144 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
144 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 21:13:52 -0700 (PDT)
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From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
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Subject: File 5--Net Porn: The Communism of the 1990s
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[Bob Chatelle has an interesting essay about child pornography (below
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namd as the "Communism of the 90s") and the limits of free expression
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somewhere near <http://world.std.com/~kip/>. --Declan]
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
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Date--Fri, 26 Jul 1996 11:00:18 -0400
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From--Noah Robischon <noah@pathfinder.com>
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>From this week's Village Voice
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Who Opened Their E-mail?
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It's the Kiddie Porn Crusaders
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by ANNETTE FUENTES
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Don't look now, but some FBI suits may be lurking around the chat
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room or, worse, secretly surveilling your e-mail and other private
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cyberspace communications. And chances are it's all in the name of
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fighting child pornography.
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That's what two New York City women learned recently when each
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received certified mail from the U.S. Justice Department. The
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letters, dated May 20, explained that "between the dates of August
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1, 1995 and August 26, 1995, electronic communications involving you
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or persons using your America Online username were intercepted."
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The letters listed six targeted AOL account numbers and their
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respective screen names, like Cyberqueer, Yngcumlvr, and Borntocum
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none of which had any connection to the women.
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"I was horrified," said Elizabeth Ewen. "At first I didn't
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understand what it was all about. I didn't recognize any of the
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screen names."
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Ewen, a professor at SUNY Old Westbury, called the assistant U.S.
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attorney who'd signed the letter, John David Kuchta, in Virginia. He
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told her the rationale for the surveillance was child porn. She told
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him she felt her privacy and civil rights had been violated.
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"He said, 'Don't worry, you were just caught up in the net. You
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didn't do anything criminal, and you should support what we're
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doing,' " Ewen recalled.
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Two days after Ewen got her letter, a friend of hers got the same
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thing. Margaret S. (she asked that her last name not be used), an
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educator in the Queens library system, was stunned to learn that
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almost a year after the fact, the FBI was disclosing that they'd
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been spying on her travels through cyberspace.
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"I don't expect total privacy online the same way I know the
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telephone isn't really private," she said. "But how often will the
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government raise the specter of child porn to justify this? We're
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just supposed to forget our civil rights in the name of it."
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Margaret e-mailed AOL with a message of outrage. In return she got
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a form letter from Jean Villanueva, a vice president for corporate
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communications, stating that AOL had merely complied with a court
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order obtained by the Justice Department when it "monitored" the
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e-mail of six AOL subscribers. It was part of Justice's campaign,
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"Innocent Images," Villanueva wrote. In closing, he referred
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members to a special Justice Department hotline set up to deal with
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AOL subscribers like Margaret and Ewen, innocents caught in the web.
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(By deadline, AOL had not responded to several calls seeking
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comment.)
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Margaret called the hotline, left a message, and two weeks later got
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a call back from Tonya Fox at Justice. Fox told her there were some
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840 other AOL subscribers like her who'd accidentally stumbled into
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the FBI's cyber wiretaps. "She kept telling me over and over that I
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was 'clean,' that I shouldn't worry," Margaret said. "She also
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said if I wanted to read the file on my surveillance, I should get a
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lawyer."
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How Ewen and Margaret were scooped up by the FBI they can't figure
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out. If one of them tripped into FBI surveillance of a suspected
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pornographer, did she then lead the feds to her friend through their
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e-mail correspondence? ACLU associate director Barry Steinhardt says
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that while it's legal for the government armed with a warrant to
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surveil the e-mail and other private cyber communications of
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suspected criminals, it is not legal to extend the surveillance to
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unrelated communications of innocent bystanders who chance into chat
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rooms or read electronic bulletin boards while a suspect is also
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present.
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"What has happened here is the most intrusive form of e-mail
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interception," Steinhardt said. "The government can get a
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subpoena to intercept real-time e-mail, which is the equivalent of
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phone wiretapping. They can also use a variety of devices to
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retrieve stored e-mail." But, adds Steinhardt, what is legal and
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what should be lawful are two different things.
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Mike Godwin, an attorney with the San Francisco'based Electronic
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Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization, warns that as
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government expands its reach into cyberspace, such incursions into
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private lives will pose a greater threat to civil liberties than
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simple phone taps. "It was necessary for law enforcement to learn
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how to narrow the scope of wiretapping, but here you have this
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technology where you're always making copies, always storing
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material somewhere," Godwin said. "It makes it very easy to get
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even deleted files that stay around for a while. That's not true
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about telephone calls."
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Justin Williams, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division
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in Alexandria, Virginia, could not comment on the particular
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investigation that snared Ewen and Margaret. But he insisted that
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what happened to them "was not a surveillance."
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"You wouldn't say their e-mail was read," Williams said. "It
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could be they were surfing the Internet and happened into a
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particular room where by chance there is an [individual] under
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electronic surveillance."
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Williams said their hotline received 160 calls from AOL subscribers
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such as Ewen and Margaret. While the statute regulating government
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surveillance Title III requires Justice to notify the targets of
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eavesdropping, notifying innocent bystanders is discretionary, he
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said.
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Williams could not say how many such online surveillances the
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Justice Department is conducting. But ACLU lawyer Steinhardt says in
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the past year, the government's pursuit of child porn in cyberspace
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has reached a fever pitch.
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"Most online surveillance by the government is now centered on
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child porn," he said. "It has people assigned to child porn
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investigations who are fascinated by the use of the Internet to
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distribute it. They're no longer going after the producers who
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actually abuse children. They're going after consumers. It's easier,
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splashier."
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Splashy and messy for those who happen to be in the wrong cyber
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place, if only for a nanosecond. For Ewen, the witch-hunt has begun
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again.
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"Child porn will become the communism of the '90s," she said.
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