I have not been paying enough attention to the cyberpunk list, but I did notice that some of you were concerned with the subject, and that Tim May was mentioning "pure information" as a better model to play with, so I thought I would send this in as a sample. Perhaps some ideas of where to take the story will come out of using this model for another game. Anyway, this game theme should not push as many hot buttons as drugs do (though it should!). 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 forth 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 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, "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, damnit" 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. 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 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, "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, "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. "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. "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." "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 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. 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 will do it!" one of them said, and jammed a furry dead fish under his nose. Lenny found he could move as he pushed it away. He woke up to find the cat had been licking his face and smelling of fish flavored cat food. 5:14 AM. "There isn't much point in trying to get back to sleep," he thought but Lenny flopped back on the bed. The cat started to purr and kneed the covers. Lenny absently rubbed its head, and thought about the next fundraising letter. The DSO had had the effect of galvanizing the GreenRage membership, so donations were way up, and for the first time in several years, there was more than just a little money in the bank account of GreenRage. Of course, it was flowing out almost as fast. Even though Bruce charged about half the going lawyer rate to public interest organiztions, fighting the DSO was going to cost them a bundle. "Just how much of the stuff on the disk is going to cause trouble," Lenny realized he had spoken outloud. If they asked for a special master, the membership list could be declared off limits. Unlike the old days, when the cops could look through outgoing mail at the post office, an electronic 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. 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 stuff which they had on that WORM disk which *had not yet happened*. He could probably get away with claiming that the files on the events which had happened were interactive fiction based on news stories. Or could he? Nope, the damn files are dated prior to the "events," he thought. And, even though fewer than half of the projects he had worked on ever came off, there were at least three or four of them they could nail me on. Lenny turned the light on and pulled his palmtop out of the charging stand next to the bed. He stretched the keyboard out to full size and set there trying to put his thoughts in order. After entering his password, he brought up an organizer program. It prompted: State the problem. "I don't want to go to jail for conspiricy. The only way to stay out of jail is to keep the cops from looking through the GreenRage computer files. Or is it? If they can't convence the judge that they need to look through the files, then no problem. If they can, then they come asking me for the password. Assuming they can't crack the encryption-- which seems likely. If I give it, I go to jail, if I don't, I may get jailed for contempt, unless they give me blanket immunity. In either case, my days of managing monkey wrench projects are over." The organizer program came up with: You have used one or more legal terms. We recommend you submit your completed outline to a lawyer. It then proceeded to break the statements into an if-then-else logic tree which did not help Lenny much either.