U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION EMERGENCY DECLARED (Future View) (fwd)

[Ken Williams <jkwilli2@unity.ncsu.edu>]

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U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION EMERGENCY DECLARED (Future View)

Hamilton, Bermuda  -- Radio Free America at 2000 UTC -- (February 24,
1999)
-
FBI director Louis Freeh, Jr. today announced a nationwide crackdown on
Internet abusers as President Clinton invoked  new authorities granted
him under the Information Infrastructure Defense Act (IIDA) of 1998. White
House Press Secretary Monica Lewinsky said the President declared  a
national information emergency at 9:23 last night. The emergency
automatically lasts for 100 days. The President may then seek an extension
after consulting with three members of Congress. The FBI's Indication and
Warning Threat Center in Newington, Virginia first reported an 850 percent
increase in illegal Internet access attempts last Thursday, prompting Mr.
Freeh to ask for the presidential emergency declaration. 

Among the sites hacked were the White House's Automated Oval Office Visit
Scheduling System; the Democratic National Committee's Insta-Donation
System; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Tennessee
Summer Picnic Reservation System; the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team's
Seventh Day Adventist Watch Network (also known as "Deep Six the Sevens
Net"); the Electronic Pearl Harbor Visitors' Center;  the Arkansas
Attorney General's Cases-Disposed -Without-Further- Investigation System;
the Embassy of China's "Rent-a-Prez" system; and the Indonesian Embassy's
Rupiah-to-Dollar Laundromat Net.
       
The nationwide sting of Internet intruders began at noon yesterday
when the New York field office of the Secret Service arrested 25 members
of the Brooklyn Cyberspace Liberation Front at their regularly scheduled
Tuesday meeting at a Bayside Cyber Caf�. Secret Service spokesman Biff
"Buck" Arew said, "it took us a while to figure out when they were going
to be in one spot, but after we employed our best investigative
techniques, we had them right where we wanted them. The arresting part was
easy." 

The Secret Service is a designated  information infrastructure law
enforcement agency under the 1998 legislation. It was joined by elements
of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals' Service, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the Postal Inspection Service, the Park Service, the Border
Patrol,  the Enforcement Division of the Federal Communications
Commission, as well as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in the coast-to-coast
operation. Meanwhile, special FAA security officers on loan from Microsoft
were busy at the nation's airports searching the notebook and palmtop
computers of air travelers for illegal software programs.  At the
Pentagon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "the military
now reserves the right to move forward on the information super highway."

He said he considers the Internet similar to the nation's interstate
highway system.  "When you have a bunch of stalled cars from a
high-altitude combination electromagnetic and gamma-ray burst littering
all the passing lanes and on- ramps, our armored vehicles just need to
push them aside and move on."

The general, who escaped a recent international war crimes indictment
resulting from his peacekeeping duties in Angola, did not elaborate on the
meaning of his comment.  Other mass arrests of hackers were made in
Chicago; New Orleans; Sunnyvale, California; Tampa; Atlanta, Washington,
D.C.; Los Angeles; and St. Louis.  Some of the arrested individuals are
noted opponents of the government's policies to control the flow of
information on the Internet.  Internet users report that some
controversial web sites are no longer accessible, although the FBI
refused to confirm whether their operators were among those arrested.

The inaccessible sites include those of the Libertarian Alliance, USA;
Cascadia Green Party; Outer Banks Secessionist Party; Ashcroft for
President 2000; Supreme Court, Free Crypto Home Page;  First Amendment
Enforcement Coalition; United We Stand (Marxist-Leninist); SPAM
Prohibition League;  Virtual Zapatista, and the Arizona Naturist Home
Page.

Federal officials stated that the number of arrests totaled more than
900. Critics of the government action claim the number is much higher. An
Amnesty International spokesperson in Teheran said she thinks the number
may be well over 15,000 but that it was "difficult to get news from
America under the present circumstances." The National Security Agency's
National Information Warfare Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, reported that
the identities of several overseas hackers had been passed to their
respective governments for possible prosecution under U.S. law under the
mutual law enforcement and extradition provisions of the IIDA. Scotland
Yard said it had arrested 17 intruders in the greater London area while
Europol was preparing to make several arrests in France, Italy, and
Austria.  At a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in London, Prime
Minister Tony Blair, upon leaving a cabinet meeting, said he was in close
communication with President Clinton during "this extraordinary emergency"
and that "he fully understood what the Americans were ordering him to do."

The government of Burma summarily executed 153 members of the Rangoon
Computer Club. In Ottawa, the RCMP said  the FBI's Canada Law Enforcement
Extension Task Force was investigating several groups in Montreal,
Halifax, and Vancouver and expected to make a large number of arrests
"soon." The RCMP official admitted that, "because we do not normally get
involved in FBI matters on Canadian soil, I cannot give you precise
details about the operation."
        

If convicted, the arrested hackers face a maximum penalty of 25
years in prison and/or a $200,000 fine. Freeh said that he anticipated
further arrests would be made as federal investigators sifted through more
communications records, America On Line profiles, and escrowed encryption
keys. The stored keys are used by federal agents to read scrambled e-mail
messages sent by hackers and the 12 independent special counsels
investigating the administration.
        
Vice President Gore issued a statement in which he said, "I praise
the valiant efforts of our federal investigators in isolating and
terminating the disruptive actions of individuals and groups who were bent
on interfering with our precious national information thoroughfares." Gore
said he hoped the government's action would "send a clear signal to others
who believe that such activities will go unpunished. The government has a
controlling legal authority to address these threats." Gore, an announced
candidate for president in 2000, said one of his first acts would be to
create a Secretary of Information cabinet post that would regulate the use
of electronic information throughout the country. "Just as we created a
Department of Defense in 1947 to confront the nuclear threat, we must have
a Department of Information in 2001 to face the millennial cyber threat,"
Gore declared.