------------------------------ From: Jim Thomas Subject: MARS BBS Sting a Prank Date: 5 October, 1990 ******************************************************************** *** CuD #2.06: File 3 of 5: MARS BBS STING A PRANK *** ******************************************************************** Ok, boys and girls, we've been had--the rumor of alleged Secret Service involvement in the MARS BBS at Mississippi State was a bit of a prank. It was not malicious, not intended to be deceptive, and not without a few lessons. For those who have read the post from Ed Luke, the sysop of MARS, a BBS accessible via ftp, the gist of the story was that the Secret Service had busted the board, but allowed it to return as a sting board. According to the post (reproduced at the end of this file), the names and the up/downloads of allegedly "obscene" .gif and .gl files were kept and turned over to the SS. The post circulated across the nets during the past week, and most of us were concerned about the implications of the story, if true. We tried calling Ed during the week, but couldn't reach him (he was not hiding--he was studying for seven hour exam), which delayed explanation of the prank. Some might be angry at the prank for the consternation it created among a lot of people. Was it tacky, in bad taste and outrageous? Of course it was. But, in context, it was also rather funny (for those of us who prefer Emo Phillips' view of the world to Kant's moral imperative). Here's the story as Ed relates it: MARS BBS began at Mississippi State on a university computer system. Ed had been asked to work on a BBS program for a friend, and he set it up as a demo board called "Resource Pirates Bulletin Board." The name was intended as a campy take-off on pirate boards, because they were "pirating" the nets, not software. Ed was explicit in re-affirming that, whatever his own personal views of proprietary information (he favors "knowledge to the people"), he takes his administrative obligations very seriously, and respects the laws restricting what can and cannot be placed on a university board (see related story on censorship in the next issue). The original software could accommodate about 50 users, and was quite small. It was a "no rules" board, but it became quite popular, something he had not anticipated. He made arrangements to obtain a legitimate board through the university on a legitimate machine and reworked the software. "I had no idea what I was getting when I started," Ed said in explaining that he was surprised at the number of users (currently over 1,400) and the amount of work involved in keeping up with the volume of traffic and the file transfers. The board was down for awhile when it was switched from an Athena to a MARS system. Numerous .gif (graphic pictures) and .gl (animated pictures) were uploaded, many of which were sexually explicit. His position was not to monitor or censor, even if the sheer volume of files would allow him time to do so: "How do I determine what's obscene? It becomes my responsibility to make that judgement call on everything. And I don't want to make that call," he explained. The gif collection grew, and they dominated communications on the board and ftp traffic. Although Ed doesn't know how the National Science Foundation (NSF) became aware of the files, there were complaints and threats by the NSF of curtailing access to the nets, because the NSF provide some of the net backbone. It was not a fight that Ed felt he could win, or one that he felt he could make a strong case for, so he removed the files. That's when the fun began. He began receiving a number of messages, and some of the "ridiculous" ones prompted the prank. He received numerous notes and complaints, and there was what he describes as "lots of paranoia" about why they were taken down. >From mail we received at CuD, Ed's observations are accurate, because some MARS users suspected that the temporary hiatus during the change in systems was the result of a bust. In response to some of the more strident and conspiratorial messages he received, Ed wrote the following post: ******START POST********** Posted By: lush (Ed Luke) Date: Sat Sep 29 21:54:03 1990 Title: The story about the GIF files. Ok, since everyone has been asking about the gif files, here's the story of what happened with the gifs... It seems that the secret service under direction of Pres. Bush is on a campaign against computer crime. You've read about some of this probably. It's called Operation Sun Devil. Some of the older users will remember when this bbs was called the Pirates Resource BBS and was on athena.ee.mssate.edu. Well we eventually got shut down in a fashion similar to that of the victims of operation sun devil. However, in our case, since we were such an allegedly large center for computer criminal activity, the Secret Service, along with the National Computing Defence Council decided to conduct an ongoing investigation. If you want to catch mice, you don't just plug their holes. You lay traps. Well they allowed us to set up again at mars on the strict requirement that we would do strict accounting. We have been keeping records of every (timestamped) upload and download that's been made to this board. In addition, in hopes of cooperating with the Feds for obvious reasons, I instituted the monitoring system software on mars. When anyone did an ftp it logged the date, did a finger on the system that was connecting and snarfed up the userid via ftp protocol and made a complete record of all files downloaded and uploaded. Also, users that download files from the bbs had the machine name they were connecting to, and any other evidence collected in a similar manner. After enough information was collected, we gave them the reams of data files and removed the gifs, giving yall the bogus NSF story. So there it is. The GIFS and GL's aren't the biggest part of the story, but they are illegal in some states and the FCC has been interested in cracking down on computer obscenity for a long time. I can't say I like it, but that we have to live with it. Later, Ed Luke *******END POST******* Ed emphasizes that we wrote the post under his own name, as a user, which he feels gives him the latitude to be more playful, and *not* as "sysop." He offers several reasons for the post: First, it was a response to the numerous messages he received. Second, and more importantly, it was an experiment in the level of paranoia that exists on the nets, and he was surprised when he continued to discover the paths through which the post was spreading. Finally, it was a test of the scope of the BBS. He found that the latter two were significant: "Never underestimate the level of paranoia and the power of the nets," he observed. Ed stresses that he had absolutely no intention to deceive the CU community and that his act was done in good humor, not ill will. But, the sexually explicit files *will not* return, because he feels the board provides far to many other beneficial services to jeopardize it. The MARS board is ftp-accessible at 130.18.64.3, but if the numbers continue to grow, access may be difficult. Type "bbs" at the prompt and follow the instructions from there. It is a true BBS, and files can be ftp-ed or transfered with a variety of protocols, including kermit. On line chat, a lively message section, and an array of free (legitimate) software is available. Those wishing to obtain a copy of the BBS program may download it from the board (free), and are encouraged to tinker with it and make changes, but improvements or suggestions for them should be passed back to Ed. We see two important lessons to be learned from this. The first we will address in the next issue of CuD and relates to prior censorship. Ed (and others) agree that many of the files were in bad taste because of their sexual explicitness. The issue, however, is by what means files are determined to be "obscene" and the process by which even agencies with a legitimate interest in the contents of files should or may intervene to remove them. We do not yet know the circumstances of NFS involvement and we do not challenge the right of those with a legitimate interest to assume responsibility for standards. But, given the current lack of protections for cyberspace media, anything that smacks of censorship should at least raise the question of "how" and "why." The second lesson is more frightening. Although some astute readers were sharp enough to suspect a prank, even they were fully aware of the possibility of Secret Service meddling. This is frightening: Rather than say "no way! The SS would never do *that*," few people would have been surprised at the scenario outlined in Ed's post. Are those who believed the worst gullible or naive? We think not. In the 1960s, it was quite common for law enforcement agents to collect lists of "radicals" (defined as anybody who opposed the Viet Nam war) and use these in highly disruptive ways. For example, in 1977 one CuD moderator was part of a class action suit to obtain "Red Squad" files from the Michigan State Police, which included documents of numerous local, state, and national agencies that detailed surveillance mechanisms. One of the more ludicrous was the practice of listing the license plates of cars in parking lots near anti-war or other meetings, running these plates through the DMV, and then listing those that turned up more than once. The owners of those vehicles, according to these documents, would find themselves added to the list of "suspects" on a Red Squad list, and this type of information demonstrably cost people jobs, promotions, or subjected them to other forms of harassment. A series of law suits and legislative actions curtailed the worst of these abuses. However, the questionable tactics of the Secret Service in Operation Sun Devil hardly inspires confidence in voluntary restraint against the Computer Underground. The 15 hours of video tape that were obtained from the room of an alleged informant at Summercon '88 are one example of questionable surveillance--How far are law enforcement agents willing to go on their war against the "hacker menace?" If they are video taping a bunch of under-age kids drinking, if they seem willing to circumvent Constitutional limitations in indictments and searches, then running a sting board and listing users seems fully plausible. As we have cited in previous articles, sting boards are encouraged as a legitimate option for both state and federal authorities. The tragedy of Ed Luke's prank is not that he pulled it off, but rather that, in the current climate of legitimate paranoia created by a few over-zealous law enforcement agents, few of us would have been the least bit surprised if it were true. What does this say about the respect for law that such actions as Operation Sun Devil have created? ******************************************************************** >> END OF THIS FILE << *************************************************************************** Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253 12yrs+