Consequences
It takes an event of great magnitude to really put things into perspective, to make us realize how insignificant our daily concerns can be. At the same time, such an occurrence can trigger a chain of events that wind up magnifying these concerns.
It's hard to imagine anyone who hasn't felt the horrible weight of September 11. There, before our eyes, was all the confirmation we needed to see how uncivilized the human race could be and how vulnerable we, as individuals and a society, really are to those who value neither.
We feel the outrage along with everyone else. Anyone responsible for such heinous acts, whether directly or by helping to organize them, deserves no mercy from any court in the world.
Rage, however, often makes us lose sight of some of the important things that we're supposed to be defending in the first place. And we have to be extremely careful not to add additional loss of freedom to the loss of life that is the legacy of terrorism.
What perhaps is most disturbing is the speed with which things began to change after the attacks. It was as if members of Congress and lawmakers were poised to spring into action the moment public opinion began to turn and before common sense had a chance of regaining its dominance. Within hours of the horrific events, new restrictions on everything from encryption to anonymity along with broad new powers allowing much easier wiretapping and monitoring of Internet traffic were being proposed-all with initial overwhelming support from the terrified public.
We find it absolutely unconscionable that anyone would use such a tragedy to further their own agenda whether it be by selling a product or enacting a wish list of legislation. We've witnessed a good amount of both recently and it's all pretty repugnant. Almost every new law that's been proposed is something we've already seen in the past and rejected. And there is very little contained within them that would have been helpful in preventing the terrorist attacks in the first place.
Our concerns can best be summed up by this quote:
"Maybe the Senate wants to just go ahead and adopt new abilities to wiretap our citizens. Maybe they want to adopt new abilities to go into people s computers. Maybe that will make us feel safer. Maybe. And maybe what the terrorists have done made us a little bit less safe. Maybe they have increased Big Brother in this country. If that is what the Senate wants, we can vote for it. But do we really show respect to the American people by slapping something together, something that nobody on the floor can explain, and say we are changing the duties of the Attorney General, the Director of the CIA, the U.S. attorneys, we are going to change your rights as Americans, your rights to privacy? We are going to do it with no hearings, no debate. We are going to do it with numbers on a page that nobody can understand."
Those remarks came from Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, one of the few who seem to actually comprehend the serious risks we're facing. And when a senator expresses these kinds of fears, it's a good idea to pay attention. The consequences of not thinking this through are so great that they're difficult to even grasp.
We've faced some serious threats to freedom before all of this, as anyone who reads 2600 would know. This column was originally focused primarily on the case of Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer pictured on our cover with his son. (Our cover, incidentally, was designed well before the events of September 11 so the combination of the New York City skyline amid harbingers of doom is a rather sad coincidence.) As has already been widely reported, Sklyarov was arrested after giving a lecture at the DEFCON conference in Las Vegas this July. The Russian company he worked for (ElcomSoft) manufactured a program called Advanced eBook Processor (AEBPR) which basically allowed users of Adobe's eBook Reader to translate files to Portable Document Format (PDF).
Even though the software only works on legitimately purchased eBooks, our insanely written laws consider such a translation to be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sklyarov, who had planned on returning home to Russia, was imprisoned for three weeks before finally being released on a $50,000 cash bail. Both he and his company have been charged with violating the DMCA, an offense which could land him in jail for 25 years and bankrupt the company. He is now stuck in the United States awaiting trial.
Ever since we became the first defendants to be charged with violating the DMCA last year with the DeCSS case, we knew that it would only be a matter of time before the arena changed from a civil court to a criminal court. (At press time, we were still awaiting the results of our appeal.) Now we've crossed over into a very ominous set of scenarios. Someone has actually been imprisoned for figuring out how to translate one format of code into another. An American court seeks to put a foreign company out of business for being part of this endeavor.
And despite the fact that Adobe themselves have changed their minds about pressing charges, the United States government intends to go forward with this case and many others. Leading the charge back in July was U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller, III of San Francisco. Today he is the head of the FBI.
Before any of the really bad stuff started to happen, we were already asking ourselves if things could possibly get any worse. It almost seems as if there is no limit as to how bad it can get.
In a strange counterbalance to this theme of despair, we had the beauty and optimism of HAL 2001. For all too brief a period, we could forget the worries back home and take part in what may have been the best hacker conference so far, where people from all over the world built the equivalent of a small city in the fields of the Netherlands.
It's heartening to know that such an endeavor is still possible and, as usual, it took the Dutch to remind us of this. It is still possible for people of all cultures to come together and share everything from ideas to technology to the physical labor needed to bring it all together. And all of this in an environment where not a single security guard was seen, where the community of several thousand people took care of themselves, where few, if any, didn't feel inspired by what the hacker community could accomplish if only given the chance.
If anything is to get us through the dark days ahead, it has to be this spirit of HAL, which is really the original spirit of hackers everywhere - enthusiasm, exploration, exchange of ideas in a free and open setting. It will be quite a challenge to keep this spirit alive when there is so much pressure to move in the other direction. But we have to and for the same reason that we resist terrorism - we cannot let that which we believe in be corrupted and subverted by those who don't understand.
And they truly don't understand. As we go to press, the Anti-Terrorism Act is getting ready to be voted on without any public input. A little noticed provision would actually categorize violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as "federal terrorism offenses." It basically means that hacking offenses of all sorts (even those committed decades ago) could result in a life sentence without any hope of release. To categorize someone who hacks a web page or trespasses onto a computer system in the same way as someone who blows up buildings and sabotages airplanes is so outrageous as to be extremely offensive to anyone who has been a victim of true terrorism. It's hard to believe our government could be this ignorant. What's even scarier is the possibility that they know exactly where they're going on this. But ignorant or not, they cannot be allowed to continue down this path.
In some ways we are fortunate. The increasing activism of the hacker community over the years has put us in a position where we know what to do and can do it quicker and with more people than ever before. For instance, the Free Dimitry movement was in full swing within days after his arrest. Demonstrations occurred in multiple cities throughout the world. And public pressure was what got Adobe to back down, even though that action had no bearing on the case. Organizations like the (((Electronic Frontier Foundation))) are more alert than ever when it comes to cases that will decide the true future of technology.
Again, we encourage you to donate to them (www.eff.org or EFF, 454 Shotwell St., San Francisco, CA 94110 USA), to visit our site or www.freesklyarov.org for updates, and to keep your eyes open on all levels for the ongoing dangers to freedom. Otherwise we will all pay a very heavy price.
We lost some architectural pillars and a whole lot of innocent lives on September 11. Now the pillars of freedom and justice which remain must be saved from destruction as well.