THIS APPEARED ORIGINALLY IN COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST, VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 ANOTHER ARTICLE BY JOE ABERNATHY ABOUT THE INTERNET IS LOCATED IN THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF TELECOM ARCHIVES UNDER THE TITLE 'ABERNATHY.INTERNET.STORY' . Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 19:29:47 CDT From: edtjda@MAGIC712.CHRON.COM(Joe Abernathy) To: tk0jut2%niu.bitnet@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: Text of chron-sundevil article War on computer crime waged with search, seizure By JOE ABERNATHY Houston Chronicle The government's first assault on computer crime, un- veiled with fanfare six months ago, has generated few criminal cases and is drawing allegations that federal agents are using heavy-handed tactics. Although only four people have been charged, searches and seizures have been conducted in at least 44 homes or businesses in the crackdown, called Operation Sun Devil. One prosecutor attributed the delay in filing cases to the vast amount of information that must be sorted. Authorities would not say, however, when or if additional charges might be re- turned. Sun Devil, so named because it began in Arizona and targeted an evil that investigators deemed biblical in stature, is held forth as a sophisticated defense of the nation's computer in- frastructure. Computer-related abuses will cost the nation's business community $500 million this year, according to some esti mates. Operation Sun Devil and several related investigations made public in March have been under way for more than two years. Hun- dreds of agents from the Secret Service, U.S. attorney's office, the Bell companies, and assorted law enforcement agencies are involved. But the operation is coming under fire for what critics describe as unjustified searches and seizures of property and electronic information protected by the Constitution. Among examples they cite: * An Austin publishing house is clinging to life after Secret Service agents confiscated equipment and manuscripts, leaving behind an unsigned search warrant. * A Missouri college student faces an extra year in school and $100,000 in legal fees after defending himself from charges that he stole a proprietary document from the telephone company by publishing it in a newsletter. * The wife and children of a Baltimore corporate computer consultant were detained for six hours while he was interrogated in a locked bedroom and his business equipment was confiscated. With no way to support itself, the family has sunk into pover- ty. At a press conference in March, authorities presented Sun De- vil as a full-scale response to a serious criminal threat. "The United States Secret Service, in cooperation with the Un- ited States attorney's office and the attorney general for the state of Arizona, established an operation utilizing sophisticat- ed investigative techniques,'' a press release said, adding that 40 computers and 23,000 data disks had been seized in the initial sweep. "The conceivable criminal violations of this operation have serious implications for the health and welfare of all individu- als, corporations, and United States government agencies relying on computers and telephones to communicate,'' it continued. Six months later, most officials are silent about Sun Devil. But at least one principal denies excesses in the operation. "I am not a mad dog prosecutor,'' said Gail Thackeray, assistant attorney general for the state of Arizona and the intellectual parent of Operation Sun Devil. "(Agents) are acting in good faith, and I don't think that can be said of the hacker community. "Over the last couple of years, a lot of us in different places -- state, federal and local -- have been getting hit with a dramatic increase in complaints from computer hacker victims. So in response to that the Secret Service started the Sun Devil in- vestigation trying to find a more effective way to deal with some of this.'' Thackeray said the Secret Service, an agency of the U.S. Treasury Department, assumed jurisdiction because computer crime often involves financial fraud. Most of the losses are at- tributed to stolen long distance service. "It's not unusual for hackers to reach six figures (of abuse) in one month'' at a single business location, she said. "This whole mess is getting completely out of hand.'' But computer experts critical of Sun Devil contend the opera- tion also is out of hand. They have rallied behind the banner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which contends that computer networks represent a fundamentally new realm of self-expression into which constitutional protection must be extended. Some visitors to this realm deem it cyberspace, using termi- nology borrowed from a science fiction genre set in a gritty fu- ture in which computer and telephone lines become extensions of one's intellect and even physical being. Hackers, as those who enter others' computers without authori- zation are known, are referred to as cyberpunks by some computer network users. It may have been this connection that drew the Secret Service to the Austin offices of Steve Jackson Games, which early this spring was about to publish something called "GURPS Cyber- punk." It is a rule book for a role-playing adventure along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons, played with dice and not computers. The cover page, however, credits the Legion of Doom, a self- professed underground hackers group, for assistance in providing realism. The game's author admits discoursing with the Le- gion. This link ensnared the company in the nationwide sweep con- ducted March 1, when 27 search warrants were executed in 14 ci- ties. A number of cases targeted members of the Legion. The Secret Service seized all copies of the Cyberpunk manuscript, along with the computers on which it was being stored prior to publication. "One of the Secret Service agents told Steve Jackson that they thought the book was a handbook for computer crime,'' said Sharon Beckman of the Boston firm Silverglate & Good, Jackson's attorney. "It looks like what (this) was, in effect, was a prior restraint on protected speech, speech protected by the First Amendment.'' Jackson's company, which had revenues of $1.4 million in 1989, was nearly dealt a death blow by the raid. Cyberpunk was to be its main spring release, but it would have to be rewritten from scratch. Jackson was not allowed access to the reams of in- formation stored on the confiscated equipment. "We had to lay off eight people, and we had to cut way back on the number of products we were producing,'' said Jackson, who put the cost of the raid at $125,000. That doesn't include lost revenues, "or the value to the company of the eight (of 17) em- ployees we had to lay off, because I don't know where to start to put a value on that.'' Beckman described her client as an ordinary businessman who uses a computer in his business. "He's not a computer hacker. He's not even a particularly sophisticated computer user,'' she said. "It was terrifying,'' Jackson recal ed. "I was in the hands of a lot of keen, earnest, sincere people who had no idea what they were doing and who had federal law enforcement powers. "It's frightening that they can do this to innocent people.'' No charges have been filed. Some of the equipment has been returned, but some was damaged beyond repair. Jackson said agents recently acknowledged that some equipment indeed is gone forever. The Secret Service, Arizona U.S. attorney's office and Justice Department all refused to discuss any specifics of Jackson's case, or any activities associated with Operation Sun Devil. "We're a very efficient organization, and we follow the guide- lines set forth by the law,'' said Michael Cleary, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Chicago, which has jurisdiction in the case. "If we have a signed, sworn affidavit, and a search warrant, we execute that warrant.'' Cleary wouldn't say why the search warrant used against Steve Jackson was not signed. A request by Jackson's attorney for more information went unanswered. Beckman said a raid conducted without a signed warrant would violate Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted search and seizure. Mike Hurst, a Steve Jackson Games editor who lost his job to the raid on the company, offered bitter advice: "The Secret Ser- vice ought to make some attempt to find out if there's actually a case involved before they begin searches and confiscations of property.'' In one incident, the government did file a case, only to aban- don it when it fell apart in court. The defendant, Craig Neidorf, is going back to college at the University of Missouri this fall, but his reputation is stained, he's having to repeat his senior year, and he's $100,000 in debt. An intrusion into the computers of Bell South by a Legion member in 1988 set off much of the activity in Operation Sun De- vil, including the case against Neidorf. While in Bell South's computer, Legion member Robert Riggs found and copied a document describing administrative aspects of the emergency 911 system. Riggs and associates Franklin E. Darden Jr. and E. Grant, all three of whom are from Georgia, recently pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and await sentencing. Darden and Riggs face up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Grant faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Neidorf, publisher of Phrack, a newsletter for hackers, was accused of theft for republishing the 911 document stolen by Riggs. Prosecutors stopped the trial after the document was shown to be freely available. His case received widespread coverage because it raised is- sues of free speech. Phrack was published electronically via computer networks instead of on paper, and thus did not immedi- ately receive the First Amendment protection that virtually would have been assured a paper document, according to Sheldon Zenner, Neidorf's attorney. "Going through this last seven months is not something I would wish on my worst enemy,'' said Neidorf, 20, who faced 31 years in prison. "It devastated my parents. My grandparents, they didn't take it well. They're in their 80s. "I kind of broke down myself at one point. I don't like to talk about it exactly.'' Leonard Rose, a computer consultant in Baltimore, let the Legion forward network mail through his computer, an everyday ar- rangement on the sprawling Internet research and education net- work. But because the name of his computer appeared in the group's electronic address, he was portrayed by the government as the mastermind of the group. "I've lost everything because of it,'' he said. Business con- tracts worth $100,000 a year, $70,000 worth of computer equipment used in his business, his top secret clearance, his wife's dream home, their credit rating, cars, are gone. The Roses now live with their two young children in an apartment furnished with two mattresses and a TV. "I used to look at people in the street and I couldn't under- stand how they could get there,'' Rose said. "I couldn't under- stand how you could sink that low, but now I understand. I under- stand a lot more now.'' He was never charged as part of the Legion of Doom investiga- tion, but during that probe he was found to have received an il- licit copy of a computer program that must be licensed from AT&T. "What Len Rose is accused of turns software piracy into a felo- ny,'' said John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the Frontier Foun- dation. "If the government is prepared to go out and turn every- body who has engaged in software piracy into a felon, it'll make the war on drugs look like a minor undertaking.'' Detractors say that the investigative techniques used in Operation Sun Devil are at best rude, at worst illegal. Authori- ties respond that they are adjusting to a new world. Most concerns center on bulletin board systems, a frequent point of access into the nation's computer network byways. Locals call the BBS, which then moves private electronic mail and pub- lic messages into the public networks, which as a whole are re- ferred to as Internet or simply the matrix. "The government is seizing electronic mail like crazy, in the sense that it's seizing BBS's and all their contents,'' Barlow said. "It's the equivalent of seizing post offices and all their contents.'' The privacy of electronic mail is protected under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is also the law setting forth most of the conditions under which computer hacking can be con- sidered a crime. "We've seized lots of BBS's,'' acknowledged Thackeray of the Arizona attorney general's office, although search warrants were obtained only for the owner of each computer, not for each person with electronic mail stored on that computer. Benjamin Wright, a Dallas attorney who writes and lectures frequently on electronic data interchange, said that surveillance of electronic mail poses serious questions even when conducted properly under the supervision of a court. "A huge amount of information could build up, so there could be a great mass of information laying at the government's feet,'' he said. "To tap into all the phone lines of a corporation would be a lot of work, but if there's this database building up of a large part of a company's business, then there's a reason for being a little bit concerned. "This applies to private people as much as it applies to cor- porations.'' Authorities see the BBS seizures as preventive medicine. "The only thing I have ever found that has an effect on these kids is to take their computer away,'' Thackeray said. "It final- ly sinks in, 'I'm really not going to get this back.' '' But Barlow criticizes that approach. "Essentially what they have done is to fine (the suspect), without conviction, for the entire value of his property,'' he said. "They're not making arrests. This is turning the whole search and seizure into the punishment.'' ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The preceding appeared Sunday, 9/2/90, on the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Please send comments to: edtjda@chron.com ANOTHER ARTICLE ON THE INTERNET BY JOE ABERNATHY IS LOCATED IN THE MAIN TELECOM-ARCHIVES DIRECTORY UNDER THE TITLE 'ABERNATHY.INTERNET.STORY'