Computer underground Digest Tue Apr 23, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 32 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #9.32 (Tue, Apr 23, 1997) File 1--Thunderclouds on the Net's Horizon File 2--Reception of radio B92 affected by block on XS4All File 3--Letter to DFN, organisation that is censoring xs4all webserver File 4--Groups Protest German Compuserve Prosecution File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 13 Dec, 1996) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:41:12 +0200 (MET DST) From: Felipe Rodriquez Subject: File 1--Thunderclouds on the Net's Horizon Thunderclouds on the Net's Horizon by Sabine Helmers As the bright streak of Hale-Bopp fades from the earth's view, the night sky darkens once again. Not only is the firmament a shade darker, but the Net has been as well since April 11. The Deutsches Forschungsnetz (German Research Net, here abbreviated DFN), the oldest and still most important ISP in Germany, connecting universities and research institutions, has blocked access to the Web server of the Dutch Internet Service Provider (ISP) XS4ALL. Connecting to the Web address "www.xs4all.nl" is no longer possible via the DFN which has acted on a request from the German federal law enforcement agency (Bundeskriminalamt), which in turn reacted to the demands of federal prosecutors (Bundesanwaltschaft) that one of the texts outlawed in Germany no longer be distributed via the Net. The text at the heart of the controversy has already made headlines throughout the past year: an article in issue 154 of the publication Radikal outlines tips and tricks for sabotaging the railways. According to federal prosecutors, this text runs contrary to German law if it is to be interpreted as calling for acts of violence against the general public and constitutes a violation of Articles 129a, Paragraph 3; 130a, Paragraph 1 and 140, Paragraph 2 of criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch). As early as August 1996, the federal law enforcement agency and federal prosecutors notified German ISPs that this same article in Radikal was entering German territory via the Net and warned them that they could possibly make themselves liable to prosecution for aiding and abetting criminal activity if they didn't block access to this article. But sorting through the streams of data flowing through the Internet to pick out individual items is still not possible. The Net wasn't created with this function built in. Technically, only one possible choice is left to any ISP which is forced to block a particular text, and that is to strike the entire source from the Internet addressing system, thereby blocking it completely. In the case of XS4ALL, this means that thousands of Web pages are equally blocked, some of them including information on Amsterdam sports clubs and artists, the pages of the Israeli Embassy, universities and private home pages -- all that's usually found on Web servers of perfectly normal ISPs and is entirely legal according to German law. At the same time, XS4ALL is not a usual commercial ISP in that it has its historic roots in the Dutch hacker movement and considers one of its primary goals to be providing access to any and everyone. The managers of XS4ALL vehemently refuse to remove the Radikal article which was placed on its Web server by one of its clients, the Dutch "Solidarity Group for Political Prisoners". The text does not violate Dutch law. Last September, some German commercial ISPs reacted quite quickly to the letter circulated by federal prosecutors by blocking their Dutch colleagues for several weeks. At that time, the DFN simply sent a letter to XS4ALL demanding that the Radikal article be removed from its server. The DFN began to look into the legality of the matter on its own. The commercial ISPs lifted their blockade once the "Solidarity Group" -- albeit for only a short time -- took the problematic issue of Radikal off the server. In the meantime, the text had been copied and placed on numerous spots around the Web by free speech fundamentalists. For many, that was the end of the matter. They were wrong, as the DFN has now been forced to realize. German officials are evidently still surfing throughout the Net and keeping an eye out for illegal material. On April 2, the DFN received a letter from the federal law enforcement agency with the information that the text was still available in Germany. Taking the current legal situation into account, the DFN decided it had to heed the warning and block XS4ALL in order to avoid a legal confrontation with the terrorism fighters. The DFN intends to maintain its blockade as long as the Radikal text named by the agency is still accessible in Germany via XS4ALL. Accessibility is being checked daily. Since those in Holland are in no mood to bend to German law, the blockade may last quite a while. Technically, such a blockade is feasible, but the question remains open as to whether or not it's just -- whether or not one can simply block large, sweeping areas of information such as XS4ALL on a Net which serves international research in all fields of expertise and the greatest possible scientific communication without running into conflicts with the goals of an Internet Service Provider. Since April 16, the DFN has placed news of the blockade on its Web server but without any further comment. The spokesperson for the DFN also didn't elaborate any further than to restate the official position on the telephone. In Amsterdam, the management of XS4ALL reacted to the renewed blockade with amazed perplexity. Felipe Rodriquez, one of the managers who underwent a judicial inquiry last year, and may do so again now, says, "Neither the German nor the Dutch officials has been in contact with us regarding the Radikal article. Whether or not we'll have to remove the text from our server is a question which would nevertheless be decided by a Dutch court. It's not our task as a provider to limit the free speech of our clients without an official court order." The fact that XS4ALL has been singled out by the German prosecutors further angers Rodriquez: "For several months, over 40 Web sites are known to be mirroring the Radikal pages. Why is the DFN blocking only our server? It's totally absurd. I'll be sending Mr. Maas of the DFN a letter listing the mirror sites [and he did on April 17/dwh]. Then he'll be formally obliged to block these servers as well." While until now both blockades of XS4ALL have been conducted in such a way as to suggest that all the parties involved desire to keep the action as low profile as possible, such a twist could cause a far more tumultuous situation. Instead of a fine-pointed, possibly temporary blockade, the DFN would have to enforce a far wider blockade which may well effect several large US universities. In the long run, such a policy would lead to an increasingly isolated German Internet. One hopes that the thunderstorm building on the Net's horizon serves to clear up the legal situation in Germany. -- Sabine Helmers has received some reaction from readers of the original version of the article which appeared in German at Der Spiegel Online on April 16 . Some have pointed out that the blockade doesn't actually work what with proxy usage, ftp, direct dialup and all. She didn't bring this up in the article because, 1, she figured it was pretty common knowledge, and 2, she wanted to focus on XS4ALL, not Radikal. Also, it should be noted that the current legal situation regarding an ISP's obligations is still mighty fuzzy. What's currently being hashed out is whether or not an ISP is required to do anything if it becomes aware that illegal materials are passing through its wires. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:05:50 +0200 (MET DST) From: Felipe Rodriquez Subject: File 2--Reception of radio B92 affected by block on XS4All Serbian Radiostation, Radio B92, has sent a letter of protest to DFN, the organisation that is censoring the XS4ALL website: >From--Adrienne van Heteren >To--maass@dfn.d400.de >Subject--Reception of radio B92 affected by block on XS4All Dear dr. Klaus Eckhart Maass, We have been informed by some of our listeners from Germany that they cannot receive the Real Audio online broadcasts of the independent radiostation B92 from Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia anymore. As we understood the problem is that the website of our Internet provider in The Netherlands, XS4All, has been blocked by the Deutsche Forschungsnetz/German Research Net. As a result of this our Real Audio Service for Germany cannot be acessed anymore by our regular listeners, because this Real Audio Service resides within the domain www.xs4all.nl Radio B92 has become very prominent in providing independent accounts of the events in Belgrade during the mass demonstrations in Belgrade. While it was banned in December 1996 it continued its accounts of the events through its Real Audio Service. The connection with the world through Internet proved highly valuable for the public appeal for democratisation. As a result of the international critique and pressure, which was organized through a world wide appeal via XS4ALL, Radio B92's broadcast had to be reinstated by the government of the ruling socialist party of Mr. Milosevic. We therefor strongly urge you to reinstate XS4ALL's access to Germany and to the users via your Forschungsnetz. We are in the midst of a serious struggle for the freedom of expression. We cannot understand that one of our most serious and strenuous partners in this struggle, XS4ALL is being banned from your service for the fact that it is upholding precisely the same values (freedom of expression and a respect for the rule of law) which, we assume, you also share. We share XS4All's approach as to the fact that any legal problems regarding any websites on their service has to be considered through a juridical procedure in a Dutch court of law. Given the fact that the problematic Radical site is being mirrored by many servers all over the world and is therefor accessible through others than XS4All, we can only conclude that a blockade against XS4All is discriminatory, against the other users of XS4All and against XS4All as a provider. We hope that you will appreciate the problems this measure has caused us and that you will reconsider your decision. With kind regards, Drs. Adrienne van Heteren -Director of Rex Cultural Centre of B92 Drazen Pantic -Director of the B92 Internet Service -- XS4ALL Internet BV - Felipe Rodriquez-Svensson - finger felipe@xs4all.nl for Managing Director - - pub pgp-key 1024/A07C02F9 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:50:14 +0200 (MET DST) From: Felipe Rodriquez Subject: File 3--Letter to DFN, organisation that is censoring xs4all webserver Hi, This is a letter i've sent to the managing director of DFN, the organisation that is blocking the Xs4all website. I've sent a cc of this letter to the German State Prosecutor and the press: To: Dr. Klaus-Eckart Maass DFN-Verein, Geschdftsstelle Pariser Str.44 D-10707 Berlin cc: Herr Dr. Graf, Generalbundesanwaltschaft, Karlsruhe cc: Sabine Helmers and Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer of SPIEGEL Online About: IP-block of www.xs4all.nl Amsterdam, 17 April, 1997 Dear Dr. Klaus-Eckart Maass, Xs4all has been notified about an IP-block that has been installed by Deutsches Forschungsnetz, because of a homepage that one of our subscribers is distributing. I hereby wish to inform you that the same homepage is available on more than 40 other sites on the Internet, not just at Xs4all. Therefore it is unreasonable to only block the xs4all webserver, www.xs4all.nl. These other websites should be blocked as well, or no sites should be blocked at all. I'm attaching an overview of some of the sites where Radikal nr. 154 can be found on Internet. DFN is currently providing access to the information on these sites, while it is blocking Xs4all because of the same content: http://huizen.dds.nl/~tank/radikal http://burn.ucsd.edu/%7Eats/RADIKAL/ http://www.jca.or.jp/~taratta/mirror/radikal/ http://huizen.dds.nl/~radikal/154/ http://www.canucksoup.net/radikal/index.html http://www.ecn.org/radikal http://www.well.com/~declan/mirrors/ http://www.connix.com/~harry/radikal/index.htm http://www.anok4u2.org/radikal/ http://www.denhaag.org/~radikal http://emma.unm.edu/radikal http://www.tacacs.com/radikal/" http://users.abcs.com/dockmstr/mirror/radikal/index.htm http://home.ipr.nl/~radikal/ http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~irdial/live_free/ http://zero.tolerance.org/radi/index.htm http://www.meaning.com/library/radikal/ http://www.wfmusic.fi/~toni/radikal http://www.euronet.nl/users/funest/radi/index.htm http://www.lab.net/radikal http://www.charm.net/~gbarren/radikal http://login.datashopper.dk/~pethern/not_by_me_not_my_views/radikal/ http://radikal.autono.net./rad http://brazil.nbn.com/radikal/ http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/~fubuki71/mirror/radikal/ http://www.design.nl/~bram/radikal/ http://www.eskimo.com/~quawk/radikal/ http://www.calyx.com/~refuse/radikal/ http://www.grfn.org/~rtwo http://www.grfn.org:4380 xs4all port mirror http://www.cyberpass.net/radikal http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeroenw/radikal/ http://catalog.com/jamesd/radikal/ http://www.islandnet.com/freedom/radikal/ http://www.binary.net/mishania/radikal/ http://www.io.com/~gbroiles/radikal.html http://inet.uni-c.dk/~pethern/radikal.154.txt radikal 154 in plaintext ascii. http://www.moebius.com.au/radikal/ http://www.moebius.net/radikal/ http://interpia.net/~baldodum/radikal/index.htm http://www.firstfloor.org/~vaclav/radikal http://www.nyct.net/~malba/radikal/ Kind regards, Felipe Rodriquez - Managing Director of XS4ALL Internet BV ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 12:34:04 -0400 From: Dave Banisar Subject: File 4--Groups Protest German Compuserve Prosecution 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. elipe 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 elix 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] ITUG [www.fitug.de] ronteras Electronicas Espa=F1a (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] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1996 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 13 Dec, 1996) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. 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