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<TITLE>CDNE Chapter 9 - An Electronic Interest Group</TITLE>
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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE=+2 FACE="Times New Roman"><B>Chapter 9<br>
AN ELECTRONIC INTEREST GROUP</B></FONT></P>
<table width="620" border="0," align="center">
<tr>
<td>
<p><b><font face="Times New Roman">The story of hackers</font></b><font face="Times New Roman">,
phreakers, telephone companies, and justice is told (from an American
perspective) in Bruce Sterling's </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>The
Hacker Crackdown</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> (1992). The
reason this science-fiction author decided to write a history of hackers,
is exactly what I have tried to illustrate with my arguments so far: that
aspects of electronic cultures overlap. The whole thing started when the
U.S. Secret Service tried to clip the wings off the underground hacker
movement, and on some occasions strayed far outside the limits for law
enforcement intervention.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">They really wanted to </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>nail</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> the hackers, who had grown extremely powerful
in just a few years, through a national crackdown (hence the title of
the book), with the intent of teaching the hackers a lesson. This crackdown
was named </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Operation Sundevil.
</i>The Secret Service busted into the homes of American teenagers, grabbing
everything with wires coming out of it. The computer, the printer, the
portable stereo, mom's and dad's computers, all of it. That wasn't enough:
they also took </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>manuals</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, or anything remotely resembling one: science-fiction
novels and regular compact disc records, for example.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">All of you can probably figure out what
happens if you take all the hacker's machines away from him or her. He/she
becomes totally powerless, with no means of keeping in contact with friends
or communicate in open electronic discussions. The hackers not only had
their wings clipped; they also had their mouths sewn shut. This is exactly
what the Secret Service wanted, and probably no one would have been concerned
- not even Bruce Sterling - if they had stayed content to just raid hackers.
Many hackers arrested during the crackdown were given sentences that prohibited
them from using computers for a certain period of time.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">On March 1, 1990, the Secret Service committed
a mistake: they went into the gaming company </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Steve
Jackson Games</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">, in Austin, TX,
and confiscated all the computers that they could find, including one
which had a completely new game stored on its hard drive: </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>GURPS
Cyberpunk</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> (GURPS sands for Generic
Universal Role Playing System, developed by Steve Jackson Games to make
it easier to switch between roleplaying settings without having to switch
gaming systems).</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Steve Jackson Games, therefore, make </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>role-playing games</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
and the game GURPS Cyberpunk was written by a hacker going by the pseudonym
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Mentor</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
(his real name was </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Lloyd Blankenship</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">), and who worked as an author at the company.
When the company demanded the return of its computer, or at least the
files for GURPS Cyberpunk (which was just about to be marketed), their
request was denied, with the justification that it was not a game but
rather a manual for perpetrating computer crime. Mentor himself was a
hacker, and had written an excellent and realistic game which focused
on breaking into different computer systems. The game was considered dangerous.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Anyone who's seen a roleplaying game knows
that it is a matter of a kind of </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>books</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> used as reference material for the games,
in which the players try to create and enter a world of the imagination.
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>GURPS Cyberpunk</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
therefore, was a </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>BOOK</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, released by a publisher, with an ISBN number
just like any other book. The fact that the U.S. Secret Service had tried
to stop the publication of </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>a book</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, simply because the contents were held to
be </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>too dangerous</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
was not well received by conscientious citizens of the U.S. The freedom
of the press is constitutional in the U.S. (like in Sweden), and a fantasy-oriented
role-playing game like </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>GURPS Cyberpunk</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> has the same official right to exist as
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>The New York Times</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, whether it teaches computer crime techniques
or not - as long as it doesn't advocate the perpetration of crimes.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">After a period of fuss in regards to the
Steve Jackson Games case, the </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Electronic
Frontier Foundation</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> was formed,
led by (among others) the Grateful Dead lyricist </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>John
Perry Barlow</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">.<sup><a href="#FTNT1">(1)</a></sup></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> They were financially supported by </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><b>Mitch Kapor</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
who was one of the creators of the spreadsheet program </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Lotus
1-2-3</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">. The organization had supporters
among the users of the electronic conferencing system </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>The
Well</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">, created by the magazine
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>The Whole Earth Review</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> in San Francisco. WELL is short for </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><b>Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, and in principle functions as a gigantic
BBS with connections to the Internet. (You could also view it as a metaphorical
"well of knowledge".) Many users of The Well are old hippies
and Grateful Dead fans, who dearly value their rights of free speech and
assembly. Many are what I call university hackers, engineers, or programmers.
The hippie-programmer combination is not unusual at The Well. (I mentioned
earlier that the hippie culture originated at the universities in the
Bay area. Consider Mitch Kapor, for example - before he started making
business software, he was a meditation instructor.)</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">San Francisco is almost a chapter of its
own. It is the Meccha of the electronic world. The universities Berkeley
and Stanford are in the area, and close by is Silicon Valley. The majority
of modern computer technology comes from San Francisco. It is where the
first personal computer, the Altair, was built, and it is also the home
of EFF, The Well, Whole Earth Review, Wired, and MONDO 2000. Virtually
all forms of popular electronic culture have originated in San Francisco,
and it is also where Virtual Reality was first marketed. At the same time,
I would say that San Francisco's reputation is a little exaggerated. It
has just as much to do with American attitudes and marketing as real knowledge,
and the expertise that computer technology rests on has been researched
and developed all across the world. However, it is a natural nexus for
amateurs as well as the pros of the computer industry. Silicon Valley,
in particular, has had great significance, with its thousands of bored
upper-middle-class engineers waiting with anticipation for anything to
happen on the electronic frontier. These people constitute the innermost
core of EFF.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">EFF has quality contacts inside the entire
American software and hardware industries, and champion </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>the
electronic rights of human beings</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">.
The organization does not protect hackers, as is often said, but it protects
the rights of hackers. EFF is therefore a </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>civil
rights organization</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">. Like the
cyberpunks, EFF is ideologically influenced by libertarianism, but on
many issues (such as "intellectual property"), they are on a
collision course with the libertarians. I will now try to illustrate how
threats against civil rights and individual integrity are manifested in
the information society.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>The Right to Communicate</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">EFF stated (and states) that it is
a violation of integrity to take someone's computer away from them. It
is as violating as taking away the right for an individual to use pen
and paper. A hacker is used to communicating with the world by computer,
through BBSs, the Internet, etc. Taking the computer from the hacker is
akin to taking the typewriter (word processor, pens, or paper) from the
author. EFF sued the Secret Service for constitutional violations in connection
with the raid on Steve Jackson Games - and they won. The organization
now works towards a constitutional amendment protecting electronic expression.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">In short: a computer criminal should not
be prevented from using computers (everyone uses them nowadays), but from
committing more computer crime. You don't prevent a counterfeiter from
working at the mint - you teach him to stop printing fake currency. Properly
used, the illegal hacker's knowledge is useful to society.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Integrity</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">EFF has grown since its inception,
and currently sponsors a public debate about computers and humans in a
future information society. It wants to protect the right of the individual
not to be registered and controlled by authorities, simply because it
is now possible thanks to the advent of the computer. The organization
therefore advocates the use of the encryption program PGP, which I discussed
earlier. Why? Well, SÄPO (the Swedish National Security Police) -
or some other internal intelligence organization - should not be allowed
to examine all postal transmissions in Sweden. They should not be able
to read all electronic mail, either. </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>But</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, they could (if they so wished) put a fast,
efficient computer to the task of searching all electronic mail for certain
keywords, in order to quickly trace new political groups. (It is astonishingly
simple to construct such a program; I could even do it myself.) Let's
say that every piece of electronic mail containing the words "REVOLUTION",
"WEAPONS", or "SOCIETY", in any combination, would
be copied and sent to an analyst. You would never know.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">According to </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Philip
Zimmerman</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> (creator of PGP), it
is precisely because of this that one should encrypt one's mail so that
no third party could read it. Of course, in democratic Sweden, we
would prevent internal organizations from doing such horrible things.
Nevertheless, there might be good reasons to encrypt one's mail. Why?</font></p>
<p>F<font face="Times New Roman">irst: there are people besides SÄPO
and the local revenue office that might want to see if you're writing
something inappropriate. Second: do you trust the authorities? If so,
why not just send them a copy of your personal communications, so that
they can check them and be sure that you're not sitting around conspiring?
What do you, a conscientious citizen, have to hide? Why not let the police
search your house for illegal weapons? You see where I'm going - encryption
protects the privacy of the individual from governmental intrusion.<sup><a href="#FTNT2">(2)</a></sup></font>
</p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">All the chaos surrounding PGP started on
April 10, 1991, when the U.S. Congress made a statement about encryption
programs. It clearly stated that it expected everyone involved in the
manufacture of encryption technology, of any kind, to incorporate back
doors so that the government could read the encrypted information if necessary.
The message was a frightening one: you may keep secrets - but keep no
secrets from the government. Shortly after, Zimmerman's colleague, Kelly
Goen, went around San Francisco and distributed PGP do different BBSs
using pay phones. (!) He held that Congress was in violation of the Constitution,
and performed this act in order to protect American society from totalitarian
supervision. recently, the European Union sent a similar missive to the
nations of Europe. (Americans are much more sensitive to these matters
than Swedes - which is fortunate, I should say. <i>Translator's note:
</i>Nevertheless, and ironically perhaps, the privacy rights of individuals
in the U.S. are in much worse shape than in the Scandinavian countries
- due to <i>private</i> record-keeping organizations such as the credit
bureaus, which have become a sort of universal information source that
sells all the information it has to anyone willing to pay for it).</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Encryption, by the way, is not expressly
an American thing. Us Swedes have been in the cipher game for at least
as long. As early as WWII, we decrypted German communications going through
Sweden. In 1984, the "expert" </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Ragnar
Eriksson</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> and his friends at SÄPO
made an encryption system which, with the approval of the executive branch,
they tried to sell together with other security "know-how".
Alas, the system was worthless, since SÄPO has never had any encryption
experts worth their name, and no one wanted to buy the system.<sup><a href="#FTNT3">(3)</a></sup></font>
</p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Those who are professionally involved in
encryption (thus </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>not</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> SÄPO, but the military and the universities)
almost always encounter upstarts who think they've invented the world's
best encryption system. Common to all these parvenus is that they want
to keep their systems secret, as they consider themselves so bright that
no other person has ever been on the same track. All the pros release
their algorithms (encoding principles) and tell people how the system
works; if it is good enough, nobody can break the cipher </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>even</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> though they know how it works. Some examples
include DES (Data Encryption Standard), and IDEA (International Data Encryption
Algorithm) - which is used in PGP. (SÄPO did not want to publish
their algorithms...) Neither DES nor IDEA are impossible to crack - it's
just that it would take a few million years for today's computers to do
so, using current deciphering techniques.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">As an illustrative example, I will mention
a common beginner's crypto which entails adding a sequence of random numbers
to a digitally stored text. It would be very hard to crack if the message
was not any longer than the sequence of numbers, but with longer messages
this randomness can be removed as easily as static can be filtered out
of a radio signal.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Sweden Awakens</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">Today, Swedish police have already
been guilty of questionable activities relating to the freedom of expression.
They have confiscated BBSs, used as an exchange medium for private electronic
mail, and probably also examined the private mail stored on these. This
has been carried out on suspicions that the BBSs were used in the distribution
of pirated software. It can be compared to sifting through all the mail
in one of the Postal Service's boxes simply on the suspicion that somewhere
in this box there is information about a crime. Would you want your mail
read simply because it happened to end up in the same box as a letter
from, say, a car theft ring? (I don't even know if the police have the
right to do such a thing, but I don't like the thought of it.)</font></p>
<p> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>"Holy Christ",</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> the police say, </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>"those
who use a BBS are despicable hackers! That doesn't have anything to do
with normal people's privacy, does it?"</i></font> </p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">It's great that they were hackers, and not
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Jews</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
or </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>immigrants</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
but simply regular, honest hackers, which we all know are terribly criminal.
Hundreds of BBS users, regular Swedes with no criminal records, have had
their right to privacy abridged simply because they fall under the fuzzy
(to say the least) category of </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>hackers</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">? And the police are upset because they have
found encrypted material in these BBSs, which is hard or impossible to
read. I </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>really </i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">feel
sorry for them.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Consider that today's BBSs will, in the
future, be replaced by the Internet, through which you are expected to
send all your mail. What will happen then? Are we going to have cops running
around auditing the mail, seizing large quantities of mail when they suspect
something illegal might be lurking inside the pile? But, but... the
police follow the law, and according to the law, electronic documents
or communications are not covered by the freedom of the press. Hopefully,
they are protected under the freedom of speech, but not even this is certain.
Everything is very fuzzy, and no one seems to know what the facts are.
Legislation is in progress.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Considering all the threats against integrity,
the observant citizen naturally wants protection against surveillance,
and therefore acquires an encryption program. American intelligence agencies
want you to use their "Clipper Chip" instead of your own crypto.
The "Clipper Chip" is a very good encryption program which,
according to themselves, only the Secret Service has a back door to. The
European governments have something similar in the works, which has at
the time of this writing not been formalized.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Another use for encryption (besides making
your mail unreadable) is to put a </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>seal</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> on your messages - a kind of electronic
check digit, which can mathematically prove that the sender is who he/she
claims to be, </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>and</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
that the content has not been changed. This way, electronic bulletins
can be mass-distributed without having to worry about somebody "cutting"
them, at least not without being noticed. This method is used by, among
others, SWIFT, which is an international bank transaction system.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Those interested in the underlying technology
of encryption should pick up a book on the subject. American cryptographers
(like Zimmerman) are monitored by military intelligence agencies. (I don't
know if this is the case for Swedish crypto-scientists.) In some countries,
e. g. France, all encryption by private individuals is prohibited.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Swedish Rights</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">What about civil rights in Sweden
and the rest of Europe? Is an organization like EFF necessary on this
side of the Atlantic as well> Maybe - especially since European police
agencies learn about computer crime fighting by peeking at the USA. In
Sweden, police have also confiscated computers and disks, but also magazines,
T-shirts, and printers, in American fashion. The police in the U.S. didn't
know what to do with all the stuff they seized - and the Swedish police
doesn't know either. It's not a mystery why it takes a virtual </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>eternity</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
to sort out hacker crimes, considering the amount of junk that the investigators
collect as evidence. When I did an inventory of my own collection of about
200 disks, it took me over a month, and I only made superficial notes
of the contents of each file. A criminal investigator has to be </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>a great deal</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
more thorough for his evidence to stand up in court, and a well-organized
hacker can, in worse cases, have </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>thousands
</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">of disks.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The time span and delays for the prosecution
of a hacker is worse than those for refugees, with the difference that
these cases are eventually dismissed. To the extent that the hackers ever
see their equipment again, it is most often outdated and without value.
The police are still holding computers seized six years ago. In many
cases, the hackers' computers are considered instruments of crime rather
than communication channels. Even Swedish hackers' rights of free expression
have been infringed during police raids - whether they have been criminals
or not. Remember where </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Cervantes</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> spent his time while writing </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Don
Quixote</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">. (In prison.) Should
the pen and paper have been wrested from him simply because he was a criminal?
In at least one case, the Swedish police has been charged with violating
rights of free speech and freedom of information.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">As early as 1984, Sweden's National Police
Board determined that seizure of equipment could cause problems, and that
this should only be done in exceptional cases. Today, it's more of the
rule than the exception. If they had been able to follow their own directives,
which said to copy the information and lend it to the victim, the situation
would have been much more pleasant for both parties. In that case, the
hackers would not have had to have their computers stored in police warehouses
for decades.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">We also have a law of criminal forfeiture,
which means that equipment used in the commission of a crime can be considered
forfeited, and subject to sale or destruction. This might be reasonable
in the case of specialized equipment like lock picks, "blue boxes",
or other directly criminal equipment, but </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>computers</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">? If a typewriter is used for criminal purposes,
it is thus forfeited? Can we have just an ounce of freedom of speech,
too?</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The information age has now caused some
prosecutions against the distribution of specific, protected information
to become completely unmanageable. Are you struck by the same thought
as I? That this plays into the hands of the cyberpunks? If information
really </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>can</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
be owned - can we in that case uphold its copyright in a rational manner?
Or is our old society in about to change with regards to copyright? Relax,
there is a cure for all this. </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Computers</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> are very good at controlling large amounts
of information, and quickly at that. The organization </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>BSA</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> (</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Business
Software Alliance</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">, an association
of companies in the software industry) is apparently prepared to have
a program called </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Search II</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> stand witness in cases against companies
suspected of piracy. The program works by reading the contents of a computer's
hard drive and registering which programs are installed. The reason for
doing this as opposed to seizing equipment, is that corporations, as opposed
to hackers, raise one </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>hell</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> of a racket if you take all their computers.
So far, so good.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">When companies and (sometimes) people are
charged with piracy, the police rely on BSA and the Search II program
for technical expertise. It is a bit strange that BSA, which represents
the plaintiff, is also relied on to collect evidence. Strange, to say
the least. Now, allow me to insert a small provocation, which might help
you think along new lines:<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Q:</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> Do we want computers to witness against
corporations and individuals?<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Q:</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> Why not leave the entire justice system
to computers? Automated, powerful, cost-effective - comes in all colors
- no difficult interrogations or delayed trials...<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">Personally, I don't think we should
let computers stand witness until they're at least as intelligent as humans.
But if a human can testify under oath as to the credibility of what the
computer says, then OK. We have for many years allowed objects to act
as witnessed, or </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>evidence</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, as we call it. All evidence, however, has
to be interpreted by one or more people before it becomes practically
meaningful. What is relevant is that computers are evidence which has
a hitherto unlimited potential for lying, since they can be manipulated
in any way by anyone. I think we should stay clear of electronic justice
for a long time - the risk of judicial corruption is obvious.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">The question of computers keeping tabs on
individuals is a little more sinister than it appears at first glance
- information technology, if properly applied, can be used to prevent
or </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>totally eliminate</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> certain types of crime. Do we really want
this? Do we want an intelligent breathalyzer in our car, which tells us
when we can't drive? Perhaps such supervision of driving habits will be
legislated in the future. Do we want the recipient of a phone call to
always be able to know who we are?</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">For example, there is a program called </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>Net Nanny</i>, which is a "baby-sitter"
for the Internet. It can be set to supervise children communicating over
the Internet, and will automatically shut down the connection if some
"dirty old man" starts asking for a name or a phone number.
Even if the purpose seems noble, one could ask what would happen if an
extraordinarily benevolent government should apply such filters to all
of its citizens' communications. I mean, why not pull the plug as soon
as someone starts talking about certain kinds of explosives, or starts
using to many violent words - just in case... (Note: irony.)</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">As opposed to a cop, the computer is </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>everywhere</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">,
and basically free. Should we let our possibility to choose between obeying
or ignoring the law be eliminated by computers? Should they become our
collective, electronic conscience, and give us an electronically monitored
utopia in which there is no crime, since no crimes </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>can</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> be committed? It is not as simple a question
as you could think, if you consider it for a while... the EFF, and other
organizations, are of the opinion that it is </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>inhuman</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> to take away the individual's right to disobey.
So far, all social control has been based on self-control, a condition
which is threatened by automation. There is a risk of principles being
upheld for the sole reason that the computers have been programmed to
uphold them. This is one of the things that </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Paul
Verhouen</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">'s cyberpunk film </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>Robocop</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
is about - mechanical beings who with never-ending efficiency chastise
the citizen into obedience.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B
</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman">= Bob<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> = The Car<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Hi Car.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Hi Bob!<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> (</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>jumping
into the driver's seat</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">): Let's
go...<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Just a moment, Bob, your voice is a little
off... you haven't been drinking anything, have you?<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Oh no, of course not...<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: You'd better blow before I'll let you drive
anywhere.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Is that really necessary?<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Yes.<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: OK then... </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>(brings
out a plastic bag with a nozzle, and squeezes air from it into the mouthpiece
on the dash)</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>C</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">: Come on, Bob, I wasn't born yesterday.
That wasn't your breath. Would you like me to call a cab for you?<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"> </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>B</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> (</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>stomps
away from the car in a huff</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">)<br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Freedom of Expression</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br>
</font> <font face="Times New Roman">Well, what about the freedom of expression?
Has an electronic book as much of a right to exist as one printed on paper?
When the director of datainspektionen (</font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Translator's
note: </b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Datainspektionen</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> is a Swedish governmental institution that
regulates the permissible content and organization of computer databases
- to my knowledge, no comparable institution exists in the United States)
, </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Anitha Bondestam</b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">, stated that the somewhat childish text
files found on certain BBSs, which describe how to make bombs and weapons,
could be </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>illegal</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
- did we examine this statement as critically as we would if she had said
that </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>books</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
describing similar contraptions could be illegal?</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">For your information, I can reveal that
it is </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>in no way</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
illegal to write books on bomb construction - provided that you do not
encourage the reader to apply this knowledge. (If you're in the military,
and happen to write such a manual for internal use, you might even get
promoted.) It may be morally questionable, especially considering that
the readers are often teenagers, but it is definitely not prohibited.
A parallel would be </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Hembränningsboken
</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">("The Moonshine Manual"),
which gives detailed instructions on how to make your own hard liquor.
This book is not illegal. </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Datainspektionen</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> makes a lot of funny statements which don't
seem to have anything to do with their institutional purpose.</font></p>
<p> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Datainspektionen</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
does a lot of really good things. Above all, they protect freedom of information
and individual privacy, and the right to know in which databases one is
registered. The problem is that the institution sometimes assumes the
role of pontificator, which is not its purpose.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">From where will a Swedish EFF originate?
I would bet on its birth somewhere among people that guard the freedoms
of speech and the press. </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Föreningen
Grävande Journalister</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> ("The
Investigative Journalists' Association"), with </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><b>Anders
R Olsson</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman"> at the lead, has long
had an agenda reminiscent of the ideas of EFF. As far as I can understand,
this started with a book, written in 1985 by Anders Olsson, called </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>Spelrum</i></font> <font face="Times New Roman">
("<i>Playing Field</i>"). In it, he describes the complicated
structure of government, and its desire to control the individual, in
a captivating and agitative manner. What William S. Burroughs says through
his fictional accounts, Anders Olsson articulates through non-fiction,
to put it simply. He doesn't construct his theories based on libertarian
ideas about individual freedom, but rather on a description of the </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>machine</i>, which he calls </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Sweden,
Inc.</i>, as a gigantic, dominating social mechanism built on bureaucracy
and the wish to control the individual.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Anders has also advocated that journalists
should enlist the help of hackers to enter, and examine, the proprietary
computer systems of the government and other organizations. As described
in the previous chapter, this took place in the case of the </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>Ausgebombt</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> BBS in Vänersborg. In his book </font>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>Yttrandefrihet och Tryckfrihet </i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman">("Freedom of Speech and the Press"),
he considers it fully justified to hack into computers owned by corporations,
governmental institutions, and other organizations, in order to obtain
information of public interest. He emphasizes that it is the </font> <font face="Times New Roman"><i>purpose</i></font>
<font face="Times New Roman"> of the act, not the act in itself, that
is most important. In his opinion, the constitutional (Swedish) protection
of freedom of information, found in the articles on freedom of speech
and the press, protects the hacker while looking for information with
the intent of publicizing it.<sup><a href="#FTNT4">(4)</a></sup></font>
</p>
<hr>
<font color="#666666"><a name="FTNT1"></a> 1. </font> <font face="Times New Roman" color="#666666">
Remember the name </font> <font face="Times New Roman" color="#666666"><b>John
Perry Barlow</b></font> <font face="Times New Roman" color="#666666"> -
he is one of the greatest visionaries and contemporary philosophers that
I have encountered. Like Jean Baudrillard, he belongs to the tiny number
of people that have something sensible to say about information society.</font>
<font face="Times New Roman" color="#666666"><br>
<br>
<a name="FTNT2"></a> 2. This concept is normally called simply "privacy".
<br>
<br>
<a name="FTNT3"></a> 3. Perhaps they have acquired better "experts"
now. <br>
<br>
<a name="FTNT4"></a> 4. Anders has recently published another book about
freedom of information: <i>IT och det Fria Ordet - Myten om Storebror</i>
("Information Technology and the Free Word - the Myth of Big Brother"),
where he shoes that the fear of oversight can be used to conceal more than
necessary; he defuses the paranoia surrounding large databases, and shows
that it is quite difficult to "know everything about a person"
through them. Instead, he points to another danger - giving confidential
privilege to information that should be public, by maintaining that it is
sensitive. He also defines four useful terms, which I interpret as follows:<br>
<b>Freedom of Speech and of the Press</b> : The right to express one's opinion
in the ether or in the media, without risking being silenced or prosecuted.<br>
<b>Privacy</b> : The right to be free from intrusion into individual privacy
by government or other institutions of power. (Computer databases, drug
testing, etc.)<br>
<b>Freedom of Information</b> : The right to stay informed of the internal
structure of governments or other institutions of authority. (For example:
the Freedom of Information Act). This right is especially important to journalists.
</font></td>
</tr>
</table>
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