projects for the 4th Reich. Right on, Ian! I'm tired of these anonymous cowards, hiding behind a fake address such as dev.null, putting down those of us who recognize the need of petitioning our government to put an end to using the InterNet for purposes which are against the wishes of the majority. 1. Its theft of services because its using my bandwidth to "harrass" my customers. Exactly. I have been complaining to my ISP about their forwarding posts from the CypherPunks list that I disagree with. Despite my complaints, they allow this harrassment to continue.
December 8, 1997: Today at work, I got an email from a company selling genital enlargers. I was shocked: how did they get my email address? I sat there at work, reading this email. Then, as if waking from a dream, I looked at my watch. I had wasted 5 whole minutes of my work time! I quickly deleted the email, and went on my merry way. December 10, 1997: It happened again. This time they wanted me to buy Disco albums from the 70's. I was irate! Susan overheard me mumbling to myself, and told me that just recently, she had received an email from an unknown source that had the word 'masturbate' in it. I asked her if it was a harrasing email, and she quickly explained that it was an email regarding a certain medical condition, for which the emailer had a medical cure. But still, she said. She did look pretty flustered. I shook my head and looked at my watch. Damn! January 23, 1998: I just learned how to install email filters. I can now block email marked 'bulk mail' or with certain generic 'to' fields. But it took me a goddamn day to install the damn filter. I was talking to Joe, and he said that last week, he had to do the very same thing! It seemed our whole company was up in arms! January 30, 1998: Joe, Susan, some others and I met with your system administrator today and asked him to install the filter automatically for everyone in the office. He seemed hesitant, and even balked at doing it until we convinced The Boss to knuckle him under until he did it. We were all very relieved. February 15, 1998: Stan, our system administrator, has been having a lot of trouble meeting all of the various filtering needs of the office, and so he said he is going to meet with our area service provider and see if they can do something in their system that would filter out more of the junk getting in to our office. Today, someone said they had received email from some list of crypto punks or something like that. I asked him, "What the hell is this world coming to? Why can't we just be free of these goddamn punks and freaks cluttering our email with trash!" He nodded righteously, and explained that he'd just subscribed to that crypto punk list last week, and he couldn't believe that he had to read such shit. April 1, 1998: I was reading the newspaper today, and an article caught my eye. It said that a nationwide consortium of ISPs had gotten together and banned all email that met a certain basic description. 'Junk Mail' they called it, and it ranged from 'unwanted' list mail to anything 'indecent' or 'obscene' or obvious 'spamming' type email. Apparently, sophisticated lexical gates were being put in place on a huge number of servers nationwide to help stop the spam. I was so happy I almost cried. April 2, 1998: The United States Government passed an emergency Communication Freedom Act, citing as a primary reason the acts of the consortium of ISPs. The Government cited business interests as a primary reason for instituting a change in the policies of the ISPs. The article in today's Times said that the newly formed Bureau of Internet Communications Privileges would meet with the consortium of ISPs, as well as other ISPs that had not agreed to the terms of the consortium, to work out a mandatory, fair and equitable agreement for validation of internet materials. The Government was adamant that business related emails should, in some form or fashion, be allowed, even as 'spam', given proper certification. I realized that I didn't mind that email trying to sell me a genital enlarger that much after all. June 4, 1998: Today at work, Stan, the system admin, held a meeting for managers. He wanted to explain to us the new Government Certification System (TM). The Government instituted a policy and technical implementation of it that would have the following features: (1) all personal email would be automatically parsed for indecent content in accordance with FCC rules, with the exception of 'adult channel' email, which required a special fee-based service, also certified by the Government, to be attached to one's account. (2) all business email would be queued in a Certification Queue, and would be inspected for content if it was registered as 'bulk mail'. Only companies who registered and paid a nominal fee to the Government would be allowed to use 'bulk mailing'. (3) all encryption would have to be done with a key-escrowed encryption service. That would insure that the Government could validate Certification on every email. Incomprehensible email or otherwise suspicious email would be subject to instant deletion. At work, things were going smoothly: Susan and Joe had no complaints. I was so relieved that finally the Government had stepped in and fixed the Internet. December 21, 1998: Today in the Globe, there were two very interesting articles about the new Government Certification System. The first article claimed that the system was now completely in place, and had even begun having noticeable effects: email and web traffic were down by .25% over the last 21 days! Workplace reports on annoying and harrassing email or web content were down dramatically! Businesses had jumped to sign up for certification, and according to the report, the Government claimed that the revenues generated were 'at least enough to fund the project and associated costs'. What a relief for the economy! The second article was more scandalous: apparently, 3 women had independently reported that President Clinton had 'cybered' with them on IRC chat channels. One woman claims that he even made 'lewd and unbecoming' remarks. The Bureau will be required by a Federal Court to turn over the transcripts and any necessary cryptographic keys next Monday for all sessions over the last 4 weeks. This will help confirm or deny the allegations being pressed against the president. January 1, 1999: As I was walking down the Parade Route this morning, the headline on the Times caught my eye: "Group of Cryptographers Arrested". I walked over to the machine and put in some change. The article reported that a group of Cryptographers from the University of Berkeley and MIT were arrested on charges of including an unpatented and uncertified encryption scheme in freeware products distributed by the GNU/FSF. The four professors claimed that they had repeatedly filed for patents but had been denied. They also explained that the software in which the alleged 'cryptography' was bundled in was only for use in securing personal home systems from unauthorized personal use. The Government issued a statement to the effect that cryptography is cryptography. I did not really understand the details of the article, about the cryptography and the legal arguments and stuff, but I sure was mad at those four professors! January 8, 1999: What a scandal! The mayor of Los Angeles was arrested today for 'the use and distribution of unauthorized pornography'. The mayor claims that he only sent the pictures to his friend in Sacramento. But the law is the law. The fine is supposed to be $250,000! I was very disappointed in they mayor. Imagine: SWIMSUIT photos! January 11, 1999: I just received my first subscription to Government Unix Magazine today. The feature article was about Linux. Apparently, Linux applied for Government Certification for Use of the Internet for Commerical and Distribution Purposes, and was turned down. Government officials said that, "Linux is not a government approved project. The people who wrote linux were a bunch of hackers. The code is distributed for free. That means anyone can go out there and put viruses and encryption right in the software! How could we certify such a project?" In other news, Microsoft, after receiving certification from the Government, got permission to sponsor its own Automatic Updates Channel. Anyone connected to the internet will be automatically updated with upgrades and patches of MS Windows software. Non-windows users will be alerted repeatedly and incessantly by email that they don't have Windows until they finally break down and buy it. January 28, 1999: Today, two teens were arrested and detained indefinitely by undercover agents who claimed that they had intercepted an encrypted transmission issuing from one of the teens' computers that was encrypted with an unknown protocol. The transmission was headed for Russia, and authorities suspected that the teen was sending sensitive information illegally. When I read the report, my heart filled with pride! Home of the Brave, Land of the Free, the *U* *S* of *A*!