IP: Freedom Fighters of the Digital World; At a Time When Many of Us Are Gung-Ho About Sacrificing Personal Freedoms to Combat Terror, the Electronic Frontier Foundation Just Wants to Say No.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 09:17:24 -0500 (EST)
> From: Peter Freyd <pjf () saul cis upenn edu>
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
>
>
>   "In the early days, the Net was free," says computer scientist Dave
>   Farber, a 67-year-old University of Pennsylvania professor. An EFF
>   board member since the mid-'90s, Farber has witnessed the evolution
>   of the medium since 1968, when he first got on the Arpanet, the
>   Internet's precursor that was developed by the Department of Defense
>   and largely used in academia. "It was an information barter economy.
>   You gave things to people, they gave things to you. It was that way
>   for a long time, until relatively recently . . . It was almost like
>   the utopian socialism attitude of the '20s and '30s." The
>   philosophical divide "depends on when you came on the Net and what
>   your motivations are."
>
>                   Copyright 2002 / Los Angeles Times
>                           Los Angeles Times
>
>                 January 13, 2002 Sunday Home Edition
>
> SECTION: Los Angeles Times Magazine; Page 14; Times Magazine Desk
>
> LENGTH: 3428 words
>
> HEADLINE: Freedom Fighters of the Digital World; At a Time When Many
> of Us Are Gung-Ho About Sacrificing Personal Freedoms to Combat
> Terror, the Electronic Frontier Foundation Just Wants to Say No.
>
> BYLINE: SCOTT HARRIS, Scott Harris last wrote for the magazine for the
> December 1999, millennium issue
>
> BODY: We're bombing Afghanistan, anthrax is in the mail, and all
> across America it looks like Stars and Stripes forever. It is the
> evening of Oct. 11, one month into the war on terrorism, and Congress
> is cooking up something that will be called the USA Patriot Act. This
> sweeping law includes a dramatic expansion of Internet surveillance,
> unprecedented sharing of information between government agencies,
> stiffer penalties for computer crimes and greater power to detain
> noncitizens.
>
> For many of us, that's just fine. If personal freedoms are to be
> sacrificed, polls show that a majority of Americans aren't just
> willing, they're gung-ho. Urgent times, urgent measures. Judged
> against the horror of Sept. 11 and now our daily dread -- those
> invisible spores, the occasional drive across a bridge -- what's a
> little electronic eavesdropping among patriotic Americans anyway?
>
> But inside a half-empty auditorium at the San Francisco Public
> Library, four civil liberties attorneys have come together on a panel
> to challenge the new conventional wisdom. The audience is up for the
> challenge, and when the floor is open for questions, a slender man
> with long wispy hair and a scraggly beard takes a turn at the mike. He
> doesn't give his name, but many here recognize John Gilmore, one of
> the brains behind Sun Microsystems and one of the guiding spirits of
> the Electronic Frontier Foundation, perhaps America's most
> technologically astute civil liberties group -- and no doubt one of
> the funkiest. In a soft voice, the computer scientist explains what is
> troubling him: the scarcity of news surrounding all those people, then
> numbering about 500, who have been rounded up in the terrorism
> investigation. Who are they? Why are they being held? Does anybody
> know anything? "Who's representing these people and trying to get them
> out?"
>
> The panelists' silence leaves Gilmore exasperated.
>
> "Are all the civil rights organizations afraid to step up to defend
> potential terrorists?"
>
> Say this about the leaders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: They
> are not afraid to speak their minds. They are not afraid to push back.
>
> sometimes described as an "american civil liberties union for nerds,"
> the Electronic Frontier Foundation was launched in 1990 by an
> illustrious group of Internet pioneers troubled by what they
> considered to be the government's clueless, ham-handed efforts to
> police the new medium. "Nobody was thinking about extending the
> Constitution into cyberspace," recalls co-founder Mitchell Kapor, the
> wealthy Lotus software mogul. Who but computer scientists would argue
> that binary code is a form of speech entitled to First Amendment
> protection?
>
> To high-tech pros and policy wonks, the EFF is well-known for its
> opposition to the regulation of encryption. Hollywood and the
> publishing industry know it as the loyal opposition in battles over
> digital copy law, which the EFF believes is so restrictive that it
> frustrates innovation. "What we're working on is really cutting-edge
> stuff to protect the rights of everyone, even if they don't realize
> the significance of it," says EFF executive director Shari Steele.
>
> Non-nerds may more easily grasp the EFF's unyielding interpretation of
> First Amendment freedoms and the Fourth Amendment protection against
> unreasonable searches. It has poured resources into protecting the
> rights of scientists and journalists to publish online. It defends the
> right to make anonymous postings online, insofar as the posters honor
> laws governing libel and trade secrets. In defending its principles,
> the EFF may seem to casual observers to be bent on making the world a
> safer place for computer hackers, copyright pirates, cowardly
> commentators and people who think happiness is a warm Aibo robot
> puppy.
>
> (When Sony complained that Web sites set up by Aibo owners to share
> programming tricks were infringing on its copyright, the EFF took up
> the hobbyists' cause.) But the organization now sees itself on the
> front line of the debate over security in the age of terror, and it is
> only too happy to have its dissenting voice heard amid the clamor.
>
> Its assessment of the USA Patriot Act (an acronym for Uniting and
> Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
> Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) has been especially critical.
> Terrorism, says EFF legal director Cindy Cohn, has been used to
> justify a law enforcement power grab that threatens fundamental
> freedoms. Had the same surveillance and wiretap laws existed a year
> ago, she argues, they would not have prevented the terror attacks on
> Sept. 11 -- and now Americans are shouldering the burden of
> intelligence failures of federal authorities.
>
> "The civil liberties of ordinary Americans have taken a tremendous
> blow, especially in the right to privacy," Cohn says in a 20-page
> legal analysis of the Internet and computer crime sections of the
> Patriot Act that was distributed to more than 100 civil liberties
> groups. "Be careful what you put in that Google search. The government
> may now spy on Web surfing of innocent Americans . . . by merely
> telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to
> information that is 'relevant' to an ongoing criminal investigation."
>
> (The judge may not reject the request; his role is simply to issue and
> record it.)
>
> What makes this form of surveillance more worrisome, cyber
> libertarians say, is how the Internet links people in ways that the
> non-virtual world does not. Ask yourself: Have you ever received
> e-mail from a terror suspect? Ever been on the same listserv or in the
> same chat room? Book the same flight, frequent the same Web site? Not
> only would you not know, Cohn says, but you also wouldn't know whether
> the feds had snooped on your Web activities and compiled a secret
> dossier. Not only could authorities abuse such information, she
> suggests, but so could rogue agents.
>
> Americans, Cohn says, wouldn't tolerate such scrutiny of postal or
> telephone communications, or library research. What makes the
> electronic realm different? The EFF believes its role is to sound the
> public alarm and watch for abuses by authorities that need to be
> challenged in court.
>
> Indeed, libertarians from the left and right see the expanded Internet
> surveillance as part of an authoritarian lurch that includes President
> Bush's calls for military tribunals conducted of noncitizens accused
> of terrorism; the dragnet that led to detentions of 1,400 individuals,
> only a small number now thought to have suspicious links to the
> hijackers; and the Justice Department's efforts to interview 5,000
> men, most of whom are Muslim.
>
> Libertarians get a sense of deja vu listening to Atty. Gen. John
> Ashcroft portray opposition to such measures as "aiding" the enemy.
> They recall how dissidents were rounded up in the buildup toward World
> War I, Japanese Americans were interned during World War II and a
> Communist witch hunt ruined lives in the Cold War.
>
> Says Gilmore: "There's a McCarthy era every 20 or 30 years." Only now,
> digital technology has raised the stakes. J. Edgar Hoover would drool
> over the tools that now exist to gather, transmit, store and interpret
> information, and the technology is only getting more powerful. Broad
> Internet surveillance, some civil libertarians say, could be a first
> step toward the creation of a vast, permanent digital dragnet. Says
> Brad Templeton, a 41-year-old Internet entrepreneur and the EFF's
> chairman: "I sit in fear of the next attack not only because of who it
> might hurt but because of where it will take this debate."
>
> what templeton fears is something many americans would welcome.
> Imagine a nationwide high-tech security system as a fixed defense not
> only against terrorism but all sorts of criminal behavior. The
> high-tech fix could take many forms. A new generation of mobile
> products -- from cars to cell phones to firearms -- could be equipped
> with a kind of super-LoJack transponder linking Global Positioning
> System satellites to help authorities locate stolen goods and
> suspects. A national ID system using "smart cards" embedded with
> microchips carrying digitized personal data, many argue, could
> dramatically strengthen identity-verification practices. Airport
> security could employ advanced X-ray screening that looks through
> clothes.
>
> Privacy concerns pose a political obstacle to such technologies, but
> momentum is gathering behind another powerful idea: the use of
> biometric "face-recognition" software to augment security cameras that
> are already commonplace in many private and public places. When Wall
> Street reopened after Sept. 11 with a deep swoon, the rocketing
> exceptions were biometrics developers such as Viisage Technology,
> Visionics and Imagis. The software makes a "face print" based on a
> measurement of features and compares it to a database of images. A
> Visionics system was tested at the 2000 Super Bowl in Tampa Bay, and
> company officials have proposed such a system for Reagan National
> Airport in Washington, D.C. On Oct. 31, Viisage's system became the
> first to be used in an airport, capturing images of travelers at
> Fresno Yosemite International shortly before they pass through metal
> detectors. Whenever the software suggests that an individual resembles
> a subject in the database, security is alerted. Tom Colastoti,
> Viisage's chief executive officer, says most false positives are
> quickly resolved. And biometrics, he adds, should minimize racial
> profiling.
>
> Most law-abiding people, Colastoti says, would consider
> face-recognition capabilities helpful. Travelers already have their
> carry-on bags X-rayed and are often searched as they pass through
> metal detectors, which frequently buzz and trigger a more thorough
> search with a hand-held metal detector. After all of that, Colastoti
> says, "People are going to tell me having your face scanned in a
> nanosecond is an invasion of privacy? I don't get it." A lot of people
> don't get it. "People with something to hide are the ones who need
> 'privacy' the most," Times columnist John Balzar wrote last November.
> Polls suggest that such reasoning has become more common since Sept.
> 11. "It's insidiously hard to argue with that," Templeton allows. "But
> if we are under surveillance, we are less free. We censor ourselves."
>
> Just look at how the political climate has already censored us by
> stifling dissent, he says. "My little phrase has been that 'America
> speaking with one voice is un-American.' " Just because I'm paranoid.
> Type that phrase into the Google search engine and, before long,
> you'll be under the impression that techies simply aren't the trusting
> sort. You'll surf sites put up by computer pros who recommend
> encryption software such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). You, too, can
> mask your e-mail from, say, your boss, your staff, your spouse, your
> children, maybe your government -- which is no guarantee that the mask
> won't get ripped off. Even before Sept. 11, many techies subscribed to
> another old one-liner: If you're not paranoid, you just haven't been
> paying attention.
>
> The fondness that techies have for cryptology reflects a dynamic of
> love and fear that is very much at the root of the Electronic Frontier
> Foundation. The love is reflected in the utopian view of cyberspace
> shared by Gilmore and others who embrace the Internet Age mantra,
> "Information wants to be free."
>
> "In the early days, the Net was free," says computer scientist Dave
> Farber, a 67-year-old University of Pennsylvania professor. An EFF
> board member since the mid-'90s, Farber has witnessed the evolution of
> the medium since 1968, when he first got on the Arpanet, the
> Internet's precursor that was developed by the Department of Defense
> and largely used in academia. "It was an information barter economy.
> You gave things to people, they gave things to you. It was that way
> for a long time, until relatively recently . . . It was almost like
> the utopian socialism attitude of the '20s and '30s." The
> philosophical divide "depends on when you came on the Net and what
> your motivations are."
>
> As the Silicon Valley began its boom, the bohemians of cyberspace
> sometimes found each other at "The Well," an online bulletin board
> community launched in 1985 by environmentalist Stewart Brand, founding
> editor of the Sausalito-based Whole Earth Catalog. The Well (which
> stands for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) had some interesting,
> brilliant, influential devotees who included Mitch Kapor and John
> Perry Barlow. Kapor was a disaffected Transcendental Meditation
> instructor whose search for enlightenment led him to computer science
> at MIT and the crafting of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the most
> popular application of the mid-'80s. When not running his Wyoming
> cattle ranch, EFF co-founder Barlow was penning lyrics for the
> Grateful Dead or writing philosophical musings about digital
> technology.
>
> One day Kapor read an article that Barlow had posted on The Well
> describing a surreal encounter with an FBI agent he'd previously met
> after some cattle were rustled from his ranch. This time the agent was
> trying to figure out if Barlow was in cahoots with some outlaws who
> were either, as Barlow would later write, "a dread band of
> info-terrorists," or possibly just a disgruntled Apple employee
> distributing source code. The agent's "errand was complicated by a
> fairly complete unfamiliarity with computer technology." Kapor could
> relate; he too had been questioned by the FBI. The feds, he recalls,
> seemed incapable of distinguishing brainy kids fooling around on
> computers for kicks and knowledge -- the real-world equivalent of
> trespassing and minor vandalism -- from more serious criminals dealing
> in theft and espionage. On a cross-country flight in his business jet,
> Kapor phoned Barlow and detoured to the airport nearest Pinedale, Wyo.
> The next day, The Well heralded plans for what would become the
> Electronic Frontier Foundation.
>
> John Gilmore was the first to sign on, kicking in a six-figure
> contribution and considerable energy. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of
> Apple Computers, wrote a hefty check. Stewart Brand joined the first
> board.
>
> Five years before the ACLU handled its first Internet case, the EFF
> pioneered the field in a pair of landmark cases. The first involved
> Steve Jackson Games, a Texas-based company that had been raided by
> federal agents investigating hacking. The EFF brought a suit that
> established that e-mail is protected under the Electronic
> Communications Privacy Act. Law enforcement would be required to have
> a warrant describing each message or e-mail participant before the
> mail could be read. Later, the EFF successfully challenged the
> government's ban on the export of encryption on behalf of a
> mathematician who wanted to discuss cryptology research online. In
> that case, the court found that software code is protected as speech
> by the First Amendment.
>
> Since then, the EFF has labored to shed the image that it is little
> more than a "hacker defense fund." Today the foundation's seven-member
> board includes law professors Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University
> and Pamela Samuelson of UC Berkeley, recognized experts in technology
> law who help lend pragmatic ballast to the EFF. But the abiding
> presence of Barlow and Gilmore through EFF's sometimes rocky history
> has helped sustain the idyllic vision of cyberspace. "Yeah, I'm a
> utopian," Barlow says. "But I think I'm a relatively realistic
> utopian. I see no problem with aiming for the moon knowing you're not
> going to hit it."
>
> This may help explain Barlow's provocative prophecy on Sept. 11. In an
> e-mail to about 1,000 friends and associates, he likened the attack on
> the World Trade Center and Pentagon to "the Reichstag fire that
> provided the social opportunity for the Nazi takeover of Germany . . .
> Control freaks will dine on this day for the rest of our lives." He
> went on to write: "And please, let us forgive those who committed
> these appalling crimes. If we hate them, we will become them." (This
> from a man who, as a Republican Party official in Wyoming, helped
> elect Dick Cheney to Congress.) Barlow was speaking for himself, not
> the EFF, which tends to be more diplomatic while making some, but not
> all, of the same general points.
>
> At least Barlow hastened to note in his e-mail that he didn't think
> American authoritarians, unlike the Nazis who started the Reichstag
> fire, "had a direct role in perpetrating this mind-blistering
> tragedy." But that, he says, didn't prevent "plenty of ugly
> responses," including one death threat. Barlow laughs as he points out
> that the threat was just the sort of anonymous online speech that the
> EFF defends, at least in principle.
>
> the electronic frontier Foundation's virtual headquarters is its Web
> site (www.eff.org), which its leaders boast is one of "the most linked
> to" on the Internet. It's physical quarters started in Boston, Kapor's
> base at the time. In 1992 it moved to Washington, D.C., to focus on
> lobbying, recruiting ACLU chief legislative counsel Jerry Berman as
> its new executive director and attracting financial support from
> high-tech corporations. But the Beltway culture and the pressure to
> compromise created turmoil. Berman departed in 1994 and launched the
> like-minded Center for Democracy and Technology. The difference is
> more style than substance, with CDT focusing on lobbying and building
> consensus on Internet issues from inside the political establishment,
> and the EFF trying to effect change through the courts. Berman took
> along some staff and corporate sponsors, which now include AOL Time
> Warner, AT&T, Intel, IBM and Microsoft. He suggests that the EFF
> focuses too narrowly on litigation as a means of influence. "They're
> great in their space but they have to broaden their space." The EFF's
> pragmatists, Berman says, "will follow the yellow brick road, and the
> yellow brick road will lead back to Washington."
>
> In 1995, Kapor quit EFF's board ("I was burned out," he says now) and
> the EFF moved to San Francisco, a countercultural fit next door to the
> Silicon Valley. A brick building in the heart of the Mission District
> that once served as a church supply store is now the home of EFF, a
> bustling dot-org living amid the ghosts of dead dot-coms. It is not a
> large operation, with an annual budget of less than $2 million, 15
> employees and dozens of volunteers and interns, supported by 5,000
> members. An American flag, such a common sight these days, is
> displayed above a staff member's desk. A closer look reveals that,
> instead of white stars, the blue field is arrayed with tiny corporate
> logos.
>
> Mitch Kapor happens to be in the office this autumn day, "becoming
> reengaged." He dropped by for a briefing from EFF attorneys on the
> anti-terror legislation, preparing for a soiree of high-tech
> potentates where security and privacy will be discussed. Yes, the law
> goes too far, Kapor says, and yes, he worries that billions could be
> wasted trying to build a digital dragnet. "We need more people who
> speak Farsi," he says. "I'll vote for secure cockpit doors."
>
> This is an appeal civil libertarians are trying to make, saying there
> are smarter approaches to terrorism that won't cost billions and won't
> infringe on freedoms. Serious terrorists, they say, will be clever
> enough to slip through the dragnet while innocents are ensnared. But
> perhaps the more effective argument involves a bit of rhetorical flag
> waving. "President Bush said they attacked us because we are a free
> society," EFF executive director Shari Steele says. "If we give up our
> freedoms because of the attacks, they win." "I mean," John Gilmore is
> saying in that half-empty auditorium in San Francisco, "are civil
> rights organizations afraid to defend potential terrorists?"
>
> ACLU attorney Ann Brick musters a response. "The government is not
> releasing names, and in a way that's the good news and the bad news."
> Innocent people won't be tainted by the hint of suspicion, she says,
> but "the secrecy means no one knows who they are or why they're being
> held."
>
> Every war has its Catch-22s. Today's paradox is this: How can a
> society based on freedom protect itself by sacrificing liberties? But
> how can it protect itself without such sacrifices?
>
> On this night, Brick seeks out John Gilmore afterward to thank him for
> his question. Secrecy, they agree, is a police-state tactic that needs
> to be challenged. Gilmore takes Brick's card and offers help: "If it
> takes money, I'll send money."
>
> Later Gilmore smiles when he is asked if he thinks the EFF's work is
> more vital than ever before. No, not really, he says. "What we've been
> doing has been needed all along. You always need the Constitution.
> Right?"
>
> GRAPHIC: PHOTO: One take on the American flag in the EFF offices at
> the desk of media relations director Will Doherty. PHOTOGRAPHER: NEIL
> A. FRANCE PHOTO: (2 photos, no caption) PHOTOGRAPHER: NEIL A. FRANCE


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