Raids in Europe...be careful!

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Here's a report, dated today, that indicates the recent "software
piracy" issue (MIT/La Macchia, other sites) may be being used to
launch raids. 

Apparently this guy, in Italy, did not (his claim) have any pirated
software on his machine(s), but it was seized by the Italian feds.
Other sites, too, I gather.

This is only a SPECULATION here: With the Clipper program foundering,
and reaction very negative, and government official wringing their
hands at their inability to get a handle on things (control), there
may be alternate strategies put into play.

A crackdown on pirated material could be one avenue. Net porn could be
another. And should there be some highly visible case involving
encryption, bombers, child porn, terrorists, whatever, action could be
swift.

Briefly, let me urge you all to carefully think about this. Blatantly
illegal material on your systems could play into their hands. No, I
don't mean "free speech" issues...attacking _that_ would be a
difficult task. I mean pirated software in a location accessible to
the outside world, pornographic GIFs or whatever similarly accessible,
and so forth. (Someone recently asked if ftp sites could be
anonymously loaded (put) with items...this is worrisome, though I'm
certainly not accusing that anonymous person of any ill intent. Just
with the climate and all...)

I'm not playing net.cop. I just think Cypherpunks have enough
interesting--and ultimately very important--things to think about
without getting caught up in a criminal prosecution of software
piracy, child pornography, or the like. Just my personal view, you
understand.

I hope my concern is premature (I have no doubt that sooner or later
there will come a time of collision between Our Side and Their Side,
and that we will have to stand against Randall Flagg, DIRNSA).

Here's the Italian case:

From: zbig@junior.wariat.org (Zbigniew J. Tyrlik)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs.unixbbs,alt.bbs.unixbbs.uniboard,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.bbs.misc
Subject: Bad news from iItaly
Followup-To: alt.bbs.unixbbs
Date: 13 May 1994 07:26:13 -0400
Organization: Akademia Pana Kleksa, Public Access Uni* Site
Message-ID: <2qvo4l$b5k@junior.wariat.org>
Reply-To: staff@ita.it


Just received this message from Italy. 

Anyone know what is going wrong with te world ??? 

>>> included message:
>From ita.it!staff Fri May 13 05:32:27 1994
Return-Path: <staff@ita.it>
Received:  from relay.iunet.it by wariat.org  with smtp(/\==/\ Smail3.1.28.1 #28
.5) id <m0q1tbS-00037uC@wariat.org>; 
        Fri, 13 May 94 05:32 EDT for "|/usr/local/bin/filter -o /usr/zbig/.elm/f
ilter_error" 
Received: from ita.UUCP by relay.iunet.it with UUCP id AA02606
  (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4 for zbig@wariat.org); Fri, 13 May 1994 11:36:32 +0200
Received: by ita.it (5.65/ita-mail-drop)
        id AA09891; Fri, 13 May 94 11:23:03 +0200
From: staff@ita.it (Riccardo Pizzi)
Message-Id: <9405130923.AA09891@ita.it>
Subject: Busted!!
To: zbig@wariat.org
Date: Fri, 13 May 94 11:23:02 EET
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: RO
 

Hi Zbig,

things are getting really bad here...

On Wednesday, 11th of May, at 3:30 pm, the italian Feds came into my house
while I was out of town for a consulting business. They went into my bedroom
and seized all my equipment, diskettes, tapes. This action was part of a
nationwide raid against software piracy that hit some other 40+ FIDONET
sites (yes, they seem to have used a Fido nodelist to find out about sites
to investigate). Needless to say, I didn't even had DOS on my disk drives,
let alone any copyrighted software. Anyway, they have now all my work of the
latest 5 (five) years, including all backup copies of UniBoard and related
stuff..  and I don't know if I will be ever able to have all my stuff back.
I have also lost my nervous.com email address, but I can be reached here
as <staff@ita.it>; I will try to keep you informed about this (very bad) story.
Please, forward this to the alt.bbs.* groups, since I do not have news access
here, and am also missing all the email addresses of my customers and friends..

Wish me luck,

Rick
                                  _\\|//_ 
                                  ( 0-0 )
-------------------------------o00--(_)--00o------------------------------------
     Riccardo Pizzi, SysAdmin                  Tel:   +39 71 204046
     I.T.A. Informatica e                      Fax:  +39 71 2073033 
     Tecnologie Avanzate s.r.l.                E-Mail: staff@ita.it
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------