A CYBERSPACE GANG FANS THE FLAMES ON THE INTERNET (CR article for educational purposes .. ok someone

[David Farber <>]

A CYBERSPACE GANG FANS THE FLAMES ON THE INTERNET




By MICHELLE LEVANDER
Mercury News Staff Writer


IF SINGAPORE'S leaders ruled cyberspace, members of a so-called Internet
gang would be in for a serious cyber-caning.


Instead of egging cars or spraying graffiti, this group, whose stated goal
is ''inspired mischief,'' carries out its mayhem by starting destructive
electronic flame wars in the virtual world.


Flame wars, or incendiary exchanges of insult and abuse, are an age-old part
of the culture of Usenet, a loosely linked collection of thousands of
electronic bulletin boards that connect about 10 million people
internationally. But one group strives to start out-of-control flame wars as
part of an organized campaign.


Its aim is to reduce discourse to chaos.


The group, Alt.syntax.tactical (AST), has joined others in sending graphic
messages about cat-killing to a group of cat-lovers, according to its
founder and to newsgroupusers. On an erotic pictures group, its members have
posed as outraged puritans who call for censorship, and in an Olympics
newsgroup, a member posed as a loutish caricature of an overly patriotic
Canadian to inspire the hatred of American readers.


AST is not alone in its attempts to violate the voluntary norms of the
Internet, or ''netiquette.'' A spate of recent incidents has provoked a
fierce on-line debate about whether thousands of newcomers are endangering
the unfettered freedom that defines this electronic world.


Elsewhere, on-line animosities have exploded into death threats, deliberate
cloggingof fax and phone lines and ''mail bombing,'' the sending of large
volumes of unsolicited e-mail to opponents. Racial animosities between
Armenians and Turks, according to some critics, has resulted in
''robo-posting'' or the automatic posting of huge volumes of information
over and over to a large number of Usenet groups.


Informal rules of conduct on the Internet, of which Usenet is a subset, are
designed to prevent electronic discourse from descending into anarchy. But
this once tightly knit community of academics and scientists is now the
preserve of new users who have made their way into the electronic world
using commercial gateways.


There now are some 20 million people internationally on the Internet. And,
some of the same destructive and sometimes deviant behavior found in the
real world has increasingly found its way into the virtual one.


''It's a real test of whether something this large can be managed on a
cooperative or voluntary basis,'' said Roger Karraker, host of a First
Amendment conference on the Well, a Sausalito-based on-line service. ''It's
very clear one or two obnoxious individuals have the power to inconvenience
hundreds of thousands of people. I don't know where it will end.''


Debra K. West, a horror and mystery writer from Madison, Wis., who combs
such Usenet groups as alt.evil and alt.revenge for story ideas, sees AST and
similar groups as akin to ''vandals running around the frontier with cans of
spray paint.''


West was one of the people who posted information on AST's plan of action on
Usenet groups. Usenet, she writes in an e-mail to the Mercury News, has its
own common law, which functions much the way the frontier justice did in the
Old West.


Some, like Mike Godwin, the counsel for the Washington-based Electronic
Frontier Foundation, say anyone who ever saw the Internet as a ''warm, fuzzy
place'' was misguided. Godwin said recent flames don't threaten the
integrity of the net or call for government intervention or regulation just
as the few people who abuse 911 numbers don't call into question a broader
''shared social consensus.''


CALLS FOR REGULATION


The spate of recent on-line abuses has some users contemplating the
heretical notion of some form of regulation or censorship on the Internet.
Others talk about organizing boycotts or signing petitions to force an
Internet service provider to eject a disruptive user.


''What I oppose is the few sociopaths who abuse this freedom by failing to
cooperate with the guidelines that the rest of us have imposed upon
ourselves,'' said Dick DePew, a professor of microbiology at Northeastern
Ohio Universities College of Medicine and an advocate of some censorship by
self-appointed monitors. Even without these recent abuses, a supposedly
civil discussion on Usenet can sometimes seem to be a descent into
Wonderland. People swap personalities and identities and can suddenly change
from compassionate to juvenile or wickedly sarcastic.


''Get a life, net-loser,'' one user said to another in a relatively tame
insult exchange in one recent conversation about censorship vs. flaming.
''I'm telling your mommy, I was flamed in alt.flame, I was moose poemed in
alt.bigfoot.''


The incident that has prompted the greatest controversy in cyberspace of
late occurred last month when two Phoenix lawyers posted advertisements
throughout the Usenet, offering help to those seeking immigrant work permits
or green cards.


Critics of the pair said they skillfully manipulated technology to cause the
greatest possible disruption, forcing their messages upon readers of 1,500
separate newsgroups.


MORE CHALLENGES


Since then, lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel have challenged
angered users further, with their promise to put ads for their firm,
Cybersell, and their clients throughout Internet.


Their tactics have touched off a host of hostile responses, including the
deliberate clogging of the law firm's fax and phone line.


''Canter clearly doesn't mind using underhanded tactics to get what he
wants. He deserves getting underhanded tactics in return,'' said one angered
Usenet user on the Well.


Other groups have operated in the manner of AST and invaded newsgroups with
flame wars. In an attack described in the May issue of WIRED magazine,
members of a newsgroup called alt.tasteless, who glory in the scatological
and the revolting, decided to take over rec.pets.cats, a place where
grieving owners of recently deceased cats and those seeking advice on kitten
care gather.


There, the tone changed suddenly when alt.tasteless members began suggesting
dismembering cats and having sex with their innards.


Karen Kolling, a software engineer at Adobe Systems in Mountain View and an
active member of rec.pets.cats, said the situation came to a head when she
began receiving death threats from one of the alt.tasteless crew.


MERGING REALITY


Kolling, who owns three cats, Sweetie, Holly and Little Bit, said she had a
''schizo reaction'' as the virtual and real world collided.


''On the one hand, it's just e-mail,'' she said. ''But it really wigged me
out. I received three or four threats.''


AST hasn't done anything nearly as harmful as other Internet trouble-makers,
said a man who identified himself as its founder, Jeff Antebi, a Los Angeles
political consultant.


AST had not had the disruptive power it proclaims in its grandiose
manifesto, as Antebi freely admits. Yet AST's manifesto has been reprinted
widely -- supposedly as a warning to members of invaded groups on Usenet.


But many are taking it as yet another challenge to the freedom of the Net.


The group has 35 members, each of whom goes under at least two different
accounts to communicate on the Internet. Antebi described himself as a
prankster, although he said many hate him from his postings from an account
at the University of Southern California. Others in his group, he said, may
have a more destructive vision.


''What is important is that each individual brings into this their own brand
of inspired mischief,'' the group's manifesto states. ''In some ways it is
completely innocent. In some ways it is completely destructive.''


In its manifesto, AST states that it takes no art to send obvious flames.
The key is to be subtle. Some of its members are supposed to pretend to be
outraged victims of flames while others carry out staged assaults.


STIRRING PASSIONS


''Even if we attack a group of people restrained enough to resist our
flame-bait, wave two will stir things up and get others to join in,'' the
group's manifesto states. Antebi himself said he majored in propaganda at
USC, but a spokesman said that major does not exist and could not confirm or
deny whether Antebi had been a student there.


And there was no way to definitively confirm if the group's manifesto itself
was not an elaborate hoax designed to create fear on the net.


''I founded AST in order to provide people the opportunity to disrupt the
so-called information highway through disinformation and low-level chaos,''
said Antebi in an e-mail message to the Mercury News.


''On most levels, it is entertainment; but there is an element here that
allows individuals to become their own experts in propaganda, manipulating
hundreds or even thousands of people to believe that what they are reading
is real, when in fact it is absurd, incorrect, made up.''




MERCURY CENTER ID: me40051g




Transmitted:  94-05-15 05:49:20 EDT