Computer underground Digest Sun Jun 28, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 36 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #10.36 (Sun, Jun 28, 1998) File 1--Seized the server of Islands in the Net (Italy) File 2--"Internet Kidnapping" case update - TELECOM Digest reprint File 3--On-Line Guitar Archive closes to avoid lawsuit File 4-- A Week of Free Hacking (Telecom Digest reprint) File 5--New Mailing List - Cybercafe & Community File 6--Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli File 7--DR DOS and the Browser Wars File 8--Imaginary Gardens. The Year 2000 Fear Bug. June 11, 1998 File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 18:00:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Arturo Di Corinto Subject: File 1--Seized the server of Islands in the Net (Italy) Hi Jim, I have a very sad news. The server of Islands in the Net has been seized by the police and we need your help to ditribute widely these infos. Apart of that, any comments or suggestion from you will be very appreciated. Please insert the message below in the bulletin. Thank you *** please re-distribute widely *** Saturday, June 27th at 10:30 am the server of Islands in the Net (Isole nella Rete, an Italian non-profit association that offers communication spaces to social centres, free radios and collectives of the movement) has been seized by the Postal Police in Bologna for allegedly defamatory material posted on its system. Starting from now, and who knows for how long, the server at http://www.ecn.org is down, its web pages are no longer available online and all its e-mail services that permitted in the last years the construction of a strong solidarity network among several self-organized collectives are shut down. The seizure took place in the office of the Internet provider hosting the server, ordered by the State Prosecutor of Vicenza Paolo Pecori and was executed by officers of the Postal Police of Bologna. It is a 'preventive' seizure, claiming the crime of 'prolonged defamation' toward a travel agency in Milan. The reason for the seizure would be the web publication of a message posted by an Italian collective, accurate transcription of a printed flyer publicly distributed. This message was first sent to a mailing list (cslist) hosted by the server of Islands in the Net and then published on the web through the usual automatic procedure. The flyer (and the message posted on the mailing list and on the web as well) claimed that Turban Italia Srl, a travel agency in Milan, had strong financial ties to former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, then suggesting a boycott of the agency services in solidarity with Kurdistan people persecuted by Turkish government. Although the seizure order still does not explicitly mention any person formally charged with the crime of defamation, the judge that ordered this action evidently holds Islands in the Net liable for the content of anything hosted by its Internet server. The liability of the providers for the contents they carry is actually a very hot topic worldwide still far from a viable solution. However, the main direction is that Internet providers should NOT being hold liable for the contents they carry, at least on grounds both of technical feasibility and commercial suitability. The order of seizure of the server (and its entire content), furthermore, seems exceptionally harmful because it hits a service used by hundreds of users in Italy and abroad, completely unaware of the events that conducted to the charge. Now those users are suddenly deprived of their communication tool, without any notice or explanation. Their rights have been clearly violated. We are currently closely studying the situation in order to find the best solutions to what seems to us an extremely serious event that will, in any case, be known far and wide. For now the web server at www.ecn.org, all the mailing lists and all the e-mail addresses hosted by the server are down. We are working to set up a backup server as soon as possible. For more info and the latest news: http://strano.net/news http://geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2184/inr.html mailing list (in Italian) [send mail to including 'subscribe hackmeeting' in the body message] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 21:11:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@TELECOM-DIGEST.ORG Subject: File 2--"Internet Kidnapping" case update - TELECOM Digest reprint Source - TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 May 98 Volume 18 : Issue 80 ((MODERATORS' NOTE: For those not familiar with Pat Townson's TELECOM DIGEST, it's an exceptional resource. From the header of TcD: "TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * ======" )) ================== This is just an update on the 'Internet Kidnapping' case which was first reported here in the Digest on Wednesday March 20, 1996 (in volume 16, issue 131 'Youngster Kidnapped by Internet Chat Companion') and on Friday, April 5, 1996 (in volume 16, issue 163 'Internet Kidnap Suspect Pleads Not Guilty'). Richard Romero, believed to be 39, a native of Brazil and resident of Jacksonville, Florida in 1996 was a frequent user of Internet Relay Chat, and in several sessions on line, he posed as a fifteen year old boy named 'Kyle'. During those sessions he chatted frequently with another fifteen year old boy in Mt. Prospect, IL, a northwestern suburb of Chicago. He and the boy exchanged photos (he had a photo of some child who became 'Kyle' for his purposes) and at some point in their various conversations on line, he became himself, and began to talk with the Chicago-area boy on a regular basis via telephone. After several phone conversations and online chats, the boy decided to run away from home, and go live with Romero in Florida. At some point in their various conversations, the boy's mother found out about the online/telephone relationship and asked her son to break it off immediatly and have no further contact with Romero. Romero came to Mt. Prospect on March 18, 1996 and checked into a motel in the community where the boy met him the next day. From there, they went to the Greyhound Bus Station in Skokie, IL where they boarded a bus bound (eventually) for Jacksonville, FL. leaving at 9:15 AM. When the boy failed to appear in school that day at the regular time, school authorities contacted his mother. His mother went immediatly to check the boy's room, where she found he had packed many of his clothes in a duffle bag which was missing. He had also packed his computer into a backpack. The mother reviewed her phone bills and other items in the boy's room and found Romero's address and telephone number in Jacksonville. The rest was easy ... Police were able to detirmine that a boy matching the description of her son and Romero -- whose picture she had seen earlier when she confronted her son about his online companion -- had been seen boarding a bus for Florida that morning at the Greyhound Station in Chicago. The bus would be stopping for a dinner break just a couple hours later in Louisville, KY at about 6:00 PM. FBI agents in Louisville met the bus when it pulled in to the station there, and placed Romero under arrest. On April 5, 1996, the story in the Digest reported that Romero had chosen to remain silent in court. He appeared without an attorney and the judge (a) appointed an attorney to represent him and (b) entered a plea of not guilty. Since that point, Romero has had two trials. His first trial actually ended as a mistrial, with a jury which could not reach a decision. His second trial, which was concluded late last year, resulted in a finding of guilty by the jury on charges of kidnapping, and transport- ing a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity. At his sentencing on Thursday, May 21, 1998, Romero was sentenced to 34 years in federal prison. US District Court Judge Charles Kocoras in Chicago stated that, "Richard Romero's crimes represented the worst thing anyone can imagine," and that "Romero created a nightmare for the family, for which there is no comparable dimension in the course of human experience." Virginia Kendall, the assistant US attorney handling the case, said that Romero was the nation's first convicted 'Internet kidnapper'. (Quote marks around 'Internet kidnapper' inserted by TELECOM Digest Editor.) And that concludes still another chapter in the history of the net. When this story first appeared in the Digest in March, 1996, I received mail from a couple readers who objected to the use of the word 'Internet' as an adjective for 'kidnapper', however, since the very beginning of this saga, the accounts which have appeared in the print media -- most noticably the {Chicago Sun-Times} have routinely used the phrase when discussing Romero. I've sent written objections to the newspaper about that description, but to no avail. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:55:15 -0500 From: cal woods Subject: File 3--On-Line Guitar Archive closes to avoid lawsuit The On-Line Guitar Archive (OLGA) has closed its doors to try to avoid a lawsuit from the Harry Fox Agency, which represents various music publishers. The issues center on the legality of the files at OLGA, which give instruction in how to play song on the guitar, in chord and/or tablature format. OLGA goes back to pre-web days - it was originally an ftp archive for a newsgroup - and has remained free and community-oriented. Many many people are severly pissed off - 4000 people have signed a petition in two days! I thought this might be relevant to your site and of interest to your readers. For more info, check out the OLGA web page at http://www.olga.net/ in particular the pages ../hfa.html ../support.html ../hfa2.html thanks a lot cal woods OLGA admin ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 23:19:28 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@TELECOM-DIGEST.ORG Subject: File 4-- A Week of Free Hacking (Telecom Digest reprint) ((MODERATORS' NOTE: For those not familiar with Pat Townson's TELECOM DIGEST, it's an exceptional resource. From the header of TcD: "TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * ======" )) ================== Source - TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Jun 98 Volume 18 : Issue 99 Date--Mon, 22 Jun 1998 00:41:19 +0200 From--Paul Boots Dear reader, Over the past week Holland resembled to be the hacker's paradise of old; initiated by the "Cracking Competition" called for by ISP World Online. To blow of steam and steer my agressive energy towards positive motion I have written this small fragmented evaluation. The whole thing caused a lot of rumour. It involved the national press (papers, radio, tv and ezines) where different parties had a chance to throw their opinions, allegations, reality-distortions and a lot of mud. The press itself was a party in this whole thing as well. The image of the hacker as young innocent geek hero revisited. In the digital age all boundaries blurr; there are really no exceptions (personally I doubt that boundaries have ever been very clear). After witnessing this 'event' from very close my conclusion is a sad one: "The part of the Internet called Holland" is far from being a save and secure public infrastructure. It seems a lot of companies and individuals involved do not understand their responsibilities or even worse, are ignorant of the fact that they have certain responsiblities. Their have been multiple claims of unsecurity of an ISP, this ISP is still in a phase of denial. Nobody outside this ISP really knows what really is the case: broken into or not, full of holes or not. Details? The claims of unsecurity are not widely published in detail either. How exactly is the ISP insecure. How were claimed breakins executed? All questions remain unanswered. Is this ISP save or not? Have there been breakins? What were the intentions of claimed breakins? The fact that a major ISP is claimed to be unsecure and broken into ultimately is not just an issue for that ISP and it's customers. It will become an issue for any indivual or company dealing with this ISP or it's customers! It will become an issue for the ISP suppliers as well; hardware, software and network facilities. It will become an issue for fellow ISP's as well as their customers. After all the gigling, finger pointing and mud throwing where does this leave all people not directly involved in this 'incident'? How many steps are needed to involve you? Hackers come in as many forms as people do. This means there are hackers for hire. They make money, a lot of money. They are hired by so called governments, governments agencies, multi-nationals and other companies, organized crime, terrorist groups and probably political activist groups as well. Basically anybody with enough money and purpose. Let's assume their was in fact a professional breakin at certain ISP. This breakin happily went unnoticed due to all the fuzz around a certain "Breakin contest" called for by same ISP. Let's assume as well that this ISP remains unaware of the intruders after the dust settles. Would you still feel very secure? For the benifit of all netizens every claim of breakin (or whatever maliscious digital act) need to be taken seriously and verified. Every ISP should be forced to have its anwers regarding questions on such incidents checked and verified by trusted third parties. Of course you can only feel secure and save upto a certain level, but I rather live in an open and free society than in one plagued by paranoia and fear. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 22:45:28 -0700 (PDT) From: President b!X Subject: File 5--New Mailing List - Cybercafe & Community Cybercafe & Community Mailing List cybercafe-community@millennium-cafe.com http://www.millennium-cafe.com/cybercafe-community/ Dedicated to discussing how cybercafes can position themselves as hubs of community activity (and even activism), becoming not merely part of the global communities of the net but part of the local communities where they are located. Matters of interest may include: * Can cybercafes play some of the roles of the more traditional community computer networks, especially since cybercafes provide a physical presence for any networked community, which traditional community networks lack? * Are cybercafes valuable sites for local/neighborhood activism and political activity? * Does the identity of cybercafes as profit-making business ventures negatively impact their ability to play an active social role in the community which it serves? Welcome participants include: concerned cybercafe owners, community network specialists, community/neighborhood activists, and any other legitimately interested individual. To subscribe, send email to majoromo@millennium-cafe.com with no Subject header and a body containing only the words subscribe cybercafe-community and then respond as required to the confirmation message you will receive. There is not at present a digest version of this list. Although not available at the present, a web archive for the list will be made available at a later date. Christopher D. Frankonis, President baby-x@millennium-cafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 07:06:54 -0400 From: Jonathan Wallace Subject: File 6--Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli: The WebSENSE Censorware at Work By The Censorware Project http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/ June 21, 1998 In April, the Censorware Project reported that the WebSENSE blocking software from NetPartners Internet Solutions of San Diego was in use in the federal courts in the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits, covering twenty-two states and Guam. WebSENSE is also installed in the Orange County, Florida, and Fulton County, Indiana public libraries. (The April 22 Censorware Project report is at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/courtcen.html) said: "Its an outrage....I don't do stuff like that to my children." (Quoted in James Evans, "Blindered Justice: 9th Circuit Judges Chafe Over Software That Restricts Access to X-Rated Internet Sites", Los Angeles Daily Journal, April 27, 1998, p. 1.) After publicizing the installation of censorware in the federal court system, The Censorware Project evaluated the WebSENSE product. We wanted to determine what kind of speech the court administrators were seeking to keep from the judges' eyes. The answer: our tax dollars are being spent to protect judges, and library users, against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, a grocer, a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company--and some free speech advocates. All of these sites are blocked by WebSENSE under the Sex1, Sex2 or Adult Entertainment categories, the settings used in the federal courts and in libraries. On its website at http://www.websense.com, NetPartners brags that: [W]e do not use key words or wild cards when adding sites. Instead, we rely on our team of Internet surfers who personally check each potential site to verify the contents..... This process ensures that only those sites that actually meet the category definitions are included in the database. The Censorware Project tested WebSENSE to see if this claim could be verified. We discovered that, like any censorware product, WebSENSE blacklists numerous sites erroneously. We concentrated on sites blocked under WebSENSE's Adult, Sex1 and Sex2 categories, which are enabled in both the federal court's and Orange County library's WebSENSE implementations. The company defines Adult as "Adult Entertainment --Full or partial nudity of individuals. This might include strip clubs, lingerie, adult- oriented chat rooms, erotica, sex toys, light adult humor and literature, etc." Sex1 is defined as " (Pornography) --Heterosexual activity involving one or two persons, hard-core adult humor and literature, etc." Sex 2 is described as "(Sexuality/Lifestyles) --Heterosexual acts involving more than two people; homosexual and bisexual acts, orgies, swinging, bestiality, sadism, masochism, fetishes, etc., and related hard-core adult humor and literature." The following pages are a small sample of the sites we found inappropriately blocked by WebSENSE: The Liza Minnelli Web Site, http://cobweb.cc.oberlin.edu/~dfortune/lizapage.html, blocked as Adult Entertainment 3. Includes a discography, photos of the singer, and links to other relevant sites. The Jewish Teens page, http://www.jewishteens.com, blocked as Sex 2. Its current top page includes articles on "How to Talk to Your Kids About the Holocaust" and "Jewish Female Role Models for Our Daughters." The Laboratory of Molecular Medicine at Michigan State, http://www.msu.edu/user/zemkedan/ ("Sex2"). "The Canine Molecular Genetics project, funded by the largest private grant ever given solely for canine health, aims to use the powerful new tools of molecular genetics to prevent the hereditary diseases that affect dogs." Visionary Voices Professional Speakers Online, http://www.visionaryvoices.com/ ("Sex2"). "Visionary Voices is a powerful speakers bureau designed to bring dynamic, quality speakers into organizations and ignite their team into action." Sterling Funding, http://www.sterlingfunding.com/, a mortgage company ("Sex2"). "Tax Deductible Loans for Home Owners!" A. Bohrer's Inc., http://www.abohrer.com/, a grocer ("Sex2"). "Our product line now encompasses fresh produce as well as, a full line of frozen products, fresh meats, fresh seafood, and groceries." The Swallows, http://165.76.244.1/yakult/swallows/, a Japanese baseball team, rated Sex2. We found many Japanese-language sports sites listed as porn by WebSENSE. The Indiana Twisters, http://www.indianatwisters.com, a soccer team ("Sex2"). "Now with our indoor team joining the Blast and the Blaze, soccer fans in Indiana will get to follow the game year-round, and root for the familiar players they've come to know and love." Also blocked in the same category: the Indiana Blast, http://www.indianablast.com/: "Promotions like 'Godzilla Night'... make BLAST games fun!" We found several advocacy and freedom of speech sites inappropriately blocked as if they were porn: A copy of http://bloodstone.globalnet.co.uk/~probon/demon1.htm, The Demon Internet Policy on Censorship, ("Sex2"). Demon is a British ISP. MIT Student Association for Freedom of Expression "Censorbait" page, http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/notsee.html, blocked as "Adult". "Throughout human history, attempts have been made to suppress certain writings and pictures. This is a collection of links to material about such suppression, or material likely to be suppressed." A former location of the Safer Sex Page, http://alexander.ucsf.edu/~troyer/safesex.html ("Sex2"). This site is dedicated to AIDS prevention; the webmaster was a plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno, the case which invalidated the Communications Decency Act. The blocked page was last updated in January, 1996. "The straight dope on safer sex: what's safer? what's risky? What's the latest on HIV? How do I protect myself?" Conclusion: Like all other censorware we have examined, WebSENSE contains numerous bad blocks. Contrary to the marketing claims, clearly no human being examined these sites before they were added to the blacklist. We believe that, like most censorware companies, Net Partners uses an automated tool, called a "spider" to search the Web for sites which meet certain criteria, including the use of keywords such as "teens" or "sex". The company claims, as quoted above, that every site is then examined by a human being. The grossly inappropriate blocks listed here--Liza Minnelli, a grocer, a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company, a teens page all blocked as PORNOGRAPHY--belie this claim. In the case of the blacklisted Japanese sports sites, we believe that NetPartner's spider is picking up a common string of Japanese characters as an English-language word on its blacklist. Unseen by a human reviewer, these Japanese language sites then end up being blocked as porn. The use of WebSENSE in the court system and public libraries is clearly a violation of First Amendment rights of court employees and library users. In a recent decision in the first lawsuit brought to challenge the use of censorware in libraries, Judge Leonie Brinkema held that the Internet "more closely resembles plaintiffs' analogy of a collection of encyclopedias from which defendants have laboriously redacted portions deemed unfit for library patrons." Judge Brinkema also said that "public libraries are places of freewheeling and independent inquiry." Once having chosen to provide access to the Internet, Judge Brinkema concluded that "the Library Board may not thereafter selectively restrict certain categories of Internet speech because it disfavors their content." Mainstream Loudoun v. Loudoun County Libraries, http://www.venable.com/ORACLE/opinion.htm Under the standard Judge Brinkema suggested should be applied, censorware installed in public institutions must be "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling government interest." WebSENSE fails the "narrowly tailored" branch of the test for two related reasons: First, the profound negligence illustrated by the numerous bad blocks included in the product's blacklist; secondly, the extreme vagueness of the company's standards. For example, "Heterosexual activity involving one or two persons" as a definition of pornography would permit the censorship of almost every novel or movie currently available. As Judge Brinkema's decision forecasts, censorware will fail to stand up to the exacting standards demanded by First Amendment law. It has no place in public libraries or in the courts. A briefing paper on the unconstitutionality of such uses of censorware is available at http://www.spectacle.org/cs/library.html) It is the ultimate irony that co-workers of Judge Brinkema's in other federal circuits cannot surf the Web without going through WebSENSE, the product which protects them against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, speakers' bureaus, and mortgage companies. -------------------------------------- Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net Publisher, The Ethical Spectacle, http://www.spectacle.org Co-author, Sex Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996) http://www.spectacle.org/freespch "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."--Gandhi ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 11:10:11 -0700 From: Jeremy Lassen Subject: File 7--DR DOS and the Browser Wars One thing that that's been bugging me for some time that hasn't been brought up in the context of the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit and the browser wars is DR DOS. Does anybody remember DR DOS? Around the Time MS Dos 3.2 was the standard PC OS, a competitor released a clone product (DR DOS) that included advanced features such as a text editor, undo commands and a host of other utilities that enhanced the operating system. While Microsoft was putting all of its eggs into its windows basket, someone else beat them to market with a superior DOS product. Just as sales of DR DOS began to take off, Microsoft released its windows 3.1 upgrade. Windows 3.0 had taken the PC world by storm but it still had a LOT of problems that windows 3.1 promised to fix. Microsoft decided this was the perfect opportunity to eliminate the DR DOS competition, by including a DOS check in Windows 3.1. While windows 3.0 ran just fine on DR DOS, Windows 3.1 refused to run. It wasn't a technical matter, it was simply a version check. And all the companies and individual users that invested in DR DOS got burned, and had to buy MS DOS in order to keep their windows running Sure, a couple months later, DR released a patch that allowed you to run win 3.1 on DR DOS, but the message from Microsoft to the corporate and private world was clear -- buy only MS products, or we will screw you. This little history lesson is important, because it demonstrates what Microsoft is willing to do in order to gain/keep market share. A lot of people think the browser war is unimportant -- But what if Microsoft DOES win the browser war, and Internet Explore/Win 98 is the only way to access the web from a windows based PC system? Would it be possible for Microsoft to put hooks into Explorer such that it only displayed web pages that were hosted on NT-web servers? How about if they simply added a delaying mechanism such that Apache, Netscape and other competing web server's web pages were displayed significantly slower then NT based web pages? Or what if they simply required some new piece of code to exist on all web servers in order for Explorer to display the pages -- a piece of code which Microsoft would be happy to license to its competitors for a small fee? Does this sound paranoid? Microsoft justified its windows 3.1 version check by saying "we can't garuntee that Microsoft products will work with competitors software." This justification would be equally applicable to Internet Explorer and competing web server software. In case you're wondering, DR DOS never recovered -- its innovation and nimbleness in getting a superior product to the market place resulted in Microsoft destroying it with a separate product. (we had to wait until MS DOS 5.0 for all the features of DR DOS). Now that Microsoft has even greater power in the marketplace, and now that Microsoft has turned its full attention to the Internet, I see no reason why they won't pursue the above strategy if they DO control your browser. And as much as I dislike government intervention in the computer industry, I see the anti-trust lawsuit as the only way to prevent Microsoft from using browser dominance as a lock that would keep companies from competing and innovating in the web server market. Web Servers are just ONE area where Microsoft stands to gain leverage and market power if it controls the browser. It is easy to imagine other areas. I'm sure Bill Gates's imagination is running wild. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 13:27:39 -0500 From: Richard Thieme Subject: File 8--Imaginary Gardens. The Year 2000 Fear Bug. June 11, 1998 The Year 2000 Fear Bug by Richard Thieme Dear Richard, I have a dear friend whose mother is all freaked out about the computer 2000 thing. She is thinking about shutting down bank accounts, accumulating cash, and taking other drastic actions because of stuff she's heard on late night talk radio. Is my friend's mom going overboard or are her fears justified? Dear Reader: I don't know. I do know that people who know about the reality of the situation are anxious. The treasurer of a neighboring county told me this week that embedded chips in their traffic lights and trucks will shut down and must be replaced. Is that good news because they can fix it or bad news because it might be true for power plants and communications systems around the world? Will there be heat and light, food delivery, airplane flights? Will the government continue to function? The economy has never been better, but if we succumb to uncertainty and fear, the markets will plunge. Are electronic deposits safe? Paper money? Where will you store your platinum and gold? In bank vaults? Or the basement? Will you hoard food too and guns and ammo or should we ask our cities how they plan to defend us when the hordes invade, armed to the teeth, looking for food? This is the Year 2000 Fear Bug, spreading like a virulent flu. Are rational (but guilty) people secretly afraid that their undeserved prosperity will end? Are they succumbing to the primordial fear of the end of the world? Is this how a high-tech society comes to Armageddon? In the absence of truth, we make it up. The earth IS a risky place, and we have lived so long in a bubble of prolonged prosperity that we have forgotten how difficult life can be. But it is also true that human beings rise to the challenge. When we short-circuit our fear, we manifest our capacity for heroic resilience. We may not be able to fix all the systems, but we can prepare ourselves for dealing with whatever comes. Given that we lack the x-ray vision that would enable us to see the full truth, what should a prudent person do? We should not locate our security in the form in which our money is stored nor seek "truth" in tabloid journalism. We ought to fear our fear more than the mountains we might have to climb. We are so much more than our fears. We are a possibility for reasonable thinking, selfless collective effort, and heroic response to adversity. Our security lies in remembering that and acting on that when times get tough. ******************************************************************** Imaginary Gardens is a daily reflection on techno/spirituality -- the interaction between ourselves, computer technology, and the ultimate concerns of our lives. To subscribe to Imaginary Gardens, send email to rthieme@thiemeworks.com with "subscribe gardens" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send an email to rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the word "unsubscribe gardens" in the body of the message. Imaginary Gardens and the weekly column, Islands in the Clickstream, are archived at the ThiemeWorks web site at http://www.thiemeworks.com. Copyright 1998 Richard Thieme. All rights reserved. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1998 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. To UNSUB, send a one-line message: UNSUB CU-DIGEST Send it to CU-DIGEST-REQUEST@WEBER.UCSD.EDU (NOTE: The address you unsub must correspond to your From: line) CuD is readily accessible from the Net: UNITED STATES: ftp.etext.org (206.252.8.100) in /pub/CuD/CuD Web-accessible from: http://www.etext.org/CuD/CuD/ ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/ aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/ world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/ wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/ EUROPE: nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/CuD/CuD/ (Finland) ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom) The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the Cu Digest WWW site at: URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/ COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of diverse views. CuD material may be reprinted for non-profit as long as the source is cited. Authors hold a presumptive copyright, and they should be contacted for reprint permission. It is assumed that non-personal mail to the moderators may be reprinted unless otherwise specified. Readers are encouraged to submit reasoned articles relating to computer culture and communication. Articles are preferred to short responses. Please avoid quoting previous posts unless absolutely necessary. DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent the views of the moderators. Digest contributors assume all responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not violate copyright protections. ------------------------------ End of Computer Underground Digest #10.36 ************************************