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F I D O N E W S -- | Vol. 9 No. 43 (26 October 1992)
The newsletter of the |
FidoNet BBS community | Published by:
_ |
/ \ | "FidoNews" BBS
/|oo \ | (415)-863-2739
(_| /_) | FidoNet 1:1/1
_`@/_ \ _ | Internet:
| | \ \\ | fidonews@fidonews.fidonet.org
| (*) | \ )) |
|__U__| / \// | Editors:
_//|| _\ / | Tom Jennings
(_/(_|(____/ | Tim Pozar
(jm) |
|
| Newspapers should have no friends.
| -- JOSEPH PULITZER
----------------------------+---------------------------------------
Published weekly by and for the Members of the FidoNet international
amateur network. Copyright 1992, Fido Software. All rights reserved.
Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes
only. For use in other circumstances, please contact FidoNews.
Electronic Price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . free!
Paper price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.00US
For more information about FidoNews refer to the end of this file.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1. EDITORIAL ..................................................... 1
Editorial: Fewer trees killed today ........................... 1
2. ARTICLES ...................................................... 2
GREEN RAGE .................................................... 2
UniPol - Bigger is Better? ... NOT! ........................... 14
MISSING GIRL RECOVERED ........................................ 14
FIDOCARDS - E-Mail slows down ................................. 15
PUBLIC_KEYS & PKEY_DROP Echos on Backbone! .................... 16
3. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .......................................... 19
FidoNews 9-43 Page 1 26 Oct 1992
======================================================================
EDITORIAL
======================================================================
Editorial: Fewer trees killed today...
by Tom Jennings (1:1/1)
... because this issue is so thin. Though it has a great -- though
truncated -- story relating to encryption and privacy. Courtesy the
author.
An interesting followup on a thing that ran in these "pages" a while
back -- the "missing girl" story and .GIF. NOT just to be a stick in
the mud, but I wonder, if the girl was trying to get AWAY from her
parents, why is it so great that she was deceived by the bureaucrat,
"caught" and returned to her parents, apparently against her will. If
she'd gone to all the trouble to try to get new identity papers, it
was obviously not a spur-of-the-moment thing, but planned in advance.
One wonders if there was a reason for the separation in the first
place.
But this has nothing to do with FidoNet, so I'll shut up. Or does it?
It *is* a use of communications, and use is not pure or one sided. I
bet that girl has a story, and I doubt it'll show up in these pages.
I'll shut up now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FidoNews 9-43 Page 2 26 Oct 1992
======================================================================
ARTICLES
======================================================================
Green Rage
From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 92 17:51:53 PDT
This fragment of a tale was written shortly after I came back
from the first Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. It is
placed in the time period between now and the usual time frame of
Gibsonian cyberpunk. It was written to help me think about the social
& legal responses we might see when encryption is more widely
available-- and used. Sorry the story is incomplete, I just got too
busy to finish it, and ran short of ideas as well. And sorry for the
obsolete technology involved. I am sure something better than MS DOS
will come along eventually. :-)
(The usual conditions of posting apply--copyright H. Keith Henson
1991)
Green Rage by H. Keith Henson
"'Nother hour and I can 'crypt and email this mess."
Lenny closed the fourth of five files: maps, diagrams, schedules,
assignments, and instructions. It was a four person monkey wrench
project for destroying a big piece of a paper mill and (he hoped)
making it look like an accident. It was due to take place on the east
coast in a few weeks. Lenny had never met any of the people who had
scouted out the plant, nor the bitter, out-of-work engineer who had
figured out how to wreck it, and none of the operators who were
involved would meet each other. Made for hard-to-crack operations.
Some people on the east coast did the same for the covert side of the
GreenRage group that paid Lenny.
The tofu sandwich he had for breakfast was a dim memory.
"Lunch first." Lenny thought.
As he headed out to pick up a vegetarian pizza, he looked through
the little glass panels in the front door.
"Oh, shit, suits outside,"
Lenny said it with feeling, but kept his voice down. He turned
on his heel in the hall leading to the front door and ran back into
the grubby GreenRage office in the dining room of a rented house in
San Samon. He managed to hit the power switch on the PC at Stel's
desk before the door opened. Stel was in the bathroom. Whether she
heard the warning or not, Lenny could get no help from her, and Marge
was out on errands. The door was opening--there was no chance to get
FidoNews 9-43 Page 3 26 Oct 1992
to the other two computers or to take down the '586 file server in the
kitchen--he looked up and in his best bright and cheerful voice (which
to Lenny sounded hollow and rehearsed) said, "May I help you?"
The first of the four suits, a beefy dude in a grey outfit spoke
up.
"Yes, you can. We're from the CCA. (The Computer Control
Agency): We have a court order to copy all the computer files in this
building," (he held up an official looking piece of paper--more trees
destroyed, thought Lenny.) "So unless you want to be charged with
contempt, you can step back from that computer, and don't touch
anything till we are done."
Lenny stepped back. He wasn't as terrified as he could have
been, though his heart rate must have been close to 120 and his mouth
was dry. He had been through raid drills and a few real
confrontations with the law at pickets and bleed-ins.
"At least it isn't a search warrant, we might keep operating" he
thought. Then remembering the drill, spoke up:
"Can I see the order?"
The beefy one handed it over while his three leaner and younger
companions fanned out to the computers. They obviously knew where the
computers were, but that did not necessarily mean rot in the
organization. How well they coped with the 'puters would say
something about that.
The paper was about what he expected, an order signed by a judge
to copy every storage device in the GreenRage's office to an encrypted
WORM drive. The box for paper documents wasn't checked, so they knew
they wouldn't find anything useful on paper. Bad sign, it meant they
knew more about GreenRage than Lenny liked. "Waste as much time as I
can," Lenny thought to himself, and in a very polite voice he asked:
"Can I see some ID for you and your men?
The closest of the technoids, as Lenny thought of them looked up
in disgust after putting his hand on the back of the ancient '386
clone Lenny had just killed.
"Its been turned off in the last 2 minutes. Did you do it when
we came in?" he said this looking right into Lenny's eyes, while
digging out his badge. Lenny didn't lie with his reply,
"Its Stel's, she was about to go out, and we try to save power by
turning them off when we go out." He said this as loud as he dared,
hoping that Stel would hear him in the bathroom, then spoke up even
louder,
FidoNews 9-43 Page 4 26 Oct 1992
"Stel, we have official visitors, so don't make any sudden
moves."
At 200+ pounds, and fifty plus years, Stel didn't make many fast
moves, unless they were on young guys. In view of the constant water
shortage, the chances were only about one in four that she would flush
the toilet, and less than even that Stel would wash her hands.
Without any running water sounds, she come out.
"Pigs, huh." Stel had been politically imprinted as an anarchist
at Madison over thirty years ago in the late '60s and early 70's.
When it suited her, she could be one of the most obnoxious people
Lenny had ever known. At least it diverted the attention from him,
chances were low that the cops would grill Stel on who shut off the
power on her computer.
Beefy, whose' badge claimed to be one Dan Barker, and technoid #1
(Lenny never did get a name for him, flashed their badges. Lenny
grabbed a whiteboard marker (almost dry, and the only non computer
writing device permitted in the office) and scribbled Barker's name
and badge number on the edge of a badly cluttered whiteboard. The
other two technoids had fanned out, one to Lenny's desk, and the other
to the kitchen. The kitchen one came back shaking his head.
"No damn keyboard or display on the server. Have to go in
through the other ones to dump the disk."
Technoid #2 moved the mouse on Marge's machine, but thank the
green mother, thought Lenny, the screensaver program had timed out,
and the "I NEED A PASSWORD!" message came up. That meant the password
was gone from memory on that machine. Technoid #3 hit paydirt on
Lenny's machine: the screen was still alive. He hit the space bar,
and pulled out a little alarm timer which he set to go off every 3
minutes. "Damn, dammit" thought Lenny, "I should have set the timeout
shorter, has it really been less than 5 minutes since I got up?" And
he was mentally kicking himself for not wiping the password when he
got up.
Technoid #3 noted the directory (ACIDRAIN/TRMINATE) where Lenny
had been working and went back up, a level at a time to the main
directory on the file server. He seemed prepared to deal with a no
printer machine, pulling out a pad of paper from a little portfolio
(more trees!) and started making notes on the directory structure.
Technoid #2 looked up from Marge's machine and asked Lenny,
"I don't suppose you would know the password?"
Lenny shook his head and then looked the agent in the eye.
"No sir! I certainly wouldn't know Marge's password to get into
her personal machine!" And wouldn't admit it if I did know, he
thought.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 5 26 Oct 1992
Technoid #2 looked over at Stel frowning at the machine on her
desk and asked mildly,
"I don't suppose you would remember your password?"
"Fuck off sharp one," Stel said with a straight face. Even in a
near state of panic, Lenny got a flash of amusement as Beefy started
to spit out a hot reply. Beefy checked himself as he saw #2 write
down fuckoff#1. Stel grinned slightly; she had almost scored one on
the agents.
Without making a move toward Stel's machine, #2 asked #3,
"Shall I try it, Jim?" Jim was engrossed, paging through
directories but he mumbled:
"No, let's see what I can get before we risk a password given
under duress." And, half a minute later,
"This is going to be a bitch, I can't find any programs to dump
memory, no debug, no basic, no smalltalk, no turbo, nothing." Lenny
grinned, and straightened his face with an effort. The crypt program
had come with instructions to delete or encrypt under a special key a
long list of compilers and interpreters-- not that he understood
exactly what they were anyway.
"Bob, could you have one of the uniformed officers get the camera
out of the car? Looks like we are going to have to photograph some of
this." Beefy went to the door and tried to get the attention of one
of the uniformed cops that had come with them. No luck, they were
both out back, keeping an eye on the building power switch so no one
could turn it off. It was less distance to the car, so he just walked
out to the car, rummaged around in the back seat and brought back the
camera kit. Jim waited for him, typing a space every 3 minutes.
"Take it easy on the polaroid, damn film costs two dollars a
shot," as he handed the camera kit to technoid #3. Technoid #2 came
over to help and started clicking shots of the screen as Jim worked
his way around in the directory tree. There were *lots* of
interesting directory and file names. Stel, Marge, and the three
masked visitors from back east had spent a whole evening making up
provocative names like HIT_LIST (Lenny's address book), and $LAUNDRY
(data for a spreadsheet program Marge used), and a lot of disaster
names like HINDENBG, and TEX_CITY. Since the crypt program left the
directories in the clear, they thought they might as well make them
amusing. At the moment, with cold sweat dripping down his back, Lenny
wished he had made the directories a little *less* provocative.
Once in a while, technoid #3 or Jim as Lenny was beginning to use
to identify him--gotta scribble that name on the white board--would
give the command to type out a file to the screen. He either got a
mess of published material from decade-old anarchist newsletters, some
of which they carefully photographed on the screen, or
computer-generated random bytes (which, of course, they thought was
encrypted material). One or the other of the technoids not sitting at
the screen kept themselves shielding the power switch and plug. Stel
FidoNews 9-43 Page 6 26 Oct 1992
was sitting on the grubby couch waiting for the technoids to either
break into the system or screw up. Lenny went over and joined her,
feeling miserable about the agents getting in through _his_ system and
unwilling to watch any more and give away by body language when they
were about to trip. He glanced at his watch. The damn cron program
should ask for the password in another 20 minutes. "Jeez," he
thought, "I hope they don't get anything."
"There are _10_ copies of something which looks like a word
processor on the server hard drive--they all have the same byte count
and date, and there is _NO_ 'path' set," technoid #3 bitched loudly
enough for Lenny to hear. (Happened that this was an accident. Lenny
had found that if he copied the word processor into each directory he
made, it worked fine.) The server had an old 700 Mbyte drive, and a
few copies more or less of a half Meg program made no big difference.
However at the moment, the technoids had concluded that this was a
clever hack, that the system would wipe the password out of memory if
they tried to run the wrong word processor program. They outfoxed
themselves: any one of them would have worked fine. ("Type" or "copy"
to the screen wouldn't work because the WD*11.0 stored files in
compressed binary.)
"Well, Bob, it is moment of truth time. We can take a 1 in 10
chance of starting up the word processor and looking at the files, or
we can try to load in a program to extract the key from this thing's
stinking memory. What say?"
"You guys are the experts, don't ask me."
After a short conference, technoid #3 fished a diskette out of
his pocket, kissed it for luck, and stuck it in the drive on Lenny's
machine.
"Here goes nothing." and he typed "dir a:". The crypt program was
watching for diskette access, and came back with:
"I NEED A PASSWORD!
"Shit." whispered a dejected technoid under his breath. "Know
anybody at NSA?"
----------------
Lenny put the back of his palmtop on the microphone of a payphone
and hit the dial button.
"That will be one dollar for the first minute."
Bong, bong, bong, bong.
"Thank you for using ESJI, you have one minute." Buzz-click,
FidoNews 9-43 Page 7 26 Oct 1992
"Hello, there is no one here at the moment, but you can record a
message."
"Here" was a little module of code in an automated PBX/voice mail
machine watching for incoming calls after working hours on a line deep
in the list of numbers assigned to a small corporation. It was an old
machine, and unlikely to get another software upgrade. After taking a
call, it would not take another for several hours, and it rotated
through several recorded messages.
Lenny hit the next button down on the palmtop.
#-Beep, 4-Beep, 3-Beep, 6-Beep.
"confirm with password.
L-beep, E-beep, N-beep.
"Record message. End with any key."
Beeeeep.
"Nancy, its Murray, just called to say hi. Get back to me
sometime when you get a chance." #-beep.
"Message confirmation number 36, repeat 36," and a click.
The PBX made a local call to a paging company and transmitted
what looked like a phone number. The phone number digits added up to
36.
Lenny punched 36 into his palmtop and hit the enter key. It came
up with an address, a description, and a phone number. It was the
phone next to the K-mart entrance about a mile away.
"K-mart will be closing about the time I get over there," he
thought. "Could have taken the bike." He closed the palmtop. It
sensed the closing and erased its encryption password.
Lenny got back in his tiny 5 year old "B-car," the 60 mpg car
some rich dude had been force to take in a package deal when he bought
a 20 mpg Lincoln Towncar. He twisted the key. The lights dimmed as
the catalytic convertor came back up to heat on the battery. There
was a few seconds' wait to let the battery recover, and the car
started. Lenny watched for cops as he drove over to the K-mart, but
he didn't drive *too* cautiously. That was one sure way to attract
attention. There wasn't much of a mob leaving the closing K-mart on a
weekday. Lenny parked near the phones and walked over. He was about
20 feet away when the one on the left rang. He picked it up and said,
FidoNews 9-43 Page 8 26 Oct 1992
"36."
"What's the problem? If you forgot your key, I can't help."
The voice on the other end sounded odd. It was probably going
through some blind location in Mexico where the automatic number
identification had not yet been installed. It also had the quality of
digital speech. Original words of the speaker were being converted to
phonemes and back to words. Not a hint of the speaker's real voice
quality came through, though this dodge did not affect word choice and
rhythm patterns.
"Agents," Lenny said. The CCAs came in early this afternoon. I
don't think they got anything, but I needed someone to talk to."
"Dumb idea if they are watching you, but tell me what happened
anyway."
Lenny related the events of the afternoon up to the point where
the agents lost the password on his machine by trying to load a memory
dump program from a diskette. And then he went on.
"After that, they popped the cover off the server, hooked up
their gear and copied the 700 Meg disk, a few dozen 60Mbyte SMs, and a
few dozen 3 meg floppies. One of them had your crypt package. They
didn't mention my palmtop, and Marge keeps the backup tapes at home.
Only took them about 2 hours. They put the covers back on and left me
with what they called a PK encrypted 2.4 Gig WORM cartridge. They
took one just like it, and even made me choose which one I got. The
order said I was required to take one of them. It has all kinds of
legal seals and signatures on it. They said take it to our lawyer.
One of us took it over about 5 pm. None of us have a way to read it.
Are we in trouble?"
There was quite a delay. Then, the digital voice spoke up.
"Even if they were able to track me down, *I* am not in trouble.
I make a point of posting all the programs I ever give out. In source
code yet."
"I don't think you are in trouble from what they took with them.
The copy they left with you is the data off your disk, encrypted with
a half-key the judge issued. Until the hearing they can't read it
because they lack the other half of the key. The only use for it is to
keep them from making a copy of data, changing the data and making
another one of those write-once cartridges. So, you are ok till the
hearing."
There was more delay, then the funny sounding voice on the other
end of the line went on.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 9 26 Oct 1992
"Presuming the passwords are not compromised, even getting the
other half of the key from the judge to look at what they took should
not be a big problem. But since they came in at all, I would say you
are in big time trouble. That was a piece of dumb luck that they
didn't try WD* on your files. Of course they always have the option
to give you blanket immunity and force the key out of you, but by the
time they get around to doing that, you can forget the key. I sure
would. I presume you had the machine convert all the files after they
came in to a new password?"
"Not yet. I haven't let anyone put a password into any of the
machines since they showed up. I'm afraid they will have a camera bug
looking over my shoulder. About a month ago, I read in the paper that
they did that to a bookie in St Paul."
"Not likely for you--but possible. Hmmm, did they leave any
judicial orders about not moving the machines?"
"Not from what I read on the court order. I can ask our lawyer.
Our lawyer may be good at filing objections to logging company
projects, but I think he is out of his depth if they go after us
criminally. I can't afford a criminal lawyer. I called around and
the best deal I could get was $100k retainer, cash or gold, no
checks."
"They have already gone after you criminally. You don't get a
data search order from a judge without a fairly good reason. On the
other hand, it was not a search warrant. It is arguable that they
shouldn't have gone looking at stuff in your files, but who needs to
argue? They either don't have enough on you for that or they are
waiting to see what you do and who you talk to after the DSO. I don't
know and don't want to know what you are doing, but there must have
been something that tipped them off."
"I can't think of anything--even if the people we are sending
email to on the east coast had all been turned, I can't see how they
could have traced it back to us. Mail to them was going through about
10 blind links, sometimes took 3-4 days to get cross country, it was
deep 'crypted all the way, and somebody donated the digital stamps."
"Never like to use digital stamps I haven't bought myself with
cash, and then only from a reputable Swiss bank. But I can't see how
that would have done any harm . . . . is there any chance the stamps
might have been 'used?' That would certainly compromise your traffic,
though not the messages."
"Nope, a few of the messages circulate back to us. They wouldn't
if the "stamps" were no good."
"Not necessarily true. The mom and pop forwarders often
accumulate stamps for a week or more before sending them to the bank.
You just can't check with a bank on dollar or sub-dollar
amounts--connect time eats you up.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 10 26 Oct 1992
"The first link was Telesis, and I know they are on line to the
bank that issued the stamps . . . . Unless they are . . . . in on it.
. . ." Lenny was looking right at the Telesis logo on the phone.
"Yeah, '/Paranoia strikes deep/' . . . . Did the court order say
anything about why they were going after you?"
"No, there was a note on the order that the supporting affidavits
were sealed."
"You guys rate! There hasn't been a sealed affidavit for a DSO I
know about in the last ten years. The stink around the Steve Jackson
warrant took years to wear off! Well, they have to unseal them before
the hearing. The hearing has to be within the next three weeks if I
remember right."
"You do, it's on the 9th of next month, 20 days from now."
"Well, the first thing you should do is change the password, so
you can start forgetting the old one. How much clear stuff was on the
disk?
"None that I know about . . . . well actually about half the disk
was filled with the nastiest old published stuff we could find--rabid
libertarian literature and anarchist newsletters, public domain stuff
off a CD ROM. The rest was filled with random numbers from a noise
card when your guy set it up last year, then we deleted about half of
it to give us working space. But far as I know, there was nothing to
worry about in the clear. Snooper hasn't been complaining about
unencrypted files when I run it on startup every morning."
"There is a hole in that program, but it takes some very special
circumstances for it to fail. I kind of doubt you are being watched.
If they were going to go to that much trouble, a search warrant
instead of a digital search order would have been the way to go, but
if you are really worried about them looking over your shoulder, take
your machine and the server to a random motel you've never been to
before. Lets see, if you had to do the whole disk, it would take
maybe two hours. You shouldn't lose anything if you have to interrupt
the process in the middle--wait, yours is a 3 person office?"
"Yes."
"Main password, and then one for each of you?"
"Yes."
"Option 4:7 is what you want to use. It will decrypt only
through the old main password, and reencrypt through the new password.
Data never comes up to clear. Try that."
FidoNews 9-43 Page 11 26 Oct 1992
"Ok. Should I take it off to a motel?"
"Suit yourself. You know how good or bad you have been. But do
keep me informed. Hasn't been a case this interesting in years.
Random route Email by preference, but call if you need to, same
method."
-------------
Lenny and Marge checked into a motel which had definitely seen
better times, but was happy to take cash. A lot of people had quit
using credit cards, especially for checking into a motel on the hourly
plan. It was just too easy for people to tap into credit card
records. The swimming pool was dry in July, but what the heck, they
weren't here for swimming.
"I can't believe this, Marge, this power outlet has only _two_
holes."
"Lenny, this place was built before they invented grounding
plugs, what do you expect."
"Well, what the heck are we going to do now?"
"First we look around. No problem, the socket in the bathroom is
a 3 pronger."
Lenny plugged in the powerstrip while Marge plugged the pieces of
the PCs together and connected a short network cable between them.
Lenny joked to keep down his nervousness;
"Wonder what they thought of us." Not many couples bring in
couple of PCs to do perverted things in the dark."
"Lenny!" Marge said sharply.
"No, Marge, I meant the _PCs_ will be doing things in the dark,
not us." Marge picked up on the joke by looking disappointed. She
really wasn't. Lenny was one of those rare guys who just did not care
about sex with anybody. Her regular boyfriends knew she was not
getting any at work.
--------------
The 'crypt program rejected the first three passwords Lenny tried
as too simple. Which to him meant easy to remember. He finally got
it to accept anhtre spelled a@n7t%h7e$r (the password program would
drop the final r). Lenny's first password had been sesame. He had
used variations on opendoor, opendore, openwindow, enterhere,
portculius, drawbridge, safedoor, gateway at various times. If
anybody had a list of his passwords, they would be a long way up on
selecting attacks. He felt he was doing the best he could to make
them complex, but still rememberable. He left the duress password
(bugout) alone. It was one he had kept using for years, and never had
needed. Lenny wasn't certain he would use it if he got a chance.
Even though Marge backed up the disk every week, he would lose a lot
FidoNews 9-43 Page 12 26 Oct 1992
of work if he used the duress password and wiped the disk.
-----------
They crammed the computers back into the tiny car five hours
later. Marge dropped the key in the slot by the office and they drove
back to the GreenRage office where Marge and Lenny set up the machines
and Marge started the backup program. The CCA observer made voice and
printed notes of their return on his palmtop from the stakeout
location inside a furniture company office about a block down the
street.
---------
The office never got up to full productivity over the next five
weeks, but Lenny did finish and email the project--with notes to the
effect that the enclosed was chapters from a book he was writing, and
a true-to-life description of the data search order being carried out.
He left it up to the folks on the other end. If they wanted to carry
out a project which was in the hands of the cops, it was on their
heads.
----------
The DSO hearing went about as expected. The judge granted a two
week extension over the protest of Bruce, the GreenRage's lawyer.
When the day came, Lenny, Marge, Stel, and Bruce were all looking more
respectable than they usually did. Even Stel was wearing a dress
(long out of style, but the only decent one she owned).
The hearing at the federal building started in open court with a
request from the US Attorney for the judge to review the CCS's
material in camera.
"Mr. Mulronny, I have already looked over the affidavits you sent
over, and I can't do it. I already granted you an extra two weeks,
and the law can only be stretched so far. You either have to make a
case and let these people defend their data, or you have to drop it."
Mulronny looked unhappy, but was prepared with the unsealed
affidavits. He gave one to Lenny, one to Bruce, and one to the judge.
The judge looked at Bruce,
"Your honor, this is only about 11 pages, I think my client and I
can review it during a short recess, or you could take up other
actions while we review this."
Court matters were running a little ahead of schedule that
morning, so the judge had the clerk pencil them in after the next two
short actions. They went out in the hall, not worrying about snoops
except being overheard. The last time a judge found out that someone
was bugging the courthouse, the head of the agency that did it spent
time in the drunk tank for contempt.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 13 26 Oct 1992
Lenny had read the affidavit almost through when they reached the
far end of the hall. Bruce waited till he finished, and said,
"Well?"
Lenny shook his head,
"They're after someone else. I've read about some of the events
they are citing, but I sure don't know anything about them."
That wasn`t entirely true. One of the "events" was one Lenny had
put together, but when it didn't come off within a year, he had
decided they had chickened out. Since the project he had put together
took out much of an oil refinery, he was not surprised. Industrial
sabotage on that scale took more than a little guts. When the plant
finally blew up, Lenny watched the papers for weeks, but never found
out if it was ruled accidental. The feds did not seem to be sure
either, they only mentioned it as a possibility. The other
accusations were split between cases where Lenny strongly suspected
sister organization had done the deed, or industrial accidents where
some organization had taken credit for what was probably an accident.
Back in court Bruce complained to the judge that there was
nothing substantial in the affidavit supporting the DSO, and that
while his client did not have anything to hide, the government was
asking to break into the confidential business records of a public
interest group. And if they would not just forget the whole thing, he
wanted more time to respond.
The US Attorney would have asked for more time to respond if
Bruce had not, so he was agreeable. The clerk set a date for 6 weeks
off.
--------
Lenny was paralyzed from the neck down. The judge was asking him
for the password, and he could not remember it. The bailiff, clerk,
Bruce and Mulroony were all talking in a huddle and he could not make
sense out of anything they said, no matter how hard he tried.
"This wonic mail list was fairly secure.
There wasn't much of interest in the finantial records either.
Oh, a few thousands spent for sabatage material would be hard to
account for if they really dug into it, but the bulk of the money was
spent on saleries, office supplies, rent, and telecom charges. They
could always claim the money was spent on spray cans and ceramic
spikes for trees. And we can say we spent it for dope. Lenny grinned
at this one. He had given up smoking dope, made him too paranoid.
But, every fall some unknown but appreciated benifactor sent the
office a plastic tub of the stickyest buds you could imagine. Perhaps
one of their above ground efforts had saved some trees screening the
"crop." Marge and Stel had split the tub the last two years.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 14 26 Oct 1992
The problem was not the lastest project. Nor was it the one or two
a month Lenny had put together over the last 3 years. They were long
perged, and the disk space overwritten. And he didn't worry about the
contents of the newletters. Presumably *somebody* on the list was a
ringer, and the cops had a collection of *The GreenFlag.* What woke
Lenny up in the middle of the night (besides his cat) was the onic mail
list was fairly secure.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Guy Martin
1:143/269, 8:914/409, 20:257/269, 88:881/136, 90:80/0
guy.martin@f269.n143.z1.fidonet.org
UniPol - Bigger is Better? ... Not!
I would like to introduce a new policy, Universal Policy (UniPol).
FidoNet acceptance of this policy will supercede all other policies
currently inflicting FidoNet. Currently proposed by anyone that will
agree on exactly what Rick Moore said:
"Everything else is bureaucratic bullshit."
----[begin policy statement]----
Universal Policy v1.0
Copyright (c) 1992
by Rick Moore, Guy martin
Section i) Be not excessively annoying.
Section ii) Be not too easily annoyed.
Section iii) If you can't abide with the above, start your own network.
Section iv) Changes to this policy will be reviewed and promptly
discarded by either Rick Moore at 1:115/333 or Guy Martin
at 1:143/269.
Sections i-iii by Rick Moore at 1:115/333 (Inspiration of UniPol).
Section iv by Guy Martin at 1:143/269 (Author of UniPol)
----[end policy statement]----
----------------------------------------------------------------------
MISSING GIRL RECOVERED
By Ward Dossche
2:292/854
Fidonet sysops succeed where police fails
I don't want to bore anyone with this subject, and yes we are not
the police, but when something good happens via our hobby, I feel
inclined to tell the world about it.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 15 26 Oct 1992
Some 8 months ago I wrote a 1st article about young girls who
suddenly went missing in Belgium.
The article was published in Fidonet and EMBBS, and the EMBBS-
editor was so kind to include 3 GIF-files in the issue.
Both publications were flashed around the world and look what
happens.
A secretary at the Belgian embassy in Rome also operates a Fido-
system and had captured and printed-out the GIF-files.
So one day in comes this young Belgian girl claiming she lost her
identity-papers and requesting a new set.
The embassy-official made a positive ID and successfully stalled
the girl. Finally she consented in having a talk with qualified
professionals and finally agreed to go home.
The parents were notified, a plane ticket purchased and 12-hours
later the family was reunited in tears.
This one success after that many misses feels good, especially
knowing that this hobby of us at least served a good cause once.
Thank you Willy (292/101) and Arjen (283/512).
And thank you everyone who made this possible ...
-o=O=o-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
by Mark Derricutt @ 3:772/300
As I sit, staring aimlessly toward to monitor, "what mail has I
got today" I ask myself as Silver Express scans the echos...
...hmm, no mail today?!? But wait - whats this I find, the latest issue
of FIDONEWS!!!! Yippe, at least I can read that, unfortunately, I just
ran out of disk space, so its off to check check the letter box. Bills,
bills, more bills, and (take a wild stab in the dark), some more bills,
after thinking to myself that all I'm going to get this morning is
bills, and assorted "junk" mail, I find a whole bunch of post cards, and
whats even better is that they have my name on it!
Recently, Fidonet users from around New Zealand, England, South
Africa have been swapping post cards of each others homeland, today I
recieved cards from Austria, Pretoria (RSA) and a few others from
people in New Zealand.
FidoNews 9-43 Page 16 26 Oct 1992
Without my daily dose off E-Mail, I now have something to occupy
my time. After taking a few minutes to read what interesting things
the cards have to say, I cruise over to the local shops, where I find
an assortment of typical New Zealand postcards, ok so I'm an
unemployed fido-junkie, who can't even afford to buy some postcards,
how am I going to pay for the post cards?? If it wasn't for a friend
who I accidently 'bumped' into at the shops, I wouldn't have been able
to buy the cards.
After writing away to all my fido-buddies that sent me cards, I
find that I've run out of stamps. Now - if I had cash that wouldn't
be a problem, but being the UFJ (see above) that I am, its off to find
that wonderful creation called mum, she'll have some stamps I steal.
So its off to the shops once again, I have the cards, I have the
stamps, and off they go to be posted. Now it's off to school I must
go.
After a couple of hours of maths, I finally get home and log into
the hub and... ...the mail has arrived!!!!! So it was a few hours
late, but hey - I got all my messages that day so I was happy...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Baker
Rights On!, 1:374/14
GK Pace
PaceSoft Utilities, 1:374/26
PUBLIC_KEYS and PKEY_DROP Echos on Zone 1 Backbone
The PUBLIC_KEYS Echo and PKEY_DROP Echo are now available on the Zone
1 Backbone.
The purpose of the Echos is to provide a place to post and find
public-keys for data privacy within FidoNet and elsewhere and to
discuss electronic signatures and data and software encryption and the
various schemes thereof.
[The rules below are a composite of the rules from each Echo. See
PUBKEYS.RUL and PKDROP.RUL in ELRUL211 for complete Guidelines for
each Echo.]
These are technical Echos with very few rules. Those very few rules
are:
1. Stay on-topic. Topics of keys and privacy are welcome.
Others are not.
2. No politics [except as it relates to privacy issues] and
FidoNews 9-43 Page 17 26 Oct 1992
no religion.
3. No personal attacks, slurs or innuendo. Stick to issues
not personalities.
4. No Private flagged messages in Echomail! PGP traffic
using public-keys is permitted for the exercise so long
as it is on-topic and anyone can read it.
5. This Echo may be traveling around the world so try to be
concise. Avoid excessive quoting for one-liner responses.
6. Be aware that Echomail is NOT secure. Don't take anything
at face value.
7. The posts in this Echo are the sole responsiblity of the
poster. If you need verification, use Netmail.
8. The Moderators will deal with off-topic traffic. Don't
respond for them. Links to this Echo will only be
curtailed when absolutely necessary so please don't make
it necessary. [grin]
The Moderators are Christopher Baker [KeyID: 1024/4B9A59 1992/10/03]
and GK Pace [KeyID: 1024/B6B823 1992/09/28] at 1:374/14 and 1:374/26,
respectively.
It is recommended that public-keys be made available via Netmail or by
file-request with the magic filename: PGPKEY and that the public-key
provided for that request by given a distinctive filename using part
or all of each provider's name and address. For example, on my system,
a file-request of PGPKEY will give BAK37414.ASC to the requesting
system. This will avoid duplicate overwriting and make it easier to
track the keys. Using a standard magic filename will make it easier to
find keys on different systems.
These Echos are now on the Zone 1 Backbone. The PKEY_DROP Echo is for
placing public-keys in circulation in a central area available to all.
This Echo will be EListed in ELIST211 next month. Please feel free to
announce and distribute this Echo to all interested participants in
your area.
Make standard requests to your normal Backbone source for these Echos
and find out what we're doing. Join us in discovering new
possibilities.
"Pretty Good Privacy" MSDOS executables and source files for porting
to other platforms are available as PGP and PGPSRC from this system
and many others. Both archives were hatched into the SDS in the
SOFTDIST area and should be available at an SDS site near you.
Thanks.
TTFN.
Christopher Baker & GK Pace
Moderators
FidoNews 9-43 Page 18 26 Oct 1992
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FidoNews 9-43 Page 19 26 Oct 1992
======================================================================
FIDONEWS INFORMATION
======================================================================
------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ----------------
Editors: Tom Jennings, Tim Pozar
Editors Emeritii: Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince Perriello
"FidoNews" BBS
FidoNet 1:1/1
Internet fidonews@fidosw.fidonet.org
BBS (415)-863-2739 (2400 only until further notice!)
(Postal Service mailing address) (have patience)
FidoNews
c/o World Power Systems
Box 77731
San Francisco
CA 94107 USA
Published weekly by and for the members of the FidoNet international
amateur electronic mail system. It is a compilation of individual
articles contributed by their authors or their authorized agents. The
contribution of articles to this compilation does not diminish the
rights of the authors. Opinions expressed in these articles are those
of the authors and not necessarily those of FidoNews.
Authors retain copyright on individual works; otherwise FidoNews is
copyright 1992 Tom Jennings. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or
distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in
other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or FidoNews
(we're easy).
OBTAINING COPIES: The-most-recent-issue-ONLY of FidoNews in electronic
form may be obtained from the FidoNews BBS via manual download or
Wazoo FileRequest, or from various sites in the FidoNet and Internet.
PRINTED COPIES may be obtained from Fido Software for $10.00US each
PostPaid First Class within North America, or $13.00US elsewhere,
mailed Air Mail. (US funds drawn upon a US bank only.)
BACK ISSUES: Available from FidoNet nodes 1:102/138, 1:216/21,
1:125/1212, 1:107/519.1 (and probably others), via filerequest or
download (consult a recent nodelist for phone numbers).
INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via FTP from ftp.ieee.org, in
directory ~ftp/pub/fidonet/fidonews. If you have questions regarding
FidoNet, please direct them to deitch@gisatl.fidonet.org, not the
FidoNews BBS. (Be kind and patient; David Deitch is generously
volunteering to handle FidoNet/Internet questions.)
FidoNews 9-43 Page 20 26 Oct 1992
SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file
ARTSPEC.DOC, available from the FidoNews BBS, or Wazoo filerequestable
from 1:1/1 as file "ARTSPEC.DOC".
"Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered
trademarks of Tom Jennings of Fido Software, Box 77731, San Francisco
CA 94107, USA and are used with permission.
Asked what he thought of Western civilization,
M.K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea".
-- END
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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