December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

www.wow-com.com
by wcreply＠ctia.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear WOW-COM Reader: WOW-COM continues to provide the knowledge wireless professionals need to stay ahead in a fast-paced environment. Our news, CTIA-sponsored research and regular updates on the top issues affecting wireless, make WOW-COM the site for industry professionals. Daily use of the wireless industry's Web hub continues to grow because we constantly add new features and information. Here is what's new: **Searchable Database on Antenna Moratoria Across America** This segment of WOW-COM provides the information on every effort by localities to thwart development of wireless infrastructure by limiting tower development. This analysis is of great value to all wireless professionals attempting to navigate the tower siting issue successfully. To reach the Moratoria Database, click on http://www.WOW-COM.com/professional/siting/index.cfm **Career Center** WOW-COM's Career Center continues to grow rapidly. New listings by Motorola, Iridium LLC, Sony Wireless Telecommunications, AirTouch Cellular, Lucent Technologies, and others have made this the on-line job center for wireless. Recruiters are also now linked to the center, making it possible for you to reach them easily. To reach the Career Center, simply logon to WOW-COM and click on the Career Center. **Week In Review** The Week In Review, authored by CTIA political and regulatory experts, is available every Friday on WOW-COM -- three days before its scheduled Monday release. We are always adding additional services, analysis and research for WOW-COM readers. Please let us know what you think about WOW-COM and how we can serve you better! Sincerely, Team WOW-COM wcreply(a)ctia.org www.wow-com.com We hope you found this email useful and informative. If you didn't, we sincerely apologize. If you do not wish to receive our notices, please reply to wcreply(a)ctia.org.

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Generic announcement
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is from a story on Top Level Domain Names. Seems like it could apply to anything: "In Washington DC, officials from the White House, federal agencies and Congress say regulations may be necessary to promote a free-market system. A White House inter-agency taskforce was due to meet last week, after CWI's press deadline, to discuss the matter." -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent(a)songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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Re: Short AP Rant [POLITICAL NOISE]
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:27 AM 4/20/97 +0800, jamesd wrote: > > The election of various unpleasant Islamic Fundamentalist regimes. > > In particular, it seems likely that had the generals not violently > > overthrown democracy in Algeria, the democratically elected > > representatives of the people would have proceeded to kill off > > everyone they deemed insufficiently Islamic, a very substantial > > minority, a minority which would doubtless have included most of > > the generals and their families. At 09:22 PM 4/20/97 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: > The Islamic party didn't start killing off foreigners until the > French and other Westerners supported the generals who overthrew them. However they have been murdering Algerian women and children from day one, though they did not get into murdering Western women and children until a little later. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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(no subject)
by Julian Curmi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please delete from this list.

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Wired news: German Network Lifts Ban on Dutch ISP
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From www.wired.com: German Network Lifts Ban on Dutch ISP With mirror sites defeating its attempt to shutter a left-wing magazine, Germany's main academic network has called off the blockade. The network acted 11 April after prosecutors warned that Radikal magazine, hosted by Dutch ISP XS4ALL, was illegal. The network then blocked XS4ALL, which hosts 6,000 Web sites. Protests included widespread mirroring of Radikal. "An effective barrier to the illegal content was not possible," a network spokesman told the Associated Press Tuesday. XS4ALL Internet BV - Felipe Rodriquez-Svensson - finger felipe(a)xs4all.nl for Managing Director - - pub pgp-key 1024/A07C02F9

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(Fwd) Wired news: German Network Lifts Ban on Dutch ISP
by Charles Anthony 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The mirror efforts have been a success. Germany has lifted the ban on the xs4all site. --C ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: tank <tank(a)xs4all.nl> Subject: Wired news: German Network Lifts Ban on Dutch ISP To: tank(a)xs4all.nl Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:39:04 +0200 (MET DST) >From www.wired.com: German Network Lifts Ban on Dutch ISP With mirror sites defeating its attempt to shutter a left-wing magazine, Germany's main academic network has called off the blockade. The network acted 11 April after prosecutors warned that Radikal magazine, hosted by Dutch ISP XS4ALL, was illegal. The network then blocked XS4ALL, which hosts 6,000 Web sites. Protests included widespread mirroring of Radikal. "An effective barrier to the illegal content was not possible," a network spokesman told the Associated Press Tuesday. XS4ALL Internet BV - Felipe Rodriquez-Svensson - finger felipe(a)xs4all.nl for Managing Director - - pub pgp-key 1024/A07C02F9 ********************************************************************** Charles Anthony canthony(a)info-nation.com http://www.info-nation.com -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3a mQBtAzM63W8AAAEDAMRi15+AIXC0j2R7IrdeNhM7AQXPGAYAd2mCNhKrQa09fICZ 4jEpTd0biV+3nMAL6/6pWUm1AmFPS/FngecmXkrmMPlbgv3O0dapbJ2/FQf3XUtH Z5AEOdKL9xK5Ml7dCQAFE7QIY2FudGhvbnmJAHUDBRAzOt1wi/cSuTJe3QkBAemw AwC1DGxodXVPkA1D6uLdqFvP5H3/98i/gM2x9IvvfZscWszwrJuOhkYyd71TF7K5 gy55OqPp+Rf77On0XhmHoi98Y4HOSTHYPhN9o9zQQ+pn/4HmxQ4Tbtih2sCDNvmG b2g= =0pHR -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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The Risks of Automatic Spam Filtering/Deadbolt
by Charles Anthony 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An item from Risks-Forum Digest forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service- --C Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 11:31:55 -0800 (PST) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com Subject: RISKS DIGEST 18.94 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 27 March 1997 Volume 18 : Issue 94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 09:25:38 -0600 (CST) From: Prentiss Riddle <riddle(a)is.rice.edu> Subject: Risks of automatic spam blockers Forwarded from Edupage, 25 March 1997: | SPAM BLOCK | A California software engineer [Ron Guilmette] takes the annoyance | caused by unsolicited e-mail messages seriously, and has developed an | anti-spam weapon he plans to unveil next month. Dead Bolt allows | online users to share their "blacklists" of spam purveyors so that they | can more effectively filter offending e-mail. "The problem now is that | everyone who is filtering is keeping their own blacklists and they're | not working together to tie their lists together in a meaningful way," | says Dead Bolt's creator. "What I hope my package will do is allow | people to work together over the Net and filter all this stuff out and | finally put these people out of business....The problem is that it | costs the sender virtually zero dollars to send out a million messages, | and even if the response rate is minuscule by all standards -- say .001 | percent -- they've made money. So from an economic selfish point of | view, it's in their interest to annoy the other 99.99 percent of the | people." (Miami Herald 24 Mar 97) The full Miami Herald article is available at: http://www.herald.com/archive/cyber/techdocs/056735.htm Some of the risks of automatic spam filtering which Deadbolt will have to overcome in order to be successful include: -- The risk of false and malicious blacklisting of non-spammers. -- The risk of harm to innocent bystanders who happen to share hostnames, ISPs, or other characteristics with targeted spammers. -- The possibility that spam messages will avoid detection by varying return addresses and other signatures in each copy of a message. I find the first two particularly troubling -- were an imperfect spam filtering system in wide use, then triggering it against an innocent party could become a handy form of denial-of-service attack. Published details of Deadbolt are sketchy, but a Deja News or Alta Vista search of Usenet for "Ron Guilmette" reveals some of its designer's thinking on the subject. So far, I don't see enough to convince me that he will be successful. Prentiss Riddle riddle(a)rice.edu ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 18.94 ************************ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 17:01:10 -0800 (PST) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Wednesday 02 April 1997 Volume 19 : Issue 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 97 13:44:07 PST From: zerkle(a)cs.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle) Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Riddle, RISKS-18.94) > Dead Bolt allows online users to share their "blacklists" of spam > purveyors so that they can more effectively filter offending e-mail. Something like this has, unfortunately, become necessary. It will happen someday. Stopping spam is a topic near and dear to me, and I've already considered the risks mentioned. > The risk of false and malicious blacklisting of non-spammers. This is a serious problem. A step towards solving it would be a secure clearing house of data on spammers. It would need to be distributed via a technique like PGP-signed Usenet messages or a on online database downloadable through some secure transfer medium. Whoever maintained the database would need to somehow decide what went into it and what didn't. The entries would have to be classified by reliability level so that the users could decide which data to use and which to ignore. Unfortunately, doing this would subject whoever did it to a suit by spammers who didn't want to be blocked. I haven't figured out a way to avoid this particular risk short of establishing the operation in a country without spammers. > The risk of harm to innocent bystanders who happen to share hostnames, > ISPs, or other characteristics with targeted spammers. This is not a risk. This is a benefit. If users at an ISP get blocked because the other users at that ISP are spamming, they will take their business elsewhere. ISP's will either take measures to avoid harboring spammers, or they will lose their customers and go out of business. Either way, spammers will have one less place to hide. > The possibility that spam messages will avoid detection by varying return > addresses and other signatures in each copy of a message. If the source of a spam can be discovered, this is not a problem. The original spamming host is going to show up somewhere in the Received: line, even if only as an IP number. Poorly configured sendmails on intermediate (relay) hosts might not properly include the Received: information. If this is the case, the defective site should be blocked until its owners fix it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 10:57:47 -0500 From: Wayne Mesard <wmesard(a)sgi.com> Subject: Spam-proofed "From:" lines A recent trend in the war against spam is to munge the "From:" line in outgoing Usenet and e-mail messages (e.g., by adding asterisks or exclamation points to the beginning or end of the userid). These messages are typically accompanied by a terse note at the bottom of the message instructing respondents to "Remove asterisks [or whatever] from my address if you would like to reply." I see several risks with this technique: - False security: Most mail and news agents will dutifully add a "Sender:" line containing the "actual" e-mail address, if the user-supplied "From:" line doesn't look right. Since many spammers already gather addresses from the "Sender:" line, munging the "From:" line provides only limited protection. - Inconsideration: In that a munged "From:" line reduces the spam received, it reduces the amount of work the munger has to do. So instead of having to press one key to delete a junk e-mail message, everyone that wants to reply to one of his messages has to (a) notice that the address is bogus (b) press many keys to fix it. (Indeed, some mail readers make it quite tedious to edit the headers in replies.) In other words, it hasn't eliminated the problem; it's merely shifted the work from the sender to his correspondents. - Lost messages: a non-scientific survey of some novice-user friends indicated that a large number of them had no idea what the "remove asterisks..." directive meant, how to perform this task, or what to do with the bounced messages that will result from the failure to do so. - False security 2: In the ever-escalating spam arms race, it won't be long before spammers' address-gathering software is modified to unmunged munged "From:" lines. (I can think of two obvious techniques, which I won't describe here so as to avoid providing aid and comfort to the enemy.) Wayne ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 19.02 ************************ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 17:04:13 -0800 (PST) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Friday 4 April 1997 Volume 19 : Issue 04 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 18:35:54 -0800 (PST) From: C Matthew Curtin <cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com> Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Zerkle, RISKS-19.02) >> The risk of false and malicious blacklisting of non-spammers. (Riddle) Dan> This is a serious problem. A step towards solving it would be [...] This is unnecessarily complex. The NoCeM effort (see http://www.cm.org/ for details) has simply, and effectively, dealt with the spam problem for usenet. Efforts are underway to adapt this to e-mail. NoCeM works this way: * Someone takes it upon himself to watch for spam in a newsgroup (or groups). * When spam does appear, that someone posts a "NoCeM" message to news:alt.nocem.misc and/or news:news.admin.net-abuse.misc, PGP signed. * Users who want to benefit from the filters have clients that, when they grab news, look in news:alt.nocem.misc (and potentially other places) for NoCeM messages. The client verifies the signatures, and if it's signed by someone the client agrees to listen to, the message won't be shown to the user at all. * Clients are also available to work with news servers, to NoCeM messages on a site-wide basis. (I believe that these actually cancel the NoCeM'd messages on the site.) This is nice, because it uses what's already there (news), and allows the user (or admin, depending on the model) to select which users' NoCeMs he honors. Either you trust someone's judgement and honor their NoCeMs, or you don't, and they're completely ignored. Dan> Unfortunately, doing this would subject whoever did it to a suit Dan> by spammers who didn't want to be blocked. Superfluous lawsuits are threatened all the time... few have the resources of CyberPromo to actually be stupid enough to try any of this. (It's another thing about NoCeM...it doesn't kill the messages, it just is another post, that certain clients deal with behind the scenes. :-) Matt Curtin Chief Scientist Megasoft, Inc. cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 11:57:49 -0800 (PST) From: Ted Wong <tmw5(a)cornell.edu> Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Zerkle, RISKS-19.02) Instead of having a central repository of spam, why not use a distributed spam-control system analogous to NoCeMs for Usenet news? Anyone could then issue digitally-signed spam-block notifications, but an individual user would configure their system to only apply notices that came from cancellers they trusted. An Alpha version of NoCeM for e-mail already exists, at <http://www.novia.net/~doumakes/abuse/>. Some advantages of this system are: o It thwarts malicious individuals or organizations attempting to systematically censor e-mail. Unless the user lists them as trusted cancellers, their notices will be ignored. o A 'spotcheck' mode would allow users to occasionally receive an otherwise cancelled e-mail, to ensure that an otherwise trusted canceller hasn't stepped over the line between spam-blocking and censorship. o There is no risk of some central database being compromised by spammers or censors. o Users receive more timely warnings of new spam, without needing to periodically check and download a spam-list. o The spammers have no-one to sue for freedom-of-speech violations. While I'm not a lawyer, I can't see any way to sue someone for merely suggesting that a spammer's mail isn't worth reading. > > The risk of harm to innocent bystanders who happen to share hostnames, > > ISPs, or other characteristics with targeted spammers. > > This is not a risk. This is a benefit. [...] I can't see that this is a benefit. Changing your ISP is hardly a trivial task - you have to notify all of your correspondents of your new e-mail address, archive any web pages you may have stored at your ISP, reconfigure your internal network if you were using a Class C subnet, etc. It's grossly unfair to punish legitimate users because they were unfortunate enough to have some Canter and Siegal wanna-be set up shop on their ISP. Ted Wong Information Technology Section Mann Library, Cornell University <tmw5(a)cornell.edu> ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 08:33:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Rosenthal, Harlan" <rosenthh(a)dialogic.com> Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Zerkle, RISKS-19.02) > [...] they will take their business elsewhere. Easy to say from a university or company account. In the real world, nobody wants to change addresses and notify all of their correspondents, especially if it means losing an established presence that may have been widely disseminated to =potential= correspondents (not to mention reprinting stationary and business cards). And why should the multitude suffer this inconvenience, expense, and loss of communication, for the activities of the few? Spam is the biggest single argument for usage charges. As long as it's cheap to set up a new address and free to abuse it, there's no reason for the spammers to cut down on e-mailing spam and freeloading on other people's processors and comm lines. The fact that spam can be sent from a domain shared by many legitimate users, and that even new addresses may be reused after the spammer changes away, means that abusers are hiding among the innocent like hostage-taking terrorists - hyperbole, perhaps, but congruent in style if not in magnitude. The goal of any anti-spam approach should be to block, slow, or encumber transmission as close to the source as possible. Yet legitimate cases are always at risk; limiting the cc: lines, for example, could inconvenience clubs or companies almost as much as it slows the spammers. As in any police-power or security effort, the problem is how much freedom the average innocent person is prepared to give up so that the abuser can be blocked. -harlan ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 09:32:46 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Franklin <dan(a)copernicus.bbn.com> Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Zerkle, RISKS-19.02) > The original spamming host is going to show up somewhere in the Received: > line, [...] Note that if you are fortunate enough to have Received: lines to work from (the most recent spam I received had none at all, either because the relay host was defective or because it really was sent directly to my mailhost) you still have a challenge, because the spammer can insert one or more bogus Received lines in the initial message, so the one added by the first relay host will be buried in the middle. By the way, it does not seem practical to me to block all mail-relay sites that don't add Received lines. How would you generate such a list? What incentive would you provide to such a site to change their software? Dan Franklin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 10:57:55 -0800 (PST) From: "J. DeBert" <onymouse(a)hypatia.com> Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Zerkle, RISKS-19.02) Any method of auto-blocking spam will create a serious problem for anyone who later acquire the spammers' discarded domain names. Spammers are registering lots of domain names and faking many to evade anti-spam and cancel bots and to hide from their enemies as well as the public at large. Once they are done with the domain names and they--the registered names--become available again, the next organization to acquire the name will find their mail bouncing or disappearing into /dev/null somewhere and perhaps harassed by bots and hostile spam-haters which do not know that the domain name has changed hands. The unfortunate victims of such acts may not even be able to escape them by merely changing their domain name, either. Who is going to removed dead spammer domains from the anti- spam and cancel bots' records and make sure that everyone knows about it? onymouse(a)hypatia.com | I've only one thing to Send NO spam | say to spammers: "47USC227". [Many thanks to an onymouse contributor (J DeBert), who acted as a guest moderator for this topic. PGN] ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 19.04 ************************ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 12:03:12 -0700 (PDT) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com Subject: RISKS DIGEST 19.10 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Tuesday 22 April 1997 Volume 19 : Issue 10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Apr 97 19:49:30 EDT From: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) Subject: Re: Risks of automatic spam blockers (Curtin, RISKS-19.04) On the risks of issuing NoCeMs I've been issuing NoCeMs for off-topic articles in several newsgroups (both global Usenet and the nyc.* hierarchy) since the summer of '96. I've received two legalese threats of legal action from posters of material that matched my criteria of being off-topic. 1. Michael Weir, a recruiter from Canada, insisted on posting job ads in an unmoderated discussion newsgroup whose charter prohibits job ads and resumes. He threatened to sue me for using his name in the NoCeM notices. He also posted a series of abusive flames about me. A search of DejaNews revealed several articles from him in Canadian newsgroups discussing his litigations and asking for personal information about a judge. Eventually he went away. 2. The "New York Theosophical Society" insists on posting in the local newsgroup nyc.seminars (usually used to announce, what else, seminars). One Bart Lidofsky responded to the NoCeM articles by saying: "I consider these messages to be a form of harassment, and will treat them as such." I have also seen several claims that the NoCeM notices themselves are "spam". Apparently, this term now applies to any traffic that the user doesn't like for any reason. I understand that other issuers of NoCeMs have also received threats, and at least one poster has been forging old-fashioned cancels for the NoCeM notices that mention his articles (another good reason to stop processing all old-fashioned cancels). Dimitri "co-proponent of news.lists.filters where NoCeM notices are posted" Vulis Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 19.10 ************************ Standard Risks reuse disclaimer: Reused without explicit authorization under blanket permission granted for all Risks-Forum Digest materials. The author(s), the RISKS moderator, and the ACM have no connection with this reuse.

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EC Electronic Commerce Report
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The European Commission has issued a major initiative for electronic commerce in competition and contrast with that of the US being readied for release shortly by Ira Magaziner. Online privacy and information security are featured. http://jya.com/ecomcom.htm (110K)

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Re: Generic announcement
by Jim Burnes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 18:37:23 -0700 > From: Kent Crispin <kent(a)songbird.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Generic announcement > This is from a story on Top Level Domain Names. Seems like it could apply > to anything: > "In Washington DC, officials from the White House, federal agencies and > Congress say regulations may be necessary to promote a free-market > system. A White House inter-agency taskforce was due to meet last > week, after CWI's press deadline, to discuss the matter." > Thats about the most humorous thing I've read all week. Typical socialist mindset "we had to control it to set it free". Sort of like "we had to destroy the village to save it." This must be the same Orwellian mindset that gave birth to the Waco "Hostage Rescue Team" concept. Please don't rescue me. War is Peace Love is Hate I love big brother. Jim Burnes Engineer, Western Security, SSDS Inc jim.burnes(a)ssds.com ---- Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural Addr

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Groups Protest German Compuserve Prosecution
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PRESS RELEASE April 23, 1997 www.gilc.org LETTER TO CHANCELLOR KOHL URGES INVESTIGATION OF COMPUSERVE PROSECUTION A coalition of civil liberties organizations from a dozen countries has written to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to express concern about the prosecution of an official from the Compuserve company which is making makes available Internet access to German subscribers. The official has been indicted by local prosecutors. The letter states the prosecution of the Compuserve manager Mr. Felix Somm is "ill-advised for both technical and regulatory reasons" and will "have a harmful impact on Internet users around the world." The groups said that "the charges against CompuServe will establish a harmful precedent, and may encourage other governments to censor speech, limit political debate, control artistic expression, and otherwise deny the opportunity for individuals to be fully informed." The organizations signing the letter, which was organized by the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, include the American Civil Liberties Union, Arge Daten, Association des Utilisateurs d'Internet, Derechos Human Rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Internet Society, and Privacy International. Felipe Rodriquez, the administrator for XS4ALL, an internet provider that was recently blocked by German authorities in a separate matter said, "Is is not possible for a provider to censor the Internet according to the local law, custom or tradition. The Internet is too international and too dynamic for that to be possible. Censoring the Internet has, in most cases, proved to be counterproductive." Andy Oram, a member of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in the United States, said that he thought the attempts by German to limit use of the Internet in this manner were impractical. "Even if an Internet provider is notified that illegal material is coming from a certain site and cuts off all access to that site, the publisher of the material can easily find another site from which to send it." The groups also noted their support for efforts now underway in the German parliament to liberalize the use of the Internet. "We believe that the measure now under consideration to reduce liability for Internet services will do much to ensure the protection of personal freedoms in the future," said the organizations. The Global Internet Liberty Campaign was established at the annual meeting of the Internet Society in June 1996 in Montreal. It maintains a web site at www.gilc.org with links to all of the member organizations. Last September the group organized a conference in Paris to educate members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development about the need to develop cryptography polices that protected privacy and fundamental human rights. Aspects of the GILC recommendations were incorporated in the OECD Cryptography Guidelines released earlier this year. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- GLOBAL INTERNET LIBERTY CAMPAIGN WWW.GILC.ORG April 23, 1997 Chancellor Helmut Kohl Adenauerallee 141 53113 Bonn GERMANY Dear Chancellor Kohl, The undersigned organizations, members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, are writing to express concern about the prosecution of Felix Somm, German representative of CompuServe, for the transmission of allegedly illegal materials over the Internet. The news reports we have received indicate that Mr. Somm is being prosecuted because Internet users are able to obtain information on the Internet, by means of the CompuServe service, that may be considered illegal in Germany. We believe that the prosecution of the CompuServe manager is ill-advised for both technical and regulatory reasons. We also believe that this prosecution violates international norms for the protection of speech and will have a harmful impact on Internet users around the world. There are two technical factors that prevent an service provider, such as CompuServe, from blocking the free flow of information on the Internet. First, an Internet service provider cannot easily stop the incoming flow of material. No one can monitor the enormous quantity of network traffic, which may consist of hundreds of thousands of emails, newsgroup messages, files, and Web pages that pass through in dozens of text and binary formats, some of them readable only by particular proprietary tools. As the European Commission noted recently, "it is as yet unclear how far it is technically possible to block access to content once it is identified as illegal. This is a problem which also affects the degree of liability of the access providers." A second technical problem is that a provider cannot selectively disable transmission to particular users. Electronic networks typically do not allow for the identification of particular users or their national region. Thus, we support CompuServe's claim that it cannot provide material in one country while blocking it in another; such a distinction would require an enormous new infrastructure on top of the current network. Some networking technologies, such as newsgroups, may allow individual operators to select some groups or items and block others. But many technologies, such as the widely used World Wide Web, currently do not support such selectivity. We also oppose the prosecution of CompuServe because of the harmful impact it will have on the development of new communication services around the globe. The great appeal of the Internet is its openness. Efforts to restrict the free flow of information on the Internet, like efforts to restrict what may be said on a telephone, would place unreasonable burdens on well established principles of privacy and free speech. We believe that the charges against CompuServe will establish a harmful precedent, and may encourage other governments to censor speech, limit political debate, control artistic expression, and otherwise deny the opportunity for individuals to be fully informed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states: ARTICLE 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. At the same, we are very much encouraged by the recent developments in the German parliament concerning new approaches to the regulation of Internet services. In particular, we believe that the measure now under consideration to reduce liability for Internet services will do much to ensure the protection of personal freedoms in the future. On behalf of the undersigned organizations and many Internet users around the world, we ask you to investigate the matter of Mr. Somm and to lend your support to policies that would promote the development of this new communications technology in a manner consistent with the aims and aspirations of democratic countries. cc: Dr. Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig. Federal Minister of Justice Respectfully yours, (Listing of organizations) ALCEI - Electronic Frontiers Italy [www.nexus.it/alcei] American Civil Liberties Union [www.aclu.org] Arge Daten [www.ad.or.at] Association des Utilisateurs d'Internet [www.aui.fr] Bevcom Internet Technologies [www.bevcom.org] C.I.T.A.D.E.L. Electronic Frontier France [www.citadeleff.org] Committee to Protect Journalists [www.cpj.org] Computer Professional for Social Responsibility [www.cpsr.org] Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) [www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm] Derechos Human Rights [www.derechos.org] Electronic Frontiers Australia [www.efa.org.au] Electronic Frontier Canada [www.efc.ca] Electronic Frontier Foundation [www.eff.org] EFF-Austin [www.eff-austin.org] Electronic Privacy Information Center [www.epic.org] FITUG [www.fitug.de] Fronteras Electronicas España (FrEE) [www.las.es/free] Human Rights Watch [www.hrw.org] Internet Society [www.isoc.org] NetAction [www.netaction.org] Peacefire [www.peacefire.org] Privacy International [www.privacy.org/pi/] XS4ALL [www.xs4all.nl] [end] ========================================================================= David Banisar (Banisar(a)epic.org) * 202-544-9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * 202-547-5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Suite 301 * HTTP://www.epic.org Washington, DC 20003 PGP Key: http://www.epic.org/staff/banisar/key.html =========================================================================

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