____________________________________ U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION EMERGENCY DECLARED (Future View) Hamilton, Bermuda -- Radio Free America at 2000 UTC -- (February 24, 1999) - FBI director Louis Freeh, Jr. today announced a nationwide crackdown on Internet abusers as President Clinton invoked new authorities granted him under the Information Infrastructure Defense Act (IIDA) of 1998. White House Press Secretary Monica Lewinsky said the President declared a national information emergency at 9:23 last night. The emergency automatically lasts for 100 days. The President may then seek an extension after consulting with three members of Congress. The FBI's Indication and Warning Threat Center in Newington, Virginia first reported an 850 percent increase in illegal Internet access attempts last Thursday, prompting Mr. Freeh to ask for the presidential emergency declaration. Among the sites hacked were the White House's Automated Oval Office Visit Scheduling System; the Democratic National Committee's Insta-Donation System; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Tennessee Summer Picnic Reservation System; the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team's Seventh Day Adventist Watch Network (also known as "Deep Six the Sevens Net"); the Electronic Pearl Harbor Visitors' Center; the Arkansas Attorney General's Cases-Disposed -Without-Further- Investigation System; the Embassy of China's "Rent-a-Prez" system; and the Indonesian Embassy's Rupiah-to-Dollar Laundromat Net. The nationwide sting of Internet intruders began at noon yesterday when the New York field office of the Secret Service arrested 25 members of the Brooklyn Cyberspace Liberation Front at their regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting at a Bayside Cyber Café. Secret Service spokesman Biff "Buck" Arew said, "it took us a while to figure out when they were going to be in one spot, but after we employed our best investigative techniques, we had them right where we wanted them. The arresting part was easy." The Secret Service is a designated information infrastructure law enforcement agency under the 1998 legislation. It was joined by elements of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals' Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Postal Inspection Service, the Park Service, the Border Patrol, the Enforcement Division of the Federal Communications Commission, as well as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in the coast-to-coast operation. Meanwhile, special FAA security officers on loan from Microsoft were busy at the nation's airports searching the notebook and palmtop computers of air travelers for illegal software programs. At the Pentagon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "the military now reserves the right to move forward on the information super highway." He said he considers the Internet similar to the nation's interstate highway system. "When you have a bunch of stalled cars from a high-altitude combination electromagnetic and gamma-ray burst littering all the passing lanes and on- ramps, our armored vehicles just need to push them aside and move on." The general, who escaped a recent international war crimes indictment resulting from his peacekeeping duties in Angola, did not elaborate on the meaning of his comment. Other mass arrests of hackers were made in Chicago; New Orleans; Sunnyvale, California; Tampa; Atlanta, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and St. Louis. Some of the arrested individuals are noted opponents of the government's policies to control the flow of information on the Internet. Internet users report that some controversial web sites are no longer accessible, although the FBI refused to confirm whether their operators were among those arrested. The inaccessible sites include those of the Libertarian Alliance, USA; Cascadia Green Party; Outer Banks Secessionist Party; Ashcroft for President 2000; Supreme Court, Free Crypto Home Page; First Amendment Enforcement Coalition; United We Stand (Marxist-Leninist); SPAM Prohibition League; Virtual Zapatista, and the Arizona Naturist Home Page. Federal officials stated that the number of arrests totaled more than 900. Critics of the government action claim the number is much higher. An Amnesty International spokesperson in Teheran said she thinks the number may be well over 15,000 but that it was "difficult to get news from America under the present circumstances." The National Security Agency's National Information Warfare Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, reported that the identities of several overseas hackers had been passed to their respective governments for possible prosecution under U.S. law under the mutual law enforcement and extradition provisions of the IIDA. Scotland Yard said it had arrested 17 intruders in the greater London area while Europol was preparing to make several arrests in France, Italy, and Austria. At a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair, upon leaving a cabinet meeting, said he was in close communication with President Clinton during "this extraordinary emergency" and that "he fully understood what the Americans were ordering him to do." The government of Burma summarily executed 153 members of the Rangoon Computer Club. In Ottawa, the RCMP said the FBI's Canada Law Enforcement Extension Task Force was investigating several groups in Montreal, Halifax, and Vancouver and expected to make a large number of arrests "soon." The RCMP official admitted that, "because we do not normally get involved in FBI matters on Canadian soil, I cannot give you precise details about the operation." If convicted, the arrested hackers face a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison and/or a $200,000 fine. Freeh said that he anticipated further arrests would be made as federal investigators sifted through more communications records, America On Line profiles, and escrowed encryption keys. The stored keys are used by federal agents to read scrambled e-mail messages sent by hackers and the 12 independent special counsels investigating the administration. Vice President Gore issued a statement in which he said, "I praise the valiant efforts of our federal investigators in isolating and terminating the disruptive actions of individuals and groups who were bent on interfering with our precious national information thoroughfares." Gore said he hoped the government's action would "send a clear signal to others who believe that such activities will go unpunished. The government has a controlling legal authority to address these threats." Gore, an announced candidate for president in 2000, said one of his first acts would be to create a Secretary of Information cabinet post that would regulate the use of electronic information throughout the country. "Just as we created a Department of Defense in 1947 to confront the nuclear threat, we must have a Department of Information in 2001 to face the millennial cyber threat," Gore declared.