From Wetware Diversions: -------------------- Item 17 by Eric P. Scott (epsilon), on Sat, Mar 10, 1990 (19:45) Is Wetware Diversions next in line at the executioner's chopping block? Jolnet was a public access UNIX system (not unlike Wetware Diversions) that was seized as evidence by federal authorities investigating its use for illegal activities by a group calling itself the Legion of Doom. Several other similar systems have also been shut down, including attctc, which wet once had a uucp connection to under its former name _killer_. My understanding is that in none of these cases were the owners/operators aware of what their users were doing. These are people of integrity, and in their interest to protect the privacy and individual rights of their user community, found themselves at odds with a government that didn't appreciate this. Wet has been an "open" system for as long as I've been associated with it; while the ability of anyone to run "newuser" and receive instant access does much for accessibility, it also means that we are vulnerable to the same kind of abuse. Wet represents a substantial investment in many people's time (and one person in --More-- particular's money). When a large number of our users are schooled on the streets [i.e. BBSes], their ethics and morals may not be in line with our best interests. There is no practical way given the size of the user community that we could even consider monitoring users' _private_ activities on this system, nor would I want any part in such an intrusion. Faced with this situation, there aren't many attractive choices: continue as we are, and risk losing everything, or impose restrictions that could severely impair our efforts to reduce the financial burden Wetware Diversions creates. Unlike the big-time (and big-cost) commercial timesharing services, we do not have the resources to pay lawyers to argue for years. The following appeared in TELECOM Digest; an electronic publication available through the usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Feb 90 11:00:00 CST Special: Wither Jolnet? Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson Fate of Jolnet (David Svoboda) What Happened To Jolnet? (David Tamkin) Ramifications of Jolnet's Trouble (Bill Kuykendall via David Tamkin) [ Two segments deleted as they are not germane to this item --EPS] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 10:04:49 CST From: David Svoboda Subject: Fate of Jolnet Reply-To: motcid!svoboda@uunet.uu.net Moderator said, at sometime or other: >[Moderator's Note: ... No further discussion here, please. >I have no desire to see eecs.nwu.edu wind up like the late Jolnet, >which it is doubtful will be back on line anytime soon. PT] What exactly happened to Jolnet? I have not been able to read any netnews for a while, so I may have missed it. Dave Svoboda, Motorola CID, RTSG, 1510 W Shure Dr., Arlington Heights, IL uucp => {uunet|mcdchd|gatech|att}!motcid!svoboda 60004 internet => motcid!svoboda@chg.mcd.mot.com Don't listen to me, I'm just a puppet of individuality. [Moderator's Note: What happened was the feds cracked down on Jolnet when they discovered cracker/phreak messages in the files there. They shut him down and seized all the equipment; quite rudely, I might add, based on David Tamkin's report which follows. David was on line at Jolnet when the feds raided the Andrews' home and pulled the plug. PT] ------------------------------ From: David Tamkin Subject: What Happened To Jolnet? Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 10:44:45 CST Gordon Meyer wrote in TELECOM Digest, Volume 10, Issue 118: | Could someone post a summary of what "troubles" Jolnet has seen | because of this LoD/e991 flap? Was it closed down, and by what agency | and under what charges? From my understanding it merely acted as a | conduit of the information and closing it down would be akin to | shutting down CompuServe if somone sent a copy of WordPerfect to my | mail box. That is what the rest of us understand as well: that Rich Andrews (the system administrator of Jolnet) has not been charged, but that his equipment has been seized as evidence. Jolnet served as a news and mail feed for several downstream sites, including a junior college, so those have had to do without links to the rest of the net or had to find new feeds. I was logged into Jolnet on the afternoon of February 3, reading netnews with rn. The article selection prompt began to show "(Mail)" but I kept reading news, figuring that I'd check mail when I was done. I was starting to display a new article, and after its header I pressed the space bar to see the first page. Before any text of the article came through there was a system message that the box was coming down in two minutes and that we should log off immediately to prevent corruption of files; that was followed by the first page of the netnews article, the pager prompt, and NO CARRIER. So I have unread mail there as well as some personally important files; I'll probably never see either. Jolnet has a Lockport mailing address but an Orland Park telephone number, so it probably is in Homer Township of Will County. I have been under the impression that its location is the Andrews' home. Rich pretty much ran it alone, with some assistance from two of his sons. I'd been a user there since January 29, 1989, and I had met Rich once, that being June 10, 1989, at the home of another local public site administrator. Rich was always a person who stayed out of controversies; he got along just fine with people who were at each other's throats. Other site administrators I have known love to jump into the fray or to forment the trouble in the first place, so it's rather sadly ironic that it was a nice, easygoing fellow like Rich who got burned. It's hard to say that it was his very lack of interference that got him in trouble, since all the illegally disseminated information appears to have been spread via email. Jolnet's login lines have gone unanswered since February 3, 1990. There is a contact phone number in its map entry, but I have not tried it yet. It looks like a business number in form, and I have the feeling that it, too, would ring without answer now. The Andrews' home telephone number is unlisted, and I don't know it. It's probably the only line still operating at Jolnet's location. On Sunday, February 4, there started to be news about the 911 break-in with references to "a Lockport, Illinois, bulletin board system." When Jolnet had been down for several days I started to wonder whether there was a connection, since after all, Jolnet's mailing address was in Lockport. By that Thursday there was talk about it on Chinet (a public site on the Northwest Side of Chicago), stating that Jolnet had been closed by federal agents because of its involvement. Jolnet was an AKCSNet site, but only a handful of AKCS posts came from there, mostly from three or four of us. Few people posted to Usenet from there either, at least as far as I could see in the groups I read. (In fact, except for control messages from Rich, test messages, and chi.forsale and chi.wanted [Chicago area groups], I cannot remember the last time I saw a Usenet article from Jolnet that I didn't write.) A large part of its usage came from silent readers, from uucp connections, from people who were writing, compiling, and testing code, and from people playing games like nethack and yahtzee on line. I had the impression that a significant group of the gaming crowd were friends of the Andrews' boys, but I never really knew. Others PCP'ed to Jolnet (it was dialable from ILCHI) from across the country and there were a few accounts with addresses in other countries. In total, there were 5% of the users of whom I could say that I knew what they used Jolnet for. If someone had asked me whether kracking and phreaking information was being exchanged there, I'd have said, "Not that I know; maybe in email but certainly not in public postings." Now I'd have to change that to "So I heard after it shut down but not that I ever saw while it was still running." Jolnet was my net.home; I'm now reading TELECOM Digest on Point and netnews on Gagme. I've decided to write to Rich Andrews on paper and ask what is going on with his family and his legal situation, but I cannot guarantee when or whether he will respond. Bill Kuykendall (pronounced "Kirk'ndall"), administrator of The Point (point.UUCP, from which I am submitting this), put up a system news item about how Jolnet's problems will affect The Point. He's given me permission to send it to the Digest, but this submission is already getting very long, so I am sending it under separate cover. David W. Tamkin dattier@point.UUCP ...{ddsw1,obdient!vpnet}!point!dattier BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591 P. O. Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 Other point users may disagree. ------------------------------ From: David Tamkin Subject: Ramifications of Jolnet's Trouble Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 11:11:07 CST Reply-To: point!wek@ddsw1.uucp The Point is a public access AKCS and UNIX site in Chicago, Illinois. On Wednesday, February 21, 1990, its administrator, Bill Kuykendall, posted the following as a system news item in the wake of the seizure of jolnet. With his permission I am submitting it to TELECOM Digest. Mr. Kuykendall requests copies of any responses. He is reachable at wek@point.UUCP or ddsw1!point!wek. ----------------- text of announcement follows --------------------- New Restrictions at The Point ----------------------------- By now you may already be aware that 'Jolnet', one of The Point's sister systems on Usenet, has been seized as evidence in a prosecution of one or more users of the system. As far as I know, no allegations of wrongdoing have been made against Rich Andrews, Jolnet's owner, at this time. Nevertheless, Rich is without his computer until the authorities see fit to give it back to him. They may of course, opt to press some charge against him as an accomplice to the crimes of the guy they're really after. There is no guarantee that Rich's life will return to normal any time in the near future. We all wish him the best, believing that he's done nothing wrong -- except perhaps in being too generous with his personal computing resources, and trusting that appreciative users would use his system for the purposes he offered it for. Today, there is no law or precedent which affords me, as owner and system administrator of The Point, the same legal rights that other common carriers have against prosecution should some other party (you) use my property (The Point) for illegal activities. That worries me. By comparison, AT&T cannot be held liable should someone use their phone lines to transmit military secrets to an enemy. Likewise, Acme Trucking is not vulnerable to drug trafficking charges should they pull a sealed trailer of cocaine to some destination unknowingly. Yet somehow, I am presumed to be cognizant of the contents of every public message, mailed message, and file upload that passes through this public access system. On a system this size, that may be nearly a gigabyte (1+ Billion characters!) of information a year. I fully intend to explore the legal questions raised here. In my opinion, the rights to free assembly and free speech would be threatened if the owners of public meeting places were charged with the responsibility of policing all conversations held in the hallways and lavatories of their facilities for references to illegal activities. Under such laws, all privately owned meeting places would be forced out of existence, and the right to meet and speak freely would vanish with them. The common sense of this reasoning has not yet been applied to electronic meeting places by the legislature. This issue must be forced, or electronic bulletin boards will cease to exist. In the meantime, I intend to continue to operate The Point, with as little risk to myself as possible. Therefore, I am implementing a few new policies: o No user will be allowed to post any message, public or private, until his name and address has been adequately verified. Most users in the metropolitan Chicago area have already been validated through the telephone number directory service provided by Illinois Bell. Those of you who received validation notices stating that your information had not been checked due to a lack of time on my part will now have to wait until I get time before being allowed to post. Out of state addresses cannot be validated in the manner above. I am considering a U.S. Mail registration scheme, but I am skeptical about the amount of additional work involved, and the potential ways to beat the system. The short term solution for users outside of the Chicago area is to find a system closer to home than The Point. o Some of the planned enhancements to The Point are simply not going to happen until the legal issues are resolved. There will be no shell access and no file upload/download facility for now. The philosophy behind these changes is simple. I cannot (and would not want to) censor the content of all users' messages on The Point. I can encourage self-censorship, and introduce another level of accountability by removing the anonymity of the author. Shell access and file transfer would afford other opportunities for abuse of the system, and I would prefer to put any time that might be spent policing users' directories toward obtaining common carrier status for The Point, and other systems like it. My apologies to all who feel inconvenienced by these policies, but under the circumstances, I think your complaints would be most effective if made to your state and federal legislators. Please do so! Thanks. Bill Kuykendall wek@point.UUCP -------------- end of text -------------------- Submitted to Telecom Digest by David W. Tamkin dattier@point.UUCP ...{ddsw1,obdient!vpnet}!point!dattier BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591 P. O. Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 All other point users disagree. ------------------------------ [I've omitted the remainder of the issue, but you get the idea. --EPS] End of TELECOM Digest Special: Wither Jolnet? ****************************** Respond or pass?