566 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
566 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
A Not Terribly Brief History
|
||
|
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
|
||
|
|
||
|
by John Perry Barlow
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thursday, November 8, 1990
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was started by a visit from the FBI.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In late April of 1990, I got a call from Special Agent Richard Baxter of the
|
||
|
Federal Bureau of Investigation. He asked if he could come by the next
|
||
|
day and discuss a certain investigation with me. His unwillingness to
|
||
|
discuss its nature over the phone left me with a sense of global guilt, but I
|
||
|
figured turning him down would probably send the wrong signal.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On Mayday, he drove to Pinedale, Wyoming, a cow town 100 miles north
|
||
|
of his Rock Springs office (where he ordinarily investigates livestock theft
|
||
|
and other regional crimes). He brought with him a thick stack of
|
||
|
documents from the San Francisco office and a profound confusion about
|
||
|
their contents.
|
||
|
|
||
|
He had been sent to find out if I might be a member of the NuPrometheus
|
||
|
League, a dread band of info-terrorists (or maybe just a disaffected former
|
||
|
Apple employee) who had stolen and wantonly distributed source code
|
||
|
normally used in the Macintosh ROMs. Agent Baxter's errand was
|
||
|
complicated by a fairly complete unfamiliarity with computer technology.
|
||
|
I realized right away that before I could demonstrate my innocence, I
|
||
|
would first have to explain to him what guilt might be.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The three hours I passed doing this were surreal for both of us. Whatever
|
||
|
this source code stuff was, and whatever it was that happened to it, had
|
||
|
none of the cozy familiarity of a few yearling steers headed across the
|
||
|
Wyoming border in the wrong stock truck.
|
||
|
|
||
|
What little he did know, thanks to the San Francisco office, was also pretty
|
||
|
well out of kilter. He had been told, for example, that Autodesk, the
|
||
|
publisher of AutoCAD, was a major Star Wars defense contractor and that
|
||
|
its CEO was none other than John Draper, the infamous phone phreak
|
||
|
also known as Cap'n Crunch. As soon as I quit laughing, I started to
|
||
|
worry.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I realized in the course of this interview that I was seeing, in microcosm,
|
||
|
the entire law enforcement structure of the United States. Agent Baxter
|
||
|
was hardly alone in his puzzlement about the legal, technical, and
|
||
|
metaphorical nature of datacrime.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I also found in his struggles a framework for understanding a series of
|
||
|
recent Secret Service raids on some young hackers I'd met in a Harper's
|
||
|
magazine forum on computers and freedom. And it occurred to me that
|
||
|
this might be the beginning of a great paroxysm of governmental
|
||
|
confusion during which everyone's liberties would become at risk.
|
||
|
|
||
|
When Agent Baxter had gone, I wrote an account of his visit and placed it
|
||
|
on the WELL, a computer BBS in Sausalito which is digital home to a
|
||
|
large collection of technically hip folks, including Mitch Kapor, the father
|
||
|
of Lotus 1-2-3.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Turns out Mitch had also been visited by the FBI, owing to his having
|
||
|
unaccountably received of one of the source code disks which
|
||
|
NuPrometheus scattered around. Mitch's experience had been as
|
||
|
dreamlike as mine. He had, in fact, filed the whole thing under General
|
||
|
Inexplicability until he read my tale on the WELL. Now he had enough
|
||
|
corroboration for his own strange sense of alarm to begin acting on it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Several days later, he found his bizjet about to fly over Wyoming on its
|
||
|
way to San Francisco. He called me from somewhere over South Dakota
|
||
|
and asked if he might literally drop in for a chat about Agent Baxter and
|
||
|
related matters.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So, while a late spring snow storm swirled outside my office, we spent
|
||
|
several hours hatching what became the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I
|
||
|
told him about the sweep of Secret Service raids which had taken place
|
||
|
several months before and their apparent disregard for the Bill of Rights.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Alarmed, he gave me the phone number of Harvey Silverglate, whose
|
||
|
willingness to champion unpopular causes was demonstrated by his
|
||
|
current defense of Leona Helmsley. He said that Harvey would probably
|
||
|
know if this were as bad as it was starting to sound. He also said that he
|
||
|
would be willing to pay the bills that generally start to appear whenever
|
||
|
you call a lawyer.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I finally found Harvey in the New York offices of Rabinowitz, Boudin,
|
||
|
Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman, a firm whose long list of successfully
|
||
|
defended liberties includes the Pentagon Papers case. I told him and Eric
|
||
|
Lieberman what I knew about recent government flailings against
|
||
|
cybercrime. They were even less sanguine than I had been.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The next day a trio code-named Acid Phreak, Phiber Optik, and Scorpion
|
||
|
entered the walnut-panelled chambers of Rabinowitz, Boudin and told
|
||
|
their tales to a young lawyer there named Terry Gross. While EFF as a
|
||
|
formal organization would not exist for another two months, its legal arm
|
||
|
was already flexing its muscle.
|
||
|
|
||
|
A few days later I received a phone call from the technology writer for the
|
||
|
Washington Post. He was interested in following up on the Harper's
|
||
|
forum, and knew nothing of Mitch's and my joint endeavors. I filled him
|
||
|
in, hoping to expose the Secret Service. Several days later, the Post
|
||
|
published the first of many newspaper stories, all of which could have
|
||
|
shared the same headline: LOTUS FOUNDER DEFENDS HACKERS.
|
||
|
|
||
|
While this was an irritating misrepresentation...we were more interested
|
||
|
in defending the Constitution than any digital miscreants...the publicity
|
||
|
produced a couple of major supporters: Steve Wozniak, who called and
|
||
|
offered an unlimited match to Mitch's contributions, and John Gilmore
|
||
|
(Sun Microsystems employee #5) who e-mailed me a six figure offer of
|
||
|
support.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Meanwhile, the list of apparent outrages lengthened. We learned about
|
||
|
an Austin role-playing games publisher named Steve Jackson whose office
|
||
|
equipment had been confiscated by the Secret Service in an apparent effort
|
||
|
to restrain his publication of a game called Cyberpunk which they thought,
|
||
|
with ludicrous inaccuracy, to be " a handbook for computer crime.
|
||
|
|
||
|
All over the country computer bulletins being confiscated, undelivered e-
|
||
|
mail and all. A Secret Service dragnet called Operation Sundevil seized
|
||
|
more than 40 computers and 23,000 data disks from teenagers in 14
|
||
|
American cities, using levels of force and terror which would have been
|
||
|
more appropriate to the apprehension of urban guerrillas than barely post-
|
||
|
pubescent computer nerds.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And there was the Craig Neidorf case. Neidorf, also known by the nom de
|
||
|
crack Knight Lightning, had published an internal BellSouth document in
|
||
|
his electronic magazine Phrack. For this constitutionally protected act,
|
||
|
Neidorf was being charged with interstate transport of stolen property
|
||
|
with a possible sentence of 60 years in jail and a $122,000 in fines.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I wrote a piece about these events called Crime & Puzzlement. Although I
|
||
|
did so at the request of the Whole Earth Review...it made its first print
|
||
|
appearance in the Fall 1990 issue of WER...I " published" it on the Net in
|
||
|
June and was astonished by the response. It was like planting a fence-post
|
||
|
and discovering that the " ground" into which you've driven it is actually
|
||
|
the back of a giant animal which quivers and heaves at the irritation.
|
||
|
|
||
|
By July, I was receiving up to 100 e-mail messages a day. They came from
|
||
|
all over the planet and expressed nearly universal indignation. I began to
|
||
|
experience datashock, but I also realized that Mitch and I were not alone in
|
||
|
our concerns. We had struck a chord.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In Cambridge, Mitch was having something like the same experience.
|
||
|
Since the Washington Post story, he found himself bathed in media glare.
|
||
|
However, the more he learned about ambiguous nature of law in
|
||
|
Cyberspace, the more of his considerable intellectual and financial
|
||
|
resources he became willing to devote to the subject.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In late June, Mitch and I threw several dinners in San Francisco, to which
|
||
|
we invited major figures from the computer industry. We weren't
|
||
|
surprised to learn than many of them had exploits in their past which,
|
||
|
undertaken today, would arouse plenty of Secret Service interest. It
|
||
|
appeared possible that one side-effect of current government practices
|
||
|
might be the elimination of the next generation of computer
|
||
|
entrepreneurs and digital designers.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It also became clear that we were dealing with a set of problems which was
|
||
|
a great deal more complex and far-reaching than a few cases of
|
||
|
governmental confusion. The actions of the FBI and Secret Service were
|
||
|
symptoms of a growing social crisis: Future Shock. America was entering
|
||
|
the Information Age with neither laws nor metaphors for the appropriate
|
||
|
protection and conveyance of information itself.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We realized that our legal actions on behalf of a few teen-age crackers
|
||
|
would go on indefinitely without much result unless something were
|
||
|
done to ease social tensions along the electronic frontier. The real task at
|
||
|
hand was the civilization of Cyberspace. Such an undertaking would
|
||
|
require more juice and stamina than two men could muster, even
|
||
|
amplified by the Net and a solid financial supply. We would need some
|
||
|
kind of organizational identity.
|
||
|
|
||
|
With this in mind, we hired a press coordinator, Cathy Cook (who had
|
||
|
formerly done PR for Steve Jobs), set a squad of lawyers to work on
|
||
|
investigating the proper organizational tax status, and, over a San
|
||
|
Francisco dinner with Stewart Brand, Nat Goldhaber, Jaron Lanier, and
|
||
|
Chuck Blanchard, we selected a name and defined a mission.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We announced the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the
|
||
|
National Press Club on July 10. Mitch and I were joined for the
|
||
|
announcement by Harvey Silverglate, Terry Gross, and Steve Jackson.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We were also joined by Marc Rotenberg of the Washington office of
|
||
|
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. One of our first official
|
||
|
acts had been to grant that organization $275,000 for a project on
|
||
|
computing and civil liberties. CPSR would keep a wary eye on
|
||
|
developments " inside the Beltway" and work in conjunction with
|
||
|
congressional staffers to see that any legislation dealing with access to
|
||
|
information was sensibly drafted.
|
||
|
|
||
|
While in Washington, we also took inventory of the terrain, meeting
|
||
|
with congressional staffers, the Washington civil liberties establishment,
|
||
|
and officials from the Library of Congress and the White House. The area
|
||
|
to be covered, from intellectual property to telecommunications policy to
|
||
|
law enforcement technique, was daunting, as were the ambient levels of
|
||
|
confusion and indifference.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We also generated an enormous amount of press. And it became apparent
|
||
|
that not everyone was persuaded of our cause. Business Week called Mitch
|
||
|
naive for his willingness to believe that computer crackers were somehow
|
||
|
less dangerous that drug kingpins. Various burghers of the computer
|
||
|
establishment, ranging from the executive director of the Software
|
||
|
Publishers Association to a columnist for ComputerWorld, called us fools
|
||
|
at best and, more likely, dangerous fools.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Wall Street Journal printed a particularly hysterical piece which alleged
|
||
|
that the document Craig Neidorf (into whose case we had entered a
|
||
|
supporting amicus brief) had published was a computer virus capable of
|
||
|
bringing down the emergency phone system for the entire country. In fact,
|
||
|
the text file which Neidorf distributed dealt with the bureaucratic
|
||
|
procedures of 911 administration in the BellSouth region and contained
|
||
|
nothing which could be used to crack a system. Indeed, it contained
|
||
|
nothing which could not be easily obtained through by legal means.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We persevered. Our first major break came in late July. Thanks in part to
|
||
|
the expertise of John Nagel, a witness we introduced to Neidorf's lawyer,
|
||
|
the government was forced to abandon its case against Neidorf after 4 days
|
||
|
in Chicago's Federal Court.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Although our briefs supporting Neidorf's activities under the 1st
|
||
|
Amendment were not admitted, it became apparent, before such loftier
|
||
|
matters could even be broached, that the Secret Service had indicted him
|
||
|
with no clear understanding of the purpose or availability of the
|
||
|
document he had distributed. Like Agent Baxter, they knew too little to
|
||
|
critically examine the misinformation they had been given by the
|
||
|
corporate masters, in this case, officials at Bellcore.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Following the resolution of the Neidorf case, and, to some extent because
|
||
|
of it, skepticism of EFF has moderated considerably. If anything, the most
|
||
|
recent press accounts of our activities have been almost fulsome in their
|
||
|
praise. Recent favorable coverage has appeared in the New York Times,
|
||
|
The Economist, Infoworld, Information Week, PCweek, and Boston
|
||
|
Magazine.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Since July, we have been absurdly busy on numerous fronts: We've
|
||
|
worked on raising public awareness of the issues at stake. We are
|
||
|
organizing legal responses to the original and continuing intemperance of
|
||
|
law enforcement. We have worked on the political front, developing and
|
||
|
lobbying for rational computer security legislation. We have started to
|
||
|
create a network of interested experts on computer security, intellectual
|
||
|
property, telecommunications policy, and international information
|
||
|
rights. And lately we've been attending to the organizational demands of
|
||
|
the non-profit equivalent of a hyper-successful computer startup.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The following is a cursory digest of these activities.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The EFF in Public
|
||
|
|
||
|
We believe that critical to taming the electronic frontier is creating a sense
|
||
|
of the stakes among both the computer literate and the general public. We
|
||
|
have combined public appearances, that incredibly blunt instrument, the
|
||
|
Media, and electronic interaction to cover a lot of consciousness since July.
|
||
|
It's a good thing Mitch has that airplane.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have continued to build a constituency within the computing
|
||
|
community, convening small gatherings of computer professionals from
|
||
|
across the hacker/suit spectrum. Mitch, Harvey, and I have also addressed
|
||
|
larger forums such as the CPSR Annual Meeting, the International
|
||
|
Information Integrity Institute meeting on computer security, the
|
||
|
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National
|
||
|
Academy of Science and Engineering, Stewart Alsop's Agenda '91,
|
||
|
MacHack, the Boston Computer Society, Ars Electronica, the Kennedy
|
||
|
School of Government, and numerous others.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have done more press interviews and call-in radio shows than I can
|
||
|
remember. Woz appeared on Good Morning America with Assistant
|
||
|
Arizona AG (and Operation Sundevil architect) Gail Thackeray. EFF has
|
||
|
appeared prominently in national publications ranging from Newsweek to
|
||
|
Spin, most of the major daily newspapers, and nearly every computer trade
|
||
|
publication from Information Week to Mondo 2000. A writer for The New
|
||
|
York Times Magazine is currently at work on a major piece about EFF.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I have agreed to write a regular column on the Electronic Frontier for the
|
||
|
Communications of the ACM. And Mitch and I have been invited to
|
||
|
submit pieces to Scientific American, Issues in Science and Technology, and
|
||
|
Whole Earth Review.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We set up two Usenet newsgroups, comp.org.eff.news and
|
||
|
comp.org.eff.talk. eff.news is moderated by Glenn Tenney and contains a
|
||
|
selection of the best articles posted in eff.talk. We began an EFF forum on
|
||
|
the WELL (which soon became among the most active conferences there,
|
||
|
right behind Sex and the Grateful Dead). We are setting up our own
|
||
|
USENET node on the Net, eff.org, with a Sun IV in our Cambridge office
|
||
|
and the guidance of volunteer sysop Spike Ilacqua. When fully
|
||
|
operational, the machine will run the Caucus conferencing system and
|
||
|
should have a 56kb Internet connection. Finally, we are investigating the
|
||
|
possibility of setting up an EFF conference on Compuserve.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have read and personally generated over 4 megabytes of e-mail since
|
||
|
June. Lately, Jef Poskanzer has been maintaining the EFF's electronic
|
||
|
mailing list, which is now approaching 1000 names. Information
|
||
|
distributed through eff.news is also sent to the mailing list.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Concerned that our approach is a little too electronic, we are now trying to
|
||
|
connect more directly with folks who might be interested in EFF but who
|
||
|
are not online. Our newsletter, the first edition of which you now have in
|
||
|
your hands, is part of that effort. Primarily the work of Rick Doherty and
|
||
|
Dan Sokol, we intend to publish The EFFector a minimum of 4 times a
|
||
|
year.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Finally, we are working with Jim Warren and a variety of groups to
|
||
|
organize a major international conference on Communications, Privacy,
|
||
|
and Freedom to be held in San Francisco in March of 1991. This gathering
|
||
|
is being designed to include citizens who are not technologically
|
||
|
sophisticated.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Legal Issues
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the beginning, we had thought that most of our activities would either
|
||
|
take place in court or on the way there. While this hasn't quite been the
|
||
|
case, legal matters still require much of our time and by far the lion's share
|
||
|
of our expenditures.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Since the Neidorf case, most of our legal activity has been, of necessity,
|
||
|
low-profile. It is not strategically sound to announce lawsuits well in
|
||
|
advance of filing them, and, while there remains a lot of dubiously
|
||
|
confiscated equipment in constabulary storage, we are not going to
|
||
|
jeopardize our ends by telegraphing their means. We are currently
|
||
|
preparing cases on a variety of fronts, proceeding at the deliberate pace
|
||
|
characteristic of both geology and the law.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We remain primarily interested in those cases in which constitutional
|
||
|
issues are at stake. We are investigating incidents in which the First
|
||
|
Amendment rights of computer users may have been abridged, where
|
||
|
searches and seizures appear to have exceeded the authority of the Fourth
|
||
|
Amendment, where the government seems to have violated the
|
||
|
Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and where warrants have been
|
||
|
issued with insufficient cause. There is no shortage of legal opportunities
|
||
|
here. The problem is picking the best ones.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We are still working with two law firms, Silverglate and Good of Boston
|
||
|
and Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky, and Lieberman of New York.
|
||
|
We also have dealings with Katten, Muchin & Zavis, the Chicago firm of
|
||
|
Craig Neidorf's attorney, Sheldon Zenner, and are considering offers of pro
|
||
|
bono assistance from a number of other firms around the country.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We recently hired Mike Godwin, a freshly minted Texas lawyer and
|
||
|
USENET adept, to sort through the factual and legal details of the many
|
||
|
cases we are being asked to intervene in. In his short time with us, he has
|
||
|
investigated several cases to determine their fit with EFF's constitutional
|
||
|
mission, their winnability, and their likelihood of producing clear legal
|
||
|
precedent.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have a conference call of the EFF Legal Committee every other
|
||
|
Wednesday to discuss the current state of our cases and any new
|
||
|
possibilities we might wish to take on. The Legal Committee includes
|
||
|
Mitch, Mike Godwin, Harvey Silverglate, Sharon Beckman (of Silverglate
|
||
|
& Good), Terry Gross (of Rabinowitz, Boudin), and myself. We also have
|
||
|
a private conference on the WELL to distribute briefs, documents, and
|
||
|
other legal information among the members of the committee.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Mike Godwin is also EFF's liaison with a committee of the American Bar
|
||
|
Association which is investigating government actions in Operation
|
||
|
Sundevil. Chaired by Judge William McMahon of Ohio, the committee is
|
||
|
devising ABA guidelines for computer searches and seizures. EFF will
|
||
|
have an important role in establishing the committee's recommendations.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Art of the Possible
|
||
|
|
||
|
Despite the patience it requires, the political process offers many
|
||
|
opportunities to pursue EFF's agenda. We have been working on two
|
||
|
different fronts to promote government rationality toward computer use,
|
||
|
in Washington, where we are working closely with the CPSR Civil
|
||
|
Liberties and Computing Project which we funded, and in Massachusetts
|
||
|
where we have been successful in developing model legislation.
|
||
|
|
||
|
CPSR, through the able efforts of Marc Rotenberg, has filed a lawsuit in
|
||
|
federal district court in the District of Columbia to obtain information
|
||
|
from the FBI about the monitoring of computer bulletin boards. This
|
||
|
follows similar efforts which forced the Treasury Department to admit
|
||
|
that the Secret Service was in fact monitoring BBS's.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Marc also testified before the Subcommittee on Technology and Law of the
|
||
|
Senate Judiciary Committee on S. 2476, the Computer Abuse
|
||
|
Amendments Act of 1990. CPSR supported the proposed addition of a
|
||
|
recklessness misdemeanor provision, calling attention to problems
|
||
|
surrounding Operation Sun Devil and the civil liberties issues raised by
|
||
|
the investigation of computer crime. The testimony was well received
|
||
|
and widely reported in the press, but Congress adjourned before passing
|
||
|
the amendments.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In Massachusetts, we headed off a misguided computer crime bill which
|
||
|
had made it all the way to the desk of Governor Dukakis. Not only did we
|
||
|
persuade the Governor not to sign it, we organized an effort to rewrite the
|
||
|
bill for re-submission to the Massachusetts Legislature.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sharon Beckman of Silverglate and Good drafted much of the new
|
||
|
legislation, which, if it passes, will serve as a model law for other states to
|
||
|
emulate. The new bill draws a clear distinction between computer trespass
|
||
|
and actual malice, proposing appropriate penalties for each. It also
|
||
|
instructs law enforcement agencies to be aware of the constitutional issues
|
||
|
involved in the investigation of computer crime.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Intellectual Property
|
||
|
|
||
|
This phrase has always sounded like an oxymoron to me. " Property"
|
||
|
seems to imply something more tangible than the mysterious stuff to
|
||
|
which the term applies, and it is from this ambiguity that arises much of
|
||
|
the difficulty along the electronic frontier. Just as limited bandwidth was
|
||
|
the excuse for applying censorship to broadcast media, it appears that the
|
||
|
zealous protection of intellectual property presents the greatest threat to
|
||
|
free digital expression.
|
||
|
|
||
|
For this reason, the definition and regulation of intellectual property is a
|
||
|
matter of great concern to EFF. However, we recognize that the
|
||
|
established canon of copyright and patent law is so fundamentally
|
||
|
inadequate to the demands of the Information Age that any effort to made
|
||
|
a significant difference in this area could consume all of EFF's resources.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Nevertheless, both Mitch and I intend to devote a lot of our personal time
|
||
|
to this issue. Mitch is especially well situated to make a difference. As the
|
||
|
author of the most successful (as well the most pirated) piece of software
|
||
|
in history, he has an important and credible voice amid the babble of
|
||
|
obsolete legalisms which surrounds the discussion of intellectual property.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Marc Rotenberg is also working in this area. He attended the first meeting
|
||
|
of the Office of Technology Assessment panel on intellectual property.
|
||
|
Marc recommended that the OTA give careful consideration to the public
|
||
|
interest issues that might be raised by various forms of intellectual
|
||
|
property protection. The OTA has agreed to host a workshop on this topic
|
||
|
and has asked CPSR to prepare a short report.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Designing the Future Net
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sometimes it seems as if all of humanity is engaged in a Great
|
||
|
Work...which I imagine to be the hard-wiring of human consciousness. It
|
||
|
is as if we must literally connect ourselves electronically before we can
|
||
|
appreciate the connections which have always existed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
As exalted as such an undertaking might sound, the actual wiring process
|
||
|
is as tedious as any endeavor I can imagine. In addition to building hard
|
||
|
infrastructure...fiber optic cabling, link stations, and microwave
|
||
|
towers...the policy process surrounding telecommunications and
|
||
|
information delivery is arcane and convoluted beyond ability of any but
|
||
|
the most dedicated student to understand it. As a consequence, those large
|
||
|
institutions with a clear financial stake are the only entities which have
|
||
|
taken the trouble.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This leaves the average citizen with no voice in the some of the most
|
||
|
important decisions about how his future will be designed. Fortunately,
|
||
|
Mitch is also willing to take these issues on. Working with Jerry Berman
|
||
|
of the ACLU, Mitch and the EFF intend to create an " information
|
||
|
consumers communications policy forum" to bring together the Baby
|
||
|
Bells, AT&T, other telcos, the FCC, newspaper publishers, online
|
||
|
information services, and other stakeholders to discuss how their vision
|
||
|
of the future of the Net serves the public interest.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Mitch is also meeting with Net hackers and visionaries to begin to
|
||
|
develop a sense of where we want to go and how we might get there. His
|
||
|
own vision: " a reliable digital network available to everyone with no
|
||
|
restrictions on content and policies which promote information
|
||
|
entrepreneurship.S He will be devoting a lot of his time to this issue.
|
||
|
Again, EFF will support his efforts to the extent it can do so without
|
||
|
diminishing its effectiveness on the civil liberties front.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
An Information Bill of Rights
|
||
|
|
||
|
When we first defined the mission of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
|
||
|
we saw our task as assuring the application of the U.S. Constitution to
|
||
|
digital media. And this remains much of what we are about.
|
||
|
|
||
|
However, information has little natural regard for national borders or
|
||
|
local ordinances. Cyberspace is transnational. During the tsunami of e-
|
||
|
mail which Crime & Puzzlement elicited, there were many items from
|
||
|
foreign countries. Their authors wanted to know how they could protect
|
||
|
or establish their rights of free expression. And I had no idea what to tell
|
||
|
them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The question arose again at Esther Dyson's recent East-West Technology
|
||
|
Conference in Budapest which Mitch and I attended. EFF was well-known
|
||
|
among the Soviets at this meeting, some of whom were already involved
|
||
|
in drafting what they called an Information Bill of Rights. (One young
|
||
|
Moscow programmer had managed to hack together an Internet
|
||
|
connection through Finland in order to contact me.)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Like intellectual property and telecom policy, the development of
|
||
|
international principles of free digital speech is a large angel to wrestle
|
||
|
with. We will have to be careful not to allow this immense task to divert
|
||
|
EFF from its specific legal agenda. But neither can we ignore the fact that
|
||
|
Cyberspace is hardly an American territory.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Nuts and Bolts
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Electronic Frontier Foundation grew from an effort to fight a specific
|
||
|
legal brushfire into a full-fledged Cause much faster than we could have
|
||
|
imagined. And, like any explosive start-up, it spends a lot of time playing
|
||
|
catch-up.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Electronically amplified, Mitch and I were able to personally conduct
|
||
|
much of EFF's business in the first few months of operations. But
|
||
|
gradually we had to confront the fact that while the Net is very broad, it is
|
||
|
also quite shallow. Without even a sense of their physical location, we
|
||
|
have been unable to marshal the hundreds of people who have e-mailed
|
||
|
us with their volunteered services. Also, we found ourselves
|
||
|
administering a significant cash-flow in both donations and expenditures.
|
||
|
(By year's end, EFF will have spent around $220,000. Our tentative 1991
|
||
|
budget predicts expenses of almost half a million.)
|
||
|
|
||
|
So, despite a mutual terror of bureaucracy and organizational sclerosis, we
|
||
|
have started to adopt some institutional trappings.
|
||
|
|
||
|
First, in order to satisfy the requirements for a 501c3 tax status (which we
|
||
|
should have in about six months), we found that we needed something
|
||
|
more substantial than two guys with modems. Thus, on October 9, we
|
||
|
held our first official board meeting and formally elected Stewart Brand,
|
||
|
Steve Wozniak, and John Gilmore to join us as board members.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And we have started to take on staff. In addition to the aforementioned
|
||
|
Mike Godwin, we have contracted Judith Nies to come in to the office
|
||
|
once a week and work on correspondence the requests for information
|
||
|
which come in via the telephone and mail.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have also advertised for an Executive Director (see notice elsewhere in
|
||
|
this issue). We hope to hire this individual soon and expect him/her to
|
||
|
attend to the many administrative details which have begun to gobble our
|
||
|
time. (Mitch has been especially swamped.) Upon his/her arrival, we will
|
||
|
be able to devise policies regarding membership, coordination of
|
||
|
volunteers, local chapters, and other organizational dimensions.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Finally, after many months as eff@well.sf.ca.us, we have established a
|
||
|
location in the material world. Our office is at:
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
|
||
|
155 Second St.
|
||
|
Cambridge, MA 02141
|
||
|
(617)864-0665
|
||
|
(617)864-0866 fax
|
||
|
|
||
|
We are determined that EFF will remain an agile, swift-moving sort of
|
||
|
outfit. We will adopt any new bureaucratic manifestations with the
|
||
|
greatest skepticism. But we are being bombarded with many legitimate
|
||
|
requests for assistance, advice, and information. In order to respond
|
||
|
rapidly and appropriately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has had to
|
||
|
become an institution. One method by which we hope to maintain
|
||
|
organizational lightness involves keeping a clear distinction between
|
||
|
strategy and tactics.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On the strategic level, EFF has a very broad mission involving such
|
||
|
amorphous endeavors as defining intellectual property, helping establish
|
||
|
a transnational culture of information, designing telecommunications
|
||
|
policy, sponsoring humane software design... civilizing Cyberspace. With
|
||
|
an appropriate sense of their limitations, the board members will remain
|
||
|
responsible for these matters.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This will prevent the staff's losing tactical focus on more tangible action
|
||
|
items like litigation, political action, communicating through the press
|
||
|
and across the Net, and organizational care and feeding.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Kicker
|
||
|
|
||
|
The problem with history is that it keeps happening. Today, as I was
|
||
|
working on this EFF mini-biography, I learned that Mitch has just had his
|
||
|
fingerprints subpoenaed by the FBI. Turns out they are now examining
|
||
|
the NuPrometheus distribution disks for fingerprints and want to be able
|
||
|
to sort his out. Or, perhaps, search for their appearance on other disks...
|
||
|
|
||
|
So the Wheels of Justice grind blindly on. And we will go on trying to
|
||
|
prevent anyone's being ground up in them.
|
||
|
|