Computer underground Digest Thu June 12, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 45 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #9.45 (Thu, June 12, 1997) File 1-- Attack against Decoder (english) (FWD) File 2--Islands in the Clickstream File 3--'Amateur Action' update File 4--Ready, aim, fire! File 5--Re: Mass-CuD Problem Solved (we hope) File 6--"Java Fundamental Classes Reference" from O'Reilly File 7--U.S. Agriculture Dept. web site closed after security breach File 8--French Internet Suit Dismissed File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 Jun 17 01:57:10 -0100 From: Bruce Sterling Subject: File 1-- Attack against Decoder (english) (FWD) From--Gomma@decoderbbs.csmtbo.mi.cnr.it (Gomma) Date--03 Jun 17 01:57:10 -0100 To--nettime-l@Desk.nl The following (translated) article is from "Il Mattino" of Naples. It concerns "Decoder", one of the most relevant magazines in the Italian antagonist landscape. This raving article is against "Decoder" and the alternative Italian telematics. It is the proof that all the repressive legislation passed or under way to "regulate" the net will become instruments against freedom of expression more broadly. For those who didn't know it, the article mentioned concerns a strip by the famous English artist, Graham Harwood ("Decoder", No. 8), on the issue of violence on children. A harsh strip, ruthless, but whose only goal was to make people reason on the origins of violence against weaker human beings. But when power becomes blind, it hits in any form, it becomes abuse, it becomes censorship, and it hits everything and everyone. If this was not so gloomy for the future prospects it envisages, we could even laugh at it, but BEWARE, because this article -which the journalist who attacks us and the right to stay anonymous was not brave enough to sign- seems to anticipate a new repressive clampdown on Italian networks and their activists. As "Decoder" we will seek for advice from our lawyers to try and do something -we do not accept being used to the ends of newspapers' manipulation- and we INVITE all the comrades, brothers and sisters from telematic communities to express solidarity, to activate on these issues, and build a united front against repression. ------- "Il Mattino" 28 May 1997 The cyber-race and its prophets. See under "violence" There is also a magazine ,"Decoder", in glossy paper: it preaches the destruction of all rules ROME. A bunch of copies on adjunct attorney's Italo Ormanni. Disgusting images of violence on children accompanied by a language that is abusive in itself. It is not a porn magazine, of those some guys get behind closed doors. It's a glossy paper, underground they say, who claims to change the world. An organ of ideological struggle, one may say party-like, if we can call this way a group which is sailing on the Net preaching the destruction of all rules. And what is more shocking, more destructive than sanctifying violence on children? Ormanni, the statutes in his hands, could only do one thing. He asked to the police's telecommunication operative branch director, Maria Cristina Ascenzi, if the requisites existed to sue someone for under- age persons' exploitation. But it came out that those sick images are the outcome of computer-aided elaborations. The crime disappears, at least for current laws, but a chilling discovery is confirmed: pedophily is not only stuff for a-social, depraved people: it is used, if you pass this concept, as a tool of struggle, a ram's head against the bases of society. Going through "Decoder"'s pages is like have a walk into a frenzy: a summary of the cyberpunk's "philosophy" is that any rule must tumble down. And that anyone do what they want, totally unnamed. Being strong or weak, being the animal that eats or the one who gets eaten, does not matter. But this is not said because anyone of these cyberphilosophers feel, tacitly, the eating animal. One of the most notable parts of this vision of the world supported even through pedophily is the coming birth of a cyber-race improved by computer. And all, which they imagine so original and part of the new times, inequivocably smacks like a rotten carcass. No signatures, only proclamations. The authors don't let people look in their faces. Only battle nicknames. It's the rule, on the Net. This in the lefty circles who are seeking on the Net for alternatives to the old social centre (whom detectives call "antagonist"), like in these groups defined, instead, as rightist. Among so many living presences, curious, even provoking, then, you can also find anti- everything propaganda, desecrating by choice. Legislation that is now going to pass in Parliament provides for very hard penalties for everyone produces pornographic material representing under-age persons. Also virtual pedophily, then, might be punished, as a non- value and an "exaltation" of a crime. Until now the police, who can anyway point and prosecute those inciting to racial hatred, can just wait and see. -- | Cybernet: Gomma 65:1200/1.2 | Internet: Gomma@decoderbbs.csmtbo.mi.cnr.it | WWW : http://www4.iol.it/decoder | | Standard disclaimer: >>>> Information wants to be free <<<< | From DecoderBBS Italy +39-2-29527597 (open 14:00-08:00). --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Jun 1997 21:38:18 From: Richard Thieme Subject: File 2--Islands in the Clickstream Islands in the Clickstream: No More Pencils, No More Books? We are all children of our times. We frame our worlds as they are given to us by our language and the structures of our education. The frame is invisible until there is a change so pervasive that we see by contrast what we once took for granted. It's like the terminator on the moon, the line between darkness and light where the mountain ranges are thrown into relief. I did not experience the education I received growing up in America in the 1950s and 1960s as a choice. It's what education was. In the same way, becoming an "adolescent" was simply a fact of growing up, a universal stage of development. But adolescence is really a modern invention. The word was first used in 1904. The same is true of "childhood" which was really invented by the Victorians. In the United States, the expectation that adults will graduate from high school is a fairly recent development, a twentieth-century phenomena. "School" as we know it is a direct result of the printing press. Collections of benches in a central building on which to sit and read are a recent development. Learning had universally been accomplished through apprenticeship. Young people worked beside adults, learning by doing. Most never left the village in which they were born. The fact of textbooks and universal literacy made necessary a prolonged period of time called "adolescence" that postponed adulthood. During that time we learned the art of symbol manipulation. We learned to internalize typographical symbols and be "reading people." Learning to read transformed who we were and how we understood our lives as possibilities for action. The process was at least as important as the content. We called that process "education." Today the structures of education are out of joint with the structures of adulthood. That's why so many businesses are educating workers. More education takes place today in conference rooms, meeting rooms in hotels, and via remote telepresence and onsite computer-assisted learning than in classrooms. The need for continuous lifelong education is now an unquestioned assumption. Apple flooded schools with computers, but didn't provide teachers who knew what to do with them. My consulting with schools tells me that money is often budgeted to buy computers, but seldom budgeted for the years of training needed to re- program teachers to use them effectively. I know a fourth grade teacher who was supposed to teach computers but didn't know how to turn them on. She asked her class, "Who knows how?" Hands waved in the air. She turned the task over to the students and hid behind her desk while they showed each other what to do. She called it "empowerment." But she couldn't hide forever. So she asked her three brightest students secretly to teach her after school how to use computers. Then she could teach the students how to use computers. That teacher's situation as an officer in a command-and- control hierarchy who does not know as much as the people she teaches is analogous to a manager asked to supervise younger workers who understand computer technology and its uses far better than she does. Older managers as well as older teachers must learn from younger adults as well as teach them. The wisdom of experience is relevant, but relevant in a different way. Command-and-control behaviors do not make for good coaching. That teacher, like many managers, learned that she still had authority, but authority that had to be exercised in a collegial way. Leadership is exercised in a network by implementing a vision, not by dominating and controlling. Power is exercised in a network by participating and contributing. That teacher knew, at least, how to get out of the way, but that didn't make her a coach. She needed to learn how to be present but not controlling, available but not directive. Like the best computer assisted learning, good coaches provide information not at the convenience of the curriculum but when learners are most teachable. Naturally the fact of computer technology has been threatening to many schools. Some responded to the challenge by taking away all the computers and locking them up in a room. They call it a "computer lab" and let the kids in there an hour a day. Imagine being a teacher when pencils were invented. You pass out pencils and watch as the children discover that pencils can do anything because a pencil is a symbol manipulating machine. Children can write stories, do math, reflect on history. Afraid you're no longer needed, you collect the pencils and lock them in a Pencil Lab, letting the children use them an hour a day. The rest of the time they write with rocks on slabs of broken concrete. In preparation for a speech for a school district in northern Illinois recently, I was told that the large corporations in which most of their students worked gave the district good grades in much of what they were teaching, but not in preparing young people for cooperative learning and cross- disciplinary teamwork. When I asked what they meant by "cooperative learning," I realized that in *my* day it was called ... cheating. A stand-alone human being who learns and works by themselves -- as I was taught to do -- is a brain in a bottle. The structures of education, like the structures of work, are moving through a sea-change. Symptoms include: + Rising drop-out rates. Racial minorities, the canaries in the coal mine of society, die first. The growing irrelevance of school to life in the real world was experienced first in ghettos. Now blue-collar workers and middle-aged managers are feeling the pain so it's a "crisis." + A growing "black market" in education. We give lip-service to traditional structures but barter for "educational goods" on the job and over the Internet, in the global marketplace. + Businesses are becoming centers of education, not because they want to, but because they must. McDonald's teaches politeness and civility because the traditional structures of society no longer do the job. The budget for training in many businesses exceeds the budgets of local school districts. Some companies have started their own colleges and graduate studies because schools do not generate people with the skills and knowledge they need. + Conscientious teachers who can't see the forest for the trees redouble their efforts. They become exhausted , working harder and harder, but it's like drinking from a dribble glass. The gears of the system don't mesh with the real world. Veterans count the days until retirement. Burn-out abounds. + "Work-to-school" programs grow as apprenticeship is re- engineered for the 21st century. Is there hope? Of course. The solutions begin with understanding the depths of the transformation we are experiencing and asking questions relevant to our real lives. The process of finding answers together will generate the security we need to remain effective during revolutionary times. ********************************************************************** Islands in the Clickstream is a monthly column written by Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions of computer technology. Comments are welcome. Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or (3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network, email for details. To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the words "subscribe islands" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe islands" in the body of the message. Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and organizations. Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1997. All rights reserved. ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321 ********************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 13:23:04 -0400 From: Michael Sims Subject: File 3--'Amateur Action' update ((MODERATORS' NOTE: A full background on the Amateur Action BBS case, including its history and the text of relevant legal documents, can be found in the CuD archives at: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~aabbs/aabbs.html ============== Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Background: Robert and Carleen Thomas ran an adult-oriented bulletin board system from their home in California. Prosecutors in Tennesee in 1994 downloaded allegedly obscene pictures of sexual acts and charged them. Of course, they were applying *their* "community standards" for obscenity to his California business. They were found guilty and sentenced to 37 months. While that case was on trial, Federal officials in Utah heard about and looked into it. They downloaded pictures of "nude and semi-nude children" and charged Thomas in Utah with distributing child pornography, although there is no evidence any Utahan except the official had ever done so. Thomas pled guilty to 1 of 16 charges and appealed alleging double jeopardy. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the decision of the Utah District Court. No double jeopardy because the individual photos are different from those which were tried in the other cases. Thomas is serving a 26-month sentence on this count, concurrently with the other sentence. The opinion does not appear to be on the Emory University web site which tracks these things. Moral: anyone who distributes content nationally continues to be subject to prosecution in each and every locale under prevailing community standards. If your content is objectionable to the most small-minded folk anywhere in the US, it would be wise to refrain from publishing it on the internet or other comparable medium. Prosecutions continue to apply local "contemporary community standards" to obscenity prosecutions, but in meeting the Miller test, they are permitted to demonstrate that the material has prurient appeal to someone else. In other words, offensive to you, sexually appealing to anyone anywhere. For example, if space aliens landed tomorrow and their pornography consisted of pictures that looked like cat vomit, prosecutors could present evidence that the material is prurient with regard to space aliens, patently offensive to you (cat vomit, you know), and lacking in serious literary value to you (obviously) and you would therefore conclude that the material was obscene. [v]enue for federal obscenity prosecutions lies "in any district from, through, or into which" the allegedly obscene material moves, according to 18 U.S.C. section 3237. This may result in prosecutions of persons in a community to which they have sent materials which is obscene under that community's standards though the community from which it is sent would tolerate the same material. United States v. Peraino, 645 F.2d 548, 551 (6th Cir. 1981) So even if you refrain from sending material to Tennesee residents, an internet router can make that decision for you by sending data packets through the state. What a great piece of law. Refs: Jonathan Wallace's consideration of the issue: http://www.spectacle.org/795/amateur.html http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/musm/obsne.html http://www.spectacle.org/296/obscene.html ACLU materials on the Tennessee case: http://www.aclu.org/court/thomas.html http://www.aclu.org/court/obscene.html -- Michael Sims ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 19:30:57 -0400 From: Michael Sims Subject: File 4--Ready, aim, fire! Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/060697/info5_16347.html Reproduced in full, it's short. Anyone have more information? Meeting reportedly will aim to fight obscenity on Internet Copyright c 1997 Nando.net Copyright c 1997 Agence France-Presse TOKYO (June 6, 1997 11:43 a.m. EDT) - Japan, the United States and European nations will hold an unprecedented ministerial meeting next month to study ways to restrict obscenity on the Internet and regulate electronic commerce, it was reported Friday. The meeting in Bonn July 6-8 will focus on measures to crack down on obscene and violent pictures on the Internet, Jiji Press quoted informed sources as saying. It will also discuss universal criteria for encoding information in electronic commerce to protect private information, Jiji said. Japan will be represented by the posts and telecommunications minister, Hisao Horinouchi, the sources said. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 06:55:40 -0400 (EDT) From: "Bill Michaelson" Subject: File 5--Re: Mass-CuD Problem Solved (we hope) <. . .> But in all this furor over spam, I've been puzzled by something. Why not as much indignation over paper mail? I told someone last week that if I could take all the paper junk that is stuffed in my postal mailbox (which I am required to physically sort for recycling), and put it in my e-mailbox, I would flick it into the ether with just as much ease as I do the electronic variety. Two years ago, after sending written requests to about 150 paper junk mailers, I was only successful at stopping the flow from half of them. The others required one or more followup calls, many of which had lame excuses for not complying with my request to stop. And it appears that I have no legal recourse. A handful have been so non-responsive (Honda, Godiva Chocolates and Starbucks come to mind) that I've considered organizing boycotts of their products by like-minded individuals. Ah, but I've got a life. At least I know that *I* won't be buying their products. This isn't to say I'm unsympathetic; I've been the victim of some idiotic spam attacks myself, and I'm still receiving junk from email lists that accept automatic registration without any sort of authentication - an administrative practice which borders on negligence at this late date. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 17:18:47 -0700 From: Sara Winge Subject: File 6--"Java Fundamental Classes Reference" from O'Reilly FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 5, 1997 PRESS ONLY--FOR REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT: Sara Winge 707/829-0515 x285 sara@ora.com http://www.ora.com O'REILLY RELEASES "JAVA FUNDAMENTAL CLASSES REFERENCE" SEBASTOPOL, CA--"Java Fundamental Classes Reference," the latest title in O'Reilly & Associates' Java documentation series, provides complete reference documentation on the core Java 1.1 classes. "Java Fundamental Classes Reference" goes beyond a standard reference manual. In addition to detailed descriptions of classes and methods, it offers tutorial-style explanations of the important classes in the Java core API. The first section of the book includes chapters that describe the ins and outs of strings and related classes, effective thread programming, and the use of the I/O classes. These chapters also include lots of sample code, so that readers can learn by example. The core classes addressed in "Java Fundamental Classes Reference" contain architecture-independent methods that serve as Java's gateway to the real world, by providing access to resources such as the network and the host filesystem. These classes also include utilities for working with strings, I/O streams, mathematical functions, vectors, and hash tables. The book covers the classes that comprise the java.lang, java.io, java.net, java.util, java.text, java.math, java.lang.reflect, and java.util.zip packages. These classes provide general-purpose functionality that is fundamental to every Java application. "Java Fundamental Classes Reference" describes Version 1.1 of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and includes: - Easy-to-use reference material on every core Java class - Tutorial-style explanations of important classes and examples that demonstrate their functionality - Detailed coverage of all the essential classes in java.lang, including Object, String, and Thread - Descriptions of all the I/O classes provided in the java.io package, including all of the new Reader, Writer, and object serialization classes in Java 1.1 - Material on using the classes in java.util effectively - Coverage of all the networking classes in the java.net package "Java Fundamental Classes Reference" is meant to be used in conjunction with the "Java AWT Reference." Together, these two reference manuals cover all of the classes in the Java core API. "Java Language Reference" completes O'Reilly's core Java documentation set by providing a detailed reference of the Java programming language. These manuals comprise the definitive set of Java 1.1 documentation--essential reference for any serious Java programmer. O'Reilly's Java series also includes a tutorial, "Exploring Java," and single-topic programming books that provide in-depth information on critical topics, an approach the company has perfected in the past ten years with their highly successful Nutshell Handbooks. "Java Virtual Machine," "Java Threads," and "Java Network Programming" are the first books on advanced programming topics. Upcoming Java programming books include "Developing Java Beans" (6/97) and "Database Programming with JDBC and Java" (7/97). # # # Java Fundamental Classes Reference By Mark Grand & Jonathan Knudsen 1st Edition May 1997 (US) 1114 pages, ISBN: 1-56592-241-7, $44.95 (US) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 00:32:43 -0400 From: "Evian S. Sim" Subject: File 7--U.S. Agriculture Dept. web site closed after security breach Copyright 1997 Reuter Information Service WASHINGTON (June 11, 1997 00:08 a.m. EDT) - The U.S. Agriculture Department's Foreign Agricultural Service shut down access to its internet home page Tuesday after a major security breach was discovered, a department aide said. "It's a big, huge problem," Ed Desrosiers, a computer specialist in USDA's Farm Service Agency, told Reuters. "We can't guarantee anything's clean anymore." Someone broke into system and began "sending out a lot of messages" to other "machines" on the internet, Desrosiers said. The volume of traffic was so great, "we were taking down machines" and began receiving complaints, he said. "It's not worth our time to try to track down" the culprit, Desrosiers said. "Instead, we're just going to massively increase security." A popular feature on the FAS home page is the search function for "attache reports," which are filed by overseas personnel and provide assessments on crop conditions around the world. Although not official data, the reports provide key information that goes into USDA's monthly world supply-and-demand forecasts. It could be next week before the page is open to outside users again, Desrosiers said. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:13:30 -0500 From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas) Subject: File 8--French Internet Suit Dismissed Date: Tuesday, June 10, 1997 Source: Reuters. Dateline: PARIS Copyright Chicago Tribune FRENCH INTERNET SUIT DISMISSED ENGLISH-ONLY WEB SITE ILLEGAL, GROUPS CHARGE The first test of whether France's disputed language law applies to the Internet ended in a fiasco Monday when a court threw out the case against an overseas branch of Georgia Tech on a technicality. Two state-approved watchdogs promoting the use of the French language had filed a complaint against the Georgia Institute of Technology's French campus for using English only on its Web site. The plaintiffs, Defense of the French Language and Future of the French Language, accused Georgia Tech Lorraine of breaking a 1994 law requiring all advertising in France to be in French. The Paris police court dismissed the lawsuit, saying the two private groups should have notified a public prosecutor first. The legislation, named after then-Culture Minister Jacques Toubon, was part of a battle to protect the tongue of Moliere and Racine from the growing international use of English. <...> ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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