enforcement channels to Constable Bubba with
the message that PGP is "some computer thing" associated with California
child pornography rings.  Great.  Just what you want on your kid's hobby
BBS in small-town Alabama.