Computer underground Digest Sun May 26, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 39 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, #9.39 (Sun, May 26, 1997) File 1--HACK - Texas Driver's License database on the web File 2--PI/GILC UK Crypto Conference Cybercast File 3--EX-VIRUS WRITER CLINT HAINES DIES OF OVERDOSE AT 21 File 4--Last parts of stories and query about status File 5--Interactive ACT-UP Civil Disobedience Training Online File 6--Cyberculture Studies (fwd) File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 17:23:12 EDT From: Martin Kaminer Subject: File 1--HACK - Texas Driver's License database on the web ------- Forwarded Message Date--Sun, 25 May 1997 11:15:33 From--FringeWare News Network Sent from: Paco Xander Nathan URGENT NEWS RELEASE - Regarding the release and use of personal information from Texas motor vehicle records, i.e. our recent news about the "www.publiclink.com" web site, the Texas legislature will vote on the floor TOMORROW over SB1069, which would attach a criminal penalty to such information use, except for "permitted disclosures". Note that these criminal penalities and their exceptions have been substituted onto a proposed bill which was already in play (SB1069) in the Texas Senate, one which had already been passed in the Texas House. The bill and its history are available online at: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/ Search for "SB1069" under the bill search link. The Texas legislature is currently in session, which only happens once every two years, and only a matter of days remain in the current session for introducing any legislation. After "www.publiclink.com" went online, a lawsuit was filed against the site's publisher, the site was taken down, and the story earned widespread headlines. Governor George Bush Jr., et al., expressed concerns over protecting the privacy of Texas citizens vis-a-vis Internet services such as Public Link, while failing to mention that Texas State offices have and will continue to receive revenue from the bulk sales of this same data. For example, if another driver cuts you off in traffic, you take down their license plate number, then go home, check the Public Link web site to find out: the name of the car's owner, where that person lives, with whom that person lives, their race/height/weight/birthdate, a list of their neighbors, how they have voted in recent elections, what criminal convictions they have, etc. My own comments on KVUE-24 news and the CNN Headline News trailer, along with similar comments online by Mike Godwin, et al., of EFF, have shown the "double-edged sword" effect of regulating such information. Certainly the issue of protecting privacy vs. freedom of information (since this information is and will remain public record in Texas) comes to mind, as has the most prevalent argument coming from women's groups in Texas, that such information, even though it has been available for years, now placed on the Internet can pose a public threat in terms of assisting stalkers. But the real issues run much deeper. On one hand, the information is available (and has been for years) to anybody with enough means to hire an attorney or investigator: "Please give me a list of all the women over age 65, widowed, living alone in a particularly wealthy block of Dallas". That one *might* cost you $75, but think of the potential return-on-investment for b&e specialists, televangelists, and other social vultures. Public Link has merely made this same data, derived from public record, available to all who have Internet access. Restrictions from the Texas legislation on who/what can be listed on the Internet would be pointless because servers could easily move to Louisiana, Mexico, or even somewhere out in the Indian Ocean.... One the other hand, look at the trade-off of who's agenda will be served by making this data only available to those parties authorized for the "permitted disclosures". Consider that investigative journalists have used this kind of data to breach stories in the public interest which the wealthy and powerful might otherwise attempt to keep quiet. Consider on the flip side that this kind of information is regularly used by the personnel staff at large corporations, who need to make decisions on hiring new employees and therefore buy computer-based records about private individuals: voting records, criminal records, worker's comp, any available medical data, etc. Here's the scenario: a personnel director needs to choose between two applicants for a position, let's say one is a woman from a racial minority who has had a previous C-section birth and voted Democrat in the past four elections; then the other applicant is a white male who voted Republican in the past elections on record. Now really, given the cost of medical insurance and employee relations these days, whom are they going to pick for the job? This exact data is at question. It is commericially available and in widespread use throughout "human resource departments" and "security" firms. Moreover, an older issue of workplace drug testing brings in related concerns. Random drug testing used in corporate America is at best 60% accurate, i.e. practically meaningless, BUT those tests provide employers and government agencies with a legal "foot-in-the-door" for correlating all of the personal information listed above along with the individual's medical records and SSN. Think about it. Think really hard about the implications, for a long time, and then ask yourself if drug testing really concerns "family values", not to mention the other privacy abuse practices in question. To the point of Texas Senate Bill 1069, an unofficial comment from one Texas capitol legislative analyst responsible for independent research of this issue was that "journalists are going to hate this bill." If you read the text of SB1069, it becomes hauntingly clear that government agencies, employers, insurance companies, private investigators, and even firms which conduct "surveys, marketing, or solicitations", will all keep their bulk access to Texas citizens personal data, BUT that any other use would become a criminal offense. Furthermore, this portion of the bill is what has been added at the last minute, i.e. subsequent to the news reports about Public Link. To wit, it will be fine for a spammer to buy and use the data to tailor "bulk distribution" mailings, but it will become a criminal offense for anybody to place the same exact data up for public use on a web site. Also, it will be fine for personnel managers and insurance agents to use this data in private while deciding about an individual's hiring potential or quoted insurance rates, but it would become a criminal offense for a newspaper journalist (or Internet email list participant) to access the same exact data in public record for the purposes of, say, exposing illegal hiring practices. Note that this bill has been slid through the voting process quietly, as a deliberate act by the legislators. It was substituted onto a bill already passed by the House, and then "recommended for local & uncontested calendar" by the Senate, i.e. so as not to draw public attention. If you live in Texas, we urge you to take action. Flood the legislature. If you are an attorney or expert familiar with Texas State privacy laws, please render a written opinion faxed to your representative. Current estimates project that the SB1069 will pass the Texas Senate tomorrow (i.e. quietly while most of the state is off on holiday). 1984 is only 13 years away... Paco Xander Nathan FringeWare Inc. 25 May 1996 Austin, TX, Earth ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 00:29:18 +0100 From: Dave Banisar Subject: File 2--PI/GILC UK Crypto Conference Cybercast For those of you interested in hearing a live cybercast of the Privacy International/GILC conference on UK cryptography policy, theURL is: http://www.encryption.co.uk Speakers will include Phil Zimmermann, Whit Diffie, Ross Anderson, and Carl Ellison. The Department of Trade and Industry and the National Criminal Intelligence Service will also present. The event is being hosted by the London School of Economics. A copy of the agenda is available at: http://www.privacy.org/pi/conference/dti/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 15:08:43 -0500 (CDT) From: Crypt Newsletter Subject: File 3--EX-VIRUS WRITER CLINT HAINES DIES OF OVERDOSE AT 21 CRYPT NEWSLETTER 42 April -- May 1997 EX-VIRUS WRITER CLINT HAINES DIES OF OVERDOSE AT 21 Long-time readers of Crypt Newsletter will be astonished to hear death -- due to heroin overdose -- came to the famous Australian virus-writer Clint Haines on his twenty-first birthday, April 10. He was from Brisbane. Writing in the Usenet comp.virus newsgroup On April 19, Rod Fewster, a moderator of one of the Fidonet's virus information newsfeeds and one who knew Haines, said: "Clinton Haines, who earned his place in virus-writing history at=20 the age of fifteen as Harry McBungus, became a household name in the=20 virus world by the time he was eighteen as Terminator-Z and=20 TaLoN . . . [Haines] gained widespread fame a couple of years ago=20 with front-page newspaper headlines yelling about how his No Frills=20 virus had stopped the Australian Taxation Office dead in its tracks=20 for two days, and was regarded by his peers as one of the best virus=20 writers of all time . . . [He] will be cremated tomorrow morning. "Clint quit virus writing two years ago to concentrate on his university studies and he had the intelligence to go a long way in his chosen field of microbiology, but unfortunately being intelligent doesn't always give you street smarts. "Clinton Haines/Harry McBungus/Terminator-Z/TaLoN died from an overdose of heroin . . . on his twenty-first birthday." Haines' interest in controlled substances could be seen in frequent posts to the Usenet where the University of Queensland student waxed enthusiastically on topics ranging from the synthesis of LSD and methamphetamines to his own experiences with Prozac. In April, it all came off the rails, rendering him dead and an acquaintance comatose. For example, on the date-rape drug, rohypnol: ". . . a friend of mine had 10 rohypnols and a 6-pack, woke up in the lockup with 25 stitches=20 in his head and a broken arm, and couldn't remember a single thing=20 from the last 12 hours . . . turns out he was vandalizing a train seat=20 and the security guards beat the shit out of him . . . then he got off=20 at the next station only to try skateboarding and broke his arm." On speed and LSD: ". . . I assure you people that LSD and amphetamines are a rather wondrous combination, the ceaseless and energetic progression of thought along a myriad gossamer threads of abstract reality . . . throw nitrous on top of that and you have God mode happening . . . thinking is simply a matter of choosing where you want to go inside your mind and insight/thought rushes abound to the point of not having enough time in which to follow every branch point . . . to the point where your individual thought threads meld themselves into higher denominations . . ." Haines rambled wildly on his thrill at sniffing laughing gas: ". . . nitrousing out in this state of mind can be wicked because you go so far out on a mental limb . . . sometimes you get to this point where everything becomes completely fluid, not in the physical sense, but one can see, perceive, visualize, etc., every ramification of everything that goes on in the particular mental environment you construct . . . including, say, the passage of a tennis ball under the influence of gravity, or the evolution of an argument and the interplay of multiple factors, even your own thought reasoning . . . when one nitrouses out to a point of total thought fusion, and the concurrent realization/visualization of an extended range of thought capabilities occurs, one gets the rare chance to 'refit' aspects of one's mind, much like getting into newly-washed clothes or something." And, sadly, on heroin synthesis in a post on September 20, 1996: "WARNING ---- MAKE SURE you cut the rock so produced down to NO MORE than 30% purity -- otherwise you'll end up killing a whole bunch of people . . street-grade heroin is usually in the range of 10-20%, maximum." The Australian VLAD virus-writing group promptly published a memorial virus to Haines, called "RIP Terminator Z," according to a story by technology writer Julie Robotham in a piece published in the April 29 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Fewster commented to Crypt Newsletter, "[Clint Haines] had a bright future ahead of him, and in my opinion could have done some good in the world if he'd just kept his head together." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:31:13 -0400 From: Paul Kneisel Subject: File 4--Last parts of stories and query about status DID THE CREATION OF VIOLATE CIVIL SERVICE RULES? by tallpaul (Paul Kneisel) Most of the newly-created 200+ news groups in the hierarchy are formally moderated. This raises several issues concerning Civil Service employment norms as well as broader issues of discrimination. The basic core of people behind was chosen outside the normal established Civil Service procedures. "A call for volunteers was issued on the email list , which was created to hash out the issues involved in creating a hierarchy. Those who responded to this initial call recruited some additional members."[1] The formal notion that people "volunteered" for does not alter anything concerning Civil Service requirements. Nor might the fact that the "volunteers" get no special financial rewards for their work moderating or administering groups. Renumeration can occur in the area of special training or of improved working conditions, or both. In other words, two low -level clerks may normally sort mail for eight hours a day. Let one, however , be freed for four hours to moderate a group and that person's working condition can be far more pleasant than the other who is still limited to the boring job of sorting mail all day. A similar point holds for training. The "volunteer" moderator gets a considerable amount of extra experience, all of which can look very good on a job resume; the other clerk does not. In this sense, "volunteering" becomes a lateral job transfer, even if there are no other salary increases or improvements in working conditions. But normal Civil Service regulations also require that such lateral transfer opportunities be officially posted. I do not believe that the official rules of the U.S. Civil Service recognize as an official location for job postings. Nor does the private word-of-mouth recruitment of people satisfy any government regulation of open posting of job openings. The idea of a Civil Service functioning according to declared procedures was a great advance for democracy. No longer did one's opportunity for job advancement depend on Uncle William being a Cabinet Minister or mom the King's mistress. Nor, non-discriminatory Civil Service rules expanded, could one be formally denied government employment because of ethnic/racial/national or gender reasons. Civil Service regulations equalized job hiring and promotion opportunities for all. The issue of ethnic/national/racial and gender discrimination also appears in the recruitment of volunteer moderators. The demographics of the existing Internet are severely twisted towards a race[2] (white) and a gender (male). It seems reasonable to infer that the composition of the list reflects this bias. There is certainly nothing illegal with the demographic bias of the Internet, until that bias involves the promotion, training, or lateral transfer of government employees. Then the issue of bias is quite relevant and any actual bias exceedingly illegal. Of course anyone might have subscribed to and many would have had known that government jobs were--in any fashion whatsoever--advertised on the list. The same point could be made for some hard-copy magazine like _White Guys Quarterly_. But this was not the case and it appears exceedingly unlikely that any reasonable man or woman would have turned to a Census discussion list when seeking government employment, transfer, or promotion. The Civil Service and discrimination problem does not disappear with some subscribers "recruiting some additional members." Rather it replicates the classical activities of the Ol' Boys Club. At one point such word of mouth information was the norm in government hiring and promotion. You got the job because you heard about the job and the other man or woman did not. Perhaps you heard from your old roommate at Eton, Oxford, or Harvard. Or you played golf with them, attended the First Episcopalian Church with their father, or shared a joint membership in the Benjamin Davis Hunting Club. This was one of the major ways that the Ol' Boys Clubs around the world and throughout history maintained their power. It was something that was ultimately deemed socially destructive and discriminatory. It led to the development of the professional Civil Service. Hiring, promoting, or transferring via the Ol' Boys (Inter) Network is also something that should be legally powerless to reinstitute. The volunteers for the top level HCC also reflect the composition typical of Ol' Boys networks. All twelve are male. None have Asiatic surnames, and only one (Sacarto) could be arguably Hispanic. Ten of the twelve represent the U.S. or United Kingdom. The two "international" representatives are Ian Barndt and Paul Nielson, names not likely to reflect any other world culture outside northern Europe. Of particular interest is the total absence of women administering the 200+ group addition to the world's Village Green. Did the twelve men make a conscious determination to exclude women? Or did they look around, see only men, and not even notice that women were lacking? One wonders which of the two is worse. FOOTNOTES [1] Richard A. Bjorklund, "Re: HCC members and moderators ," 18 Mar 1997, e-mail to P. Kneisel. Bjorklund is the official postmaster the National Science Foundation and FinanceNet. Both groups were intimately involved in creating . He is also a member of the top-level international Hierarchy Coordinating Committee responsible for administering . [2] I use the word "race" guardedly. "Race" as a scientific concept has no meaning; it is a mystical construct. But "racism"--a pattern of discrimination based on the false concept of race--certainly exists. Thus I use the term "race" in the above context to indicate the continuation of racial bias. [END INSERT: CIVIL SERVICE] [BEGIN INSERT: d00d VS. DOD] SHOULD THE PENTAGON CONTROL ANY PART OF THE INTERNET? or d00d versus DOD in Cyberspace by tallpaul (Paul Kneisel) "... the teenage hacker is just as deadly an opponent as a Force XXI soldier assaulting a position." -- Douglas D. Buchholtz[1] Lieutenant General Director for Command, Control, Communications, and Computer Systems Joint [DOD] Staff (J6) While the newly created hierarchy on UseNet created some 200+ groups, users should not think that this is the end of the matter. Documents for now hypothesize about the creation of yet another top level hierarchy called [2]. Don't confuse this with ; the two are entirely different. One purpose for the suggested hierarchy is to allow the Department of Defense (or DOD) to establish special groups on the UseNet, dedicated to DOD issues and with a special dissemination controlled not by the existing Internet Service Providers but by the DOD itself. "... the NetNews system and supporting software can provide a very convenient form for internal communications within a government, or internal communications between a closed set of agencies. The internal newsgroups are called 'local' newsgroups within the Usenet NetNews system. Each local newsgroup hierarchy must have a unique prefix. The prefix 'gov" is reserved for public newsgroups with wide distribution, but another prefix could be created by a particular government or agency. For example, 'usgov. dod' could be a prefix reserved by the Department of Defense within the U.S. government, which is reserved for internal use by the DOD. In this example, DOD news server sites would exchange these groups only with DOD and other approved sites."[2] This is rather like arguing that the public address system at the shopping mall can "provide a very convenient form for internal communications between a closed set of stores." UseNet is likely the least appropriate form on the Internet for the exchange of such "closed" information. The information broadcast over UseNet is not sent over secure point-to-point communications lines like the famous Hot Line between Washington and Moscow of the Cold War period. A far more accurate UseNet analogy would be distributing information by throwing xeroxed leaflets on the ground at the Village Green and then having tireless clerks examine each leaflet to see if it is addressed to you . Nor, except for the name, is there anything "local" about "local" groups. I sit in New York and read posts to the "local" group; hypothetically, someone in New Dehli or Dublin could as easily read posts to the "local" group with news and discussions related to Texas. At one time most Internet Service Providers would not carry such geographically distant groups. But that was in the pre-competitive bad old days of expensive hard disks and bandwidth. Today, almost all major ISPs advertise "full Internet access" and carry upwards of 20,000 different news groups. Nor, *at present*, is there any ability for the UseNet protocols to permit the DOD or any other group to limit the ability of ISPs to intercept and re-transmit such material to non-DOD sites.[3] Last year's battle involving the Church of Scientology and the net illustrated the impossibility of limiting the spread of information. In short, absent massive intervention into cyberspace by the U.S. federal government, backed by the military might of the DOD, there is no way that such DOD or any other material could be "reserved for internal use," as the FAQ hypothesizes. How might such an intervention develop? One way is to adopt a new federal law saying "don't look." In the age where official DOD policy on non-heterosexuals in the military is "don't ask; don't tell" the idea of "don't look" is not as strange as it may first appear. Nor need it be part of some future sci-fi scenario. It is already done and part of U.S. law. Cellular phones broadcast on an easily accessible part of the public airwaves. When they first came out, anyone with an inexpensive Radio Shack receiver could listen to the entire cellular band. You might think that this disturbed the Wall Street-types discussing mega-million deals who wanted a bit of security. And it did. How did the companies and government respond? If you thought that the companies soon added strong encryption or other forms of hardware security you'd be wrong. Instead, the government passed a law making it illegal to listen in, and required receiver manufacturers to cut the band out of the capability of their future products. Naturally, the hacker mags like _2600_ soon ran articles on how to modify the new receivers to give them back the old capability. One can easily imagine a new hacker group called "Dear Blabby" that intercepts all of the otherwise-confidential DOD communications and posts them to . This provides Pentagon info-security with roughly the same "biggest bang for the buck" of a small damp firecracker in a typhoon. But these are the days after the $400 hammer and $500 coffeepot via the military procurement procedures. Today, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the estimated increased cost of boosting the U.S. info-security system is three billion over the next five years.[4] The cost estimate did not include the price of protecting from the machinations of the evil 14-year-old cyber-terrorist Baron ScullDrool working out of dad's rec room. At the risk of being unpatriotic, I say we bring back the Red Menace and save the money. In order to defend against aggression you first have to be aggressed upon. Pumping DOD material over UseNet while demanding that it not be improperly distributed promises to make the Pentagon the "victim" of every curious Internet sysop in the world. Such victimization creates an equal need to defend against it. In this sense, the inappropriate move by the DOD onto UseNet permits the organization to extend itself into every part of UseNet in order to defend itself against a vulnerability that should never have existed in the first place. If the DOD wants limited channels of info-distribution it should not use the net. And if it want to use the net, it should not worry about having its mail read by any UseNet user. But the world's citizens hardly have an obligation to act as unpaid security consultants for the Pentagon. The issue of civil liberties is far more important. creates another fait accompli where the U.S. government moves to control parts of the global Internet, backed by the full might of the same government against those "cyber-terrorists" who would resist. In this sense the Pentagon neo-Pretorians[5] reverse von Clauswitz's dictum that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." One way this is done is by redefining the classical dichotomies like internal vs. external; foreign vs. domestic; war vs. peace; violent resistance and civilian vs. military. It is easy to argue that the Internet produces a unique breakdown of these dichotomies. But then, if one so wishes to so describe them, so do a number of other things from moveable type to the telephone. The forces behind such Orwellian redefinitions are neither confined to the DOD not the forces instituting such concerns into law. (There is, in fact, a strong DOD current opposed to neo-Pretorianism today.[6]) One of the most ominous redefinitions concerns the very nature of state sovereignty and state-citizenship, again presented as the need to combat terrorism. One such effort is Presidential Decision Directive 39 of 21 June 1995.[7] The unclassified portion of PDD-39 states that "We shall vigorously apply extraterritorial statues to counter acts of terrorism and apprehend terrorists outside the U.S. When terrorists wanted for violation of U.S. law are at large overseas, their return for prosecution shall be a matter of highest priority and shall be a continuing central issue in bilateral relations with any state that harbors or assists them. Where we do not have adequate arrangements, the Department of State and Justice shall work to resolve the problem, where possible and appropriate, through negotiations and conclusion of new extradition treaties." The gang that can't declassify straight failed to delete a paragraph marked SECRET when it released unclassified sections of PDD 39 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Federation of American Scientists. That paragraph states "If we do not receive adequate cooperation from a state that harbors a terrorist whose extradition we are seeking, we shall take appropriate measures to induce cooperation. Return of suspects by force may be effected without the cooperation of the host government ...." Could we really see elite anti-terrorist units of the U.S. government covertly invading the Netherlands to kidnap some junior high school d00d for reading DOD documents on the Internet? The idea has a farcical character. But then we remember that it is not a third-rate movie scenario by a second-rate screen writer. It is a scenario developed by some leading thinkers from the Pentagon and parts of academia whose speculations and advocacy are publicly available on the net. So, thanks to incompetent clerks, is the kidnap provision of PPD 39. Need this be the famed pot of gold at the end of the global information superhighway? We think not. FOOTNOTES [1] quoted by Major Jay W. Inman, I Corps G6, CAMO. 3 Feb 1997, via . accessed 15 Feb 1997. [2] "GOVNEWS: GOV Hierarchy Frequently Asked Questions: FAQ #28: Can gov.* newsgroups be used for internal, confidential, or closed distribution communications?" . accessed 17 Mar 1997. [3] One can use encryption for every message but this defeats the purpose of using UseNet instead of e-mail and secure servers. Public key encryption systems like PGP are designed for one-to-one communications and are unsuitable for widely disseminated discussions on UseNet; private key systems like DES are insecure when used by thousands of potential users, each of whom needs the "private" key to read and post messages. [4] "Report on the Defense Science Board Task Force on Information Warfare for the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology," 25 Nov 1996, released 8 January 1997. . accessed 30 Mar 1997. [5] for "neo-Pretorianism" see Col. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., "Melancholy Reunion: A Report on the Collapse of Civil-Military Relations in the United States," "I.N.S.S. Occasional Paper #11, Oct 1996, (United States Air Force National Institute for Security Studies, U.S.A.F. Academy, Colorado: 1996). , accessed 22 Feb 1997. [6] See, for example, "Prisoner 2223055759" [sic: Col. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr .], "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012." _Parameters_, Winter 1992-93. This paper, formally a social-science fiction short story, was a co-winner of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1991-92 Strategy Essay Competition. , accessed 22 Feb 1997. While the form of Col. Dunlap's arguments are fictional, the story has non-fictional footnotes equal in length to the story itself. [7] , accessed 8 Mar 1997. [END INSERT: d00d VS. DOD] -- tallpaul@nyct.net (Paul "tallpaul" Kneisel) NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: Please note that my e-mail address is back to "tallpaul@nyct.net" and is no longer "paulk@nyct.net" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 12:42:13 -0600 From: Joey Manley Subject: File 5--Interactive ACT-UP Civil Disobedience Training Online Free Speech TV has created an online RealVideo application based on ACT-UP's civil disobedience training materials and AIDS Community TV's video documentation of an ACT-UP training session. This is the first _interactive_ video FStv has posted, and one of the first politically useful video applications anywhere on the web. The training "modules" (twelve in all) will be presented every Thursday beginning today, May 22, for three months. All modules will be archived indefinitely. Visitors to the site will need the RealVideo player to watch the video. A Javascript-enabled copy of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer is necessary to experience the interactive features. Free Speech TV is a programming service dedicated to providing cable and internet broadcasts of progressive, community-based, activist video covering issues routinely ignored or distorted by the mainstream media. Joey Manley Web Editor, Free Speech TV http://www.freespeech.org/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 21:57:12 EDT From: Judith Preissle Subject: File 6--Cyberculture Studies (fwd) I am forwarding this message on request of the sender. jude ************************************************************* * Judith Preissle * ************************************************************* -------------------Original message---------------------------- Judith Preissle, Hello, my name is David Silver. I am the founder of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, a non-profit organization devoted to the study and development of cyberculture. I was wondering if you would be interested in posting the following message to QUALRS-L? I believe it may be of interest to many members of the list. If you have any comments and/or questions, do not hesitate to email me. Thanks, David Silver ---------- Forwarded message ---------- A fully operational version of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies is now up and running: WHAT IS RCCS? The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies is an online, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, study, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture. Collaborative in nature, RCCS seeks to establish and support ongoing conversations about the emerging field, to foster a community of students, scholars, teachers, explorers, and builders of cyberculture, and to showcase various models, works-in-progress, and on-line projects. In the future, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies hopes to sponsor a number of collaborative projects, colloquia, symposia, and workshops. Presently, the site contains a collection of scholarly resources, including university-level courses in cyberculture, events and conferences, and related links. Further, the site features an extensive annotated bibliography devoted to the topic of cyberculture. Finally, the site includes "conversations/collaborations," an online listing of scholars researching various elements of cyberculture. WHAT'S NEW? Since its initial launch in January 1997, RCCS has developed two new major features. The first is "Conversations/Collaborations." Here, visitors are invited to browse through the research interests and undergoing projects of a number of scholars, researchers, and instructors affiliated directly and indirectly with the field of cyberculture. Moreover, visitors are encouraged to contribute their own entries, listing their interests and contact information. The second new feature is called "Internet Interviews." This section includes a list of links to online interviews with a number of digerati. The list includes Nicholas Negroponte, Allucquere Rosanne (aka Sandy) Stone, Sherry Turkle, and Gregory Ulmer. Feel free to circulate this announcement as far and wide as you wish. Questions? Comments? Contact: David Silver Founder, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies Graduate Student, Department of American Studies University of Maryland, College Park ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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