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Censorious trends: PICSRules & digsigs & anonymity, starring Feather & Templeton
12/25/1997
It started out small: PICS, a simpleton rating language.
And "for a good cause": ideas about everyone needing
digital signatures to use the Net.
Then came Clive and others: let's expand PICS to be world-wide,
and start reporting items politically incorrect to the police.
In comp.org.eff.talk Clive D.W. Feather <[email protected]> wrote:
: I'll declare my affiliations up-front:
: * One of the authors of the PICSRules proposal.
: * Chairman of the IWF Management Board.
: * Member of the IWF Policy Board.
: * Associate Director of Demon Internet.
: * Managing Director of CityScape Internet.
: * Member of the LINX Content Regulation sub-committee.
: * Parent of three children.
: * Primary school governor.
: * Free-speech advocate.
Free speech advocate?
As long as it has been reviewed first.
The FBI has come out in favor of mandatory Key Recovery
on all *domestic* encryption in the USA.
Reason?
: * "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
: *
: * [ Al Bayse was assistant director of the FBI's Technical Services
: * Division, in charge of spending more than half a billion dollars
: * for research, development and computer operations. ]
: *
: * "Sure", said Al Bayse of the FBI, "I believe there is an absolute
: * right to privacy. But that doesn't mean you have the right to break
: * the law in a serious way. Any private conversation that doesn't
: * involve criminality should be private"
: *
: * In other words, as the debate was framed by Bayse, the right to
: * privacy is at least partly contingent on a determination by an FBI
: * agent or clerk that the conversations they already intercepted and
: * understood do not involve a crime.
PICSRules takes it a step further: review all material,
report everything politically incorrect to the police,
allow each country to censor to its own tune.
An information infrastructure to do so.
It will make us long for the days of false hits by
current filtering programs, where a White House page
was censored because the word "couples" was on it.
Decrees will control what we see.
In Australia:
# From: [email protected] (Bob Bain), re: PICSRules
#
# There are some here in Canberra who seem to view the Internet as an
# extension of the "computer game" laws. There isn't a single computer
# game that can be marketed in Australia which would be suitable for
# adults - due to the fact that somebody in Canberra has decreed it.
Can't make an effect decree without a mechanism in place.
More on decrees later.
----
Clive Feather wrote:
: Information Security writes:
: Speaking as one of the authors of the proposal in question, I can quite
: confidently say that the *only* purpose of PICSRules is to provide a
: convenient and standard notation for writing such rule sets and passing
: them around.
: >The only stated purpose is to "protect" kids.
: Right.
: Suppose that there is a secret government plan for "mass global
: censorship" of material...
Yes, let us suppose there is...what would be a good innocuous
name for it?
Oh, let's see, how about "Internet Watch Foundation"?
One big Evil Eye of Mordor, watching all.
Sorry, I'm ahead of myself...
It's all for a good cause, right?
"Protect the children" ---Clive Feather
Clive Feather wrote:
: As for a "global rating system", the whole point
: of PICSRules is to make one *less* needed.
Wrong: PICSRules will allow each country to censor to its own satisfaction.
By labeling all content far beyond the control even
keywords in the original document would give you.
You're not a censor of pornography?
# From the Lapdance News Service (a division of ASSCnn)....12/1997
#
# LONDON, ENGLAND -- Demon Internet, which claims to be Europe's
# largest Internet service provider (ISP), has begun testing an
# automated scanning system for Usenet pornography.
#
# The system relies on data from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF),
# a UK association of ISPs, which has set up telephone and online
# hotlines for members of the public to advise on suspect Usenet
# newsgroups and Web addresses.
#
# "The aim of this new system is to help streamline the process of
# finding duplicated illegal material on the Internet and reduce the
# number of abusers of the Internet by reporting and removing the
# material that has been sent," he said.
#
# "The software takes an MD5 format fingerprint of each sexually
# explicit image that has been posted to the Usenet and has been removed
# for legal reasons," he said, adding that, when the software spots the
# same fingerprint anywhere else on the Internet, it alerts staff at the
# ISP, so they can take appropriate action.
#
# Plans call for the new software to be used in conjunction with the
# IWF's program of identifying, reporting, and removing illegal material
# from newsgroups.
#
# The association is an independent organization to implement the
# proposals jointly agreed by the government, the police...
Oh, my.
Clive Feather is a liar.
He is bending over backwards to give the government and the police
exactly what they want, just as if it had been legislated.
Clive's excuse: this way _newsgroups_ won't be dropped
by government decree.
Oh, big improvement, Clive.
----
The political whims of the moment will be accommodated.
This is quite different from user-local filtering,
or allocating just one bit for labeling everything
as "child-only" or not.
It's not close to something for merely providing user-level filtering.
# http://www.internetwatch.org.uk/p040797.html
#
# IWF PROPOSES A GLOBAL RATING SYSTEM
#
# David Kerr, IWF's Chief Executive, is addressing government
# ministers from Europe, United States, Canada, Russia and Japan at
# the Global Information Networks Conference in Bonn on "rating and
# filtering Internet content".
#
# It is advocated in the EU's latest policy paper on
# "Protection of Minors and Human Dignity in Audiovisual and
# Information Services" and has been suggested as an alternative
# approach to protecting children in the USA following the fall of
# the Communications Decency Act.
# http://www.internetwatch.org.uk/stats.html
#
# September 1997 statistics:
#
# o 1600 items reported to other ISPs
# o 1800 items reported to the police
You reported 1800 items to the police in one month already?
Wow.
Sounds like you _are_ the police.
Their eyes.
# http://www.internetwatch.org.uk/legal.html
#
# The first role of the Internet Watch Foundation is to operate a
# hotline service for users to report illegal material on the Internet.
Oh, right: enforcing whatever governments pass as law,
taking responsibility for content passing through the
Net (WWW/Usenet).
No matter how silly, stupid, or censorious.
-------------------- Begin Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
Also, there seems to be a disagreement between citizens and
the Government over what even constitutes child pornography.
* The New York Times, 1995
* Newark, NJ, Jan 12 (AP)
*
* A judge ruled today that a father must stand trial for taking nude photos
* of his six-year-old daughter, despite the man's claim that the pictures
* were art, not pornography.
*
* The judge ruled they were not art, despite Mr. Feuer's instructor, Susan
* Klechner of the International Center of Photography in New York City,
* submitting an affidavit saying the pictures were taken for the course
* and were consistent with the assignment.
*
* After his arrest, Mr. Feuer was ordered not to have contact with his
* daughter and could not stay at his home while the prosecution's
* investigation continued.
*
* The order was lifted last April, but David Ruhnke, Mr. Feuer's lawyer,
* said "It's really difficult to overstate what a nightmare this has
* been for him."
*
* Mr. Ruhnke further complained that the judge revealed Mr. Feuer's name
* in court papers while he was still making motions to dismiss the case,
* to protect the girl.
Parents charged with child pornography for taking photos of their children.
Thought Police.
-------------------- End Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
Even respected photographers are hassled.
-------------------- Begin Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
We netizens are rightfully paranoid of the
American government, because it has no scruples.
What the FBI did to photographer Jock Sturges was criminal.
Excerpt from 'TO: A Journal of Poetry, Prose + the Visual Arts', Summer 1992:
* Hounded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a bizarre witch-hunt
* at an expense to the taxpayers of over a million dollars, Sturges had
* survived an attempt to destroy his life and his work and was now
* countersuing the agency.
*
* Recapitulated briefly, Sturges, who's based in San Francisco, has for
* years been photographing young people whose families practice nudity.
*
* He's done so with his subjects' permission, as well as that of their
* parents, who often appear in the photographs along with their offspring.
* Rejecting the use of standard model releases, with their blanket
* permissions, the photographer chooses instead to request approval
* from his subjects for each and every exhibition and publication
* of each and every image --- an exemplary scrupulousness.
*
* Then, in 1990, alerted to the "questionable" content of some of his
* images by a local processing lab, the FBI arrested Joe Semien, Sturge's
* assistant, invaded the photographer's San Francisco studio without a
* warrant, and seized all his prints, negatives, records, and equipment;
* thereafter, without arresting Sturges, or even charging him with
* anything, they refused to return his property and did everything
* possible to destroy him personally and professionally by branding
* him a child pornographer
On September 15, 1991, The New York Times reported that the Feds took the
case to a grand jury after 17 months, and they immediately threw it out.
And that "this was unusual because only the prosecution's evidence is
presented to a grand jury and they generally return indictments at
the Government's request".
Excerpt from 'TO: A Journal of Poetry, Prose + the Visual Arts', Summer 1992:
* Jock Sturges:
*
* It took another month to get the U.S. Attorney to admit they had
* finished the investigation and that the case was closed.
*
* Before they were through they had interviewed forty-four families in
* France to whom they lied outrageously.
*
* It seems the Feds were unable to get the French interested because
* the French Police thought the photographs were just lovely. So the
* French were given the impression by the U.S. government that I had
* been convicted of incest in the United States and that I was a
* dangerous individual.
*
* And based on this assumption, the French Police conducted their own
* interviews, but my friends happily knew me well enough. When they
* found out they had been misled, the French Police called everybody
* back and apologized.
*
* Nevertheless, an enormous amount of effort was put out in France to
* go and talk to all these people and a similar thing was done in
* Germany. This was not all free. It was hideously expensive. And the
* repercussions --- I don't know what they are yet. I haven't talked
* to all the families.
*
* In the end, everything I received back was essentially destroyed.
*
* My computer was broken.
*
* All my prints were badly damaged.
*
* Some of them had been wadded up and thrown away and then taken out
* of the waste basket and flattened out again.
It cost Sturges $100,000 in legal fees, loss of major clients, much income,
seizure of his life's work, the tools of his trade, and made him feel
depressed about his life's work.
Our government uses Orwellian terror tactics
to control the politically incorrect:
Jock Sturges:
At my lowest point in this affair, I almost decided to jump
from the San Francisco bridge. I had stopped my car.
-------------------- End Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
Where have I heard that "Human Dignity" stuff before?
Oh yeah: Congress passed a law (overturned by the US Supreme Court) called
something like "Decency and Honor in the Military", which outlawed selling
Playboy and Penthouse magazines from military base stores.
And...
In comp.org.eff.talk Dave Bird <[email protected]> wrote:
: The European Commission today adopted a proposal for an Action Plan on
: promoting safe use of the Internet. [snip]
: The Action Plan is closely linked with the Commission Communication and
: proposal for a Recommendation of 18 November 1997, which outlines
: political measures on protection of minors and human dignity in the
: audiovisual services (http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/dg10/avpolicy/new_srv
: /comlv-en.htm).
# telematics crimes
Ooooh, new terminology for Internet crimes.
Your are a telematic criminal.
Must have laws to control telematic criminals.
Porno bad.
Nudity bad.
Pretrial publicity bad. (Illegal in England & Canada? Not the USA!)
Copyright violations bad.
Bad bad bad.
http://www2.echo.lu/legal/en/internet/wp2en-chap.html#2A
# 4. FINLAND
#
# d. Other initiatives
#
# 27. The report holds the view that anonymous use of the Internet should
# be allowed, however, traceability of persons using the Internet
# should be ensured.
Oh, great, the Usenet II definition of "anonymous".
Anonymity will be under direct attack next.
Next thing you know, Chris Lewis will be recommending to the NNTP
standards people that each and every user should be identified
via a "Sender:" line.
# From [email protected] Fri Dec 19 18:43:15 1997
# Cc: [email protected]
# From: "Chris Lewis" <[email protected]>
# Subject: re:ietf-nntp Minutes from the WG
#
# Once authenticated, the server SHOULD generate a Sender: line
# using the email address provided by the authenticator if it
# does not match the user-supplied From: line.
Yep.
Chris says he merely wants it for "statistics".
Chris Lewis has declared I am on his content-based NoCeM list.
I apparently profess views he doesn't appreciate, so I am labeled
as "bad" so I can be "filtered".
People couldn't possible choose to killfile me on their own.
It's just a "global killfile" said someone.
Same goes for the whole PICSRules deal...completely unnecessary.
PICSRules wants to "objectively" label content.
A Senator Feinstein here in the USA keeps introducing a
bill to outlaw "bombmaking information on the Internet".
* C-SPAN Television, Wednesday June 5th, 1997
*
* Andrew Grove, Chairman & CEO of Intel Corporation, is asked whether
* bomb-making information should be censored from the Internet.
*
* "No. The same information is available in libraries, and we don't
* censor libraries, nor should we. When I was thirteen I built a
* nitroglycerin bomb. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do,
* and I knew someone who had their hand blown off, but I am
* adamantly against censoring such material."
*
* "And unlike a library, a parent can buy a program that uses keyword
* monitoring to disallow Internet traffic per the parents' wishes.
* Such a program is available now, and costs only $29."
Mr. Grove was just awarded Time magazine's "Man of the Year".
So, one day there's material labeled "adult/bomb info", and the
next day: it's illegal in the USA.
Only way to do it: require PICSRules filtering at the ISP level.
Nothing else scales.
: Demon Internet:
: "The aim of this new system is to help streamline the process of
: finding duplicated illegal material on the Internet and reduce the
: number of abusers of the Internet...
Filtering software will reduce "the number of abusers"???
# http://www.gilc.org/speech/ratings/gilc-pics-submission.html
#
# PICSRules 1.1 go far beyond the original objective of PICS to
# empower Internet users to control what they and those under their
# care access. They further facilitate the implementation of
# server/ proxy-based filtering thus providing a more simplified
# means of enabling upstream censorship, beyond the control of the
# end user.
You aren't fooling anyone, Clive.
Except maybe yourself.
----
And what was that about getting rid of anonymity, by - at the least -
guaranteeing traceability even through anonymous remailers?
Brad Templeton, EFF director, has a few ideas of his own:
"no fake addresses is one of my non-negotiable
requirements...eventual Usenet will require
digital signatures" --- Brad Templeton
Funny, how MLM companies (yes, ISP accounts are an MLM-able product)
including Brad's Clarinet company would like to get rid of short-term
ISP accounts too.
Brad states he wants commitment and accountability.
This EFF director wants all email and Usenet posts signed
by your digital signature, a massive control-freak change
in the status quo.
This twists some of the very technology netizens hoped
would protect us to being used against us.
*** Brad is emphatically for digital signature authentication, #1:
# I am not talking about law. I am talking about practice.
# You want to mail me, you put a digital sig on your mail.
# You want to send a posting into my news server,
# you put a digital sig on it.
*** Brad is emphatically for digital signature authentication, #2:
Brad Templeton emailed:
* Information Security emailed:
* > Nor does your digital signature idea do anything to prevent
* > throw-away accounts from doing major spams; you'll have to
* > put even MORE controls on people.
*
* Correct, no throw away accounts. It's coming.
*
* > The digital signature idea is an astonishingly bad idea, that
* > only frustrated control-freaks will accept.
*
* You are mistaken. I surveyed a roomful of usenet admins at a
* conference last year. They were 95% in favor of it.
[I replied that those were the control-freaks I was talking about]
*** Brad is emphatically for digital signature authentication, #3:
Brad Templeton emailed, formatted by guy:
> As far as I am concerned, no fake addresses is one of my non-negotiable
> requirements, because
>
> the eventual USENET is going to have digital signature requirements.
>
> It's the only way to stop [people from] posting under fake addresses
> where we can't find them, and that means stopping honest users from
> doing it too.
*** Brad is emphatically for digital signature authentication, #4:
http://www.clari.net/brad/spam.html [snipped]
Solutions...
First, improve internet mail systems and protocols to
identify mail with a fake or forged return address.
There are some simple steps to do this, and
eventually digital signature allows complete
verification of the sender.
http://polka.clari.net/usenet-format/cert.html
Q: What about anonymous remailers?
A: A person with an anonymous address that sends mail back will
probably be able to get a certificate. They can post without revealing
their name, except perhaps to the person who gives them a certificate.
Digital signature works fine to prove the same person sent two messages
without saying at all who that person is in the real world.
Forced to authenticate they are the same
person, even through the anonymous remailer.
A certificate by another person needed.
I call that traceable.
No comment by the EFF.
----
PICSRules is just the first step in putting the entire Net under
government control.
See how important it is to Brad that ~"people can be found"?
Everyone with power becomes a control freak, apparently.
----
Clive Feather wrote:
: Modern special effects are quite capable of producing such films
: without requiring a real murder. Consider a wide range of recent
: cinema releases.
No good enough for our rulers, Clive.
Video & drawings suddenly considered illegal here in the USA...
No new law was passed...
-------------------- Begin Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
The law refers to "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area".
The FBI takes that to mean naked. Obviously.
A poorly written bill, interpreted by predatory pinheads.
Guess what?
1/18/95 NYT: In a case that did not involve nudity or genital visibility,
Attorney General Janet Reno filed a brief with the Supreme Court that
said it was not necessary for a child pornography conviction. That is
how she interprets the language of the bill.
Wow.
And I thought Ed Meese was a bad Attorney General. Meese had written
to companies like the owners of 7-11 and told them selling Playboy and
Penthouse could get them Federal obscenity charges. That was his attempt
to get around the First Amendment.
10/3/96 NYT: Because of computers, a bill was passed that changes the
definition of child pornography to include generated images that do
not involve actual children.
Thought crime. Law enforcement child pornography hysteria.
Sturges incident: attacked by the FBI Thought Police Squad. Massive corrupt
use of governmental law enforcement authority to enforce mere political
correctness. Due to its size: by definition not an aberration.
It cost one million dollars of our tax money.
-------------------- End Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
That's right: the laws can be re-interpreted at any time by the police.
In the above mentioned case, Janet Reno's Department of Justice had
first filed a brief with the US Supreme Court AGAINST a child
pornography conviction for the person involved.
During election year politics, over 200 Senators wrote to her and
said they'd make a big campaign issue of it if she didn't change
her mind.
She changed her mind and filed an OPPOSITE brief in the Supreme Court.
Sheesh.
The "law" is a shifting sand...quicksand for those "on the edge"...
"Protect the children" ---Clive Feather
Oh, how quickly people forget all the manipulation involved
in "protecting children"...
-------------------- Begin Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
On June 19, 1997, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain introduced
his own bill (Senator Kerrey co-sponsor) which parrots the Clinton
administration's position and forced it to replace the Pro-Code bill.
He banged the Drum of War against Child Pornography.
* http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly, By Declan McCullagh
*
* In the end, it was child pornography that derailed encryption legislation
* in the U.S. Senate and dealt a bitter defeat to crypto supporters.
*
* Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), committee chair and chief sponsor of the
* measure, led the attack, saying Congress must "stop child pornography
* on the Internet."
*
* He warned that "allowing encryption to be exported would permit child
* pornographers to use it."
*
* "If it's being used for child pornography? Are we going to say
* that's just fine? That's it's just business? I don't think so."
*
* Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO) tried to disagree. "It's like photography. We're
* not going to [ban] photography if someone takes dirty pictures."
*
* At this point, one of the more deaf committee members asked,
* "Pornography? Are we going to ban pornography?"
*
* The Senate Commerce Committee then approved McCain's bill.
*
* For a committee whose bailiwick is commerce, the senators seemed somewhat
* detached from their mandate with business taking a backseat.
*
Thank you once again, oh Free World Leaders, for that intelligent discourse.
* The New York Times, June 15 1997
*
* "Washington Kidnaps Dick and Jane - See How Washington Uses Dick and Jane"
*
* These days much of the nation's political debate focuses on children - or
* on the needs and interests of children as defined by politicians.
*
* Mr. Horn, who was chief of the Childrens Bureau in the Bush Administration
* added, "A cynic would say that children are being used as props or proxies."
Color me cynical.
* "WHITE HOUSE IS SET TO EASE ITS STANCE ON INTERNET SMUT"
* The New York Times, By John M. Broder, June 16 1997
*
* Administration officials, in a draft report dated June 4 1997, have been
* quietly fashioning a new communications policy that leaves most regulation
* of the Internet to industry and people themselves, due to an expected
* repudiation of the Communications Decency Act by the Supreme Court.
*
* Reno's people, [beating the Drum of War] told the Supreme Court "the
* Internet was a revolutionary threat to children rendering irrelevant all
* prior efforts" to protect them from pornography.
*
* "We all knew at the time it was passed that the Communications Decency Act
* WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL," said an anonymous senior government official [yea
* anonymity!].
*
* "This was purely politics."
*
* "How could you be against a bill limiting
* the display of pornography to children?"
-------------------- End Cryptography Manifesto excerpt --------------------
Ah, yes, how could anyone be against a mega world-wide organization
for labeling all WWW and Usenet so it can be reported to the police
when the law is reinterpreted for the moment's politically incorrect
information?
Er, I mean, for protecting children?
----
Anyone wishing a copy of the 'Cryptography Manifesto', email guy
@panix.com using subject line 'Requesting Cryptography Manifesto'.
It's 519K (about 75 double-sided pages).
It documents world-wide spying by the US National Security Agency.
Merry Christmas kudos to cypherpunk John Gilmore for
putting himself at risk by publishing RSAREF source
code on the Net recently. http://www.toad.com/~dnssec
He is directly taking on the US National Security Agency.
Fred Salchli <[email protected]> wrote:
: I heard a brief report on BBC World News last evening that an internal
: report has been issued by European Union criticizing the NSA for
: bugging ALL of their communications. (Yes, ALL was the word used in the
: report!). The BBC mentioned that all communications were being filtered
: (voice and data) for key words and phrases, and the EU had some compelling
: evidence to support this. Interesting to see what, if anything comes of
: this.
Awww, the EU is upset the NSA is spying on it...
---guy
Just don't say anything illegal, what's the problem? ;-)