EFFector Vol. 12, No. 1 Feb. 11, 1999 editor@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
IN THE 145th ISSUE OF EFFECTOR (now with over 14,000 subscribers!):
* Second Preliminary Victory Against COPA ("CDA-2")
* EFF & Other Groups Oppose New Measures to Undermine Freedom of
Information
* The Eighth Annual International EFF Pioneer Awards: Call For
Nominations
* Calif. Library Filtering Case - Another Victory for Online Free
Speech
* ALERT: Protest Jailing of Online Chinese Democracy Activists
* EFF's DES Cracker puts final nail in coffin of insecure government
Data Encryption Standard
* Administrivia
For more information on EFF activities & alerts: http://www.eff.org
_________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6:00 PM, Monday, February 1, 1999
Netizens Safe from Prosecution Under Net Censorship Law
Philadelphia Judge Bars Enforcement of Child Online Protection Act
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - In a case brought by civil liberties groups to
overturn the government's new law aimed at censoring content on the
Internet, District Court Judge Lowell Reed issued a preliminary
injunction protecting Internet speakers from prosecution and fines. In
addition, Judge Reed denied the government's motion to dismiss the
plaintiffs' complaint. The case was filed by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"The content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought," wrote
Judge Reed in his decision this afternoon. "[P]erhaps we do the minors
of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will
with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their
protection."
"In granting our preliminary injunction, Judge Reed has found that
plaintiffs are likely to win this case on its merits, that Internet
users would suffer irreparable harm if the statute were enforced, and
that our First Amendment rights to communicate would be stifled,"
explained EFF staff attorney Shari Steele. "The judge clearly
understood the importance of his ruling here, and we're obviously
pleased with the results."
Enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton last
December, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) makes it a federal
crime to "knowingly" communicate "for commercial purposes" material
considered "harmful to minors." Penalties include fines of up to
$50,000 for each day of violation, and up to six months in prison if
convicted of a crime. The government may also bring a civil suit with
penalties of $50,000 for each violation in addition to criminal
penalties.
The court's ruling today denied the government's motion to dismiss
while granting EFF and the other plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary
injunction. The government had claimed that the plaintiffs did not
have standing because they were not commercial pornographers. The
court held that the law, which imposed liability on any speaker for
making any communication for commercial purposes that was "harmful to
minors," was not limited to pornographers and was a violation of the
free speech rights of adults." In addition, the court found that there
was nothing in the text of the law that would be applicable to only
pornographers, and that COPA could apply to any Web site that contains
only some material considered "harmful to minors."
"The court has protected Internet speakers from prosecution for
engaging in constitutionally protected speech," said Steele.
"Plaintiffs in this case are not pornographers; they offer resources
on obstetrics, gynecology, sexual health, visual art, poetry, gay and
lesbian issues, books, photographs and online magazines." She added,
"Judge Reed has recognized what the Supreme Court has said time and
time again - the free speech rights of adults may not be reduced to
allow them to read only what is acceptable for children."
EFF joined the case on behalf of its members who fear prosecution or
other enforcement under the statute for communicating, sending, or
displaying material "harmful to minors" in a manner available to
persons under age 18 for commercial purposes. None of EFF's members
can prevent their communications from reaching minors without also
preventing adults from accessing their speech.
"COPA is a vague, overbroad, and largely ineffective law, using our
children as hostages," said Jon Noring, publisher of OmniMedia Digital
Publishing and an EFF member named in the case. "From a business
perspective, it would gravely impact the emerging electronic book
industry, effectively closing down certain business models among U.S.
electronic book companies, and leaving them to foreign competitors who
will not be so constrained." He concluded that "COPA is just a bad law
that benefits nobody."
Rufus Griscom, another EFF member named in the case and editor of the
award-winning online magazine, Nerve: Literate Smut, said "We're
delighted this nation is not being marched into nursery school, as
threatened."
"My biggest concern is that COPA threatens the free flow of
non-pornographic information that is nevertheless valuable to adults
and older minors," said EFF member Bill Boushka, the publisher of High
Productivity Publishing who submitted an affidavit in the case. "While
I could conceivably afford some kind of age verification system for my
site, the mechanics of the process would destroy the effectiveness of
my site in providing openly available material for researchers, law
students, political activists, and even legislators."
Complete case materials and the judge's decision are available on the
EFF Web site at:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/COPA
ABOUT EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the first civil liberties
organization devoted to ensuring that the Internet remains a truly
global vehicle for free speech, and that the privacy and security of
all on-line communications are preserved. Founded in 1990 as a
nonprofit, public interest organization, EFF is based in San
Francisco, California and maintains an extensive archive of
information on free speech, privacy, and encryption policy at
http://www.eff.org.
CONTACTS
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Alex Fowler, Director of Public Affairs (San Francisco, CA)
E-mail afowler@eff.org
http://www.eff.org
Shari Steele, Staff Counsel (Washington, DC)
E-mail ssteele@eff.org
http://www.eff.org
EFF Members Named in the Case
Bill Boushka, High Productivity Publishing (Minneapolis, MN)
E-mail jboushka@aol.com
http://www.hppub.com
Jon Noring, OmniMedia Digital Publishing (South Jordan, UT)
E-mail noring@netcom.net
http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia
Rufus Griscom, Nerve: Literate Smut (New York, NY)
E-mail rufus@nerve.com
http://www.nerve.com
Gabriela Sankovich, Good Vibrations (San Francisco, CA)
E-mail goodvibe@well.com
http://www.goodvibes.com
More information on the case can be found at:
* EFF's "Child On-line Protection Act" Legal Challenge (ACLU v. Reno
II) Archive - you can think of this archive as the "COPA Cabana" -
check back periodically for updates:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/COPA
or simply visit the Blue Ribbon Campaign for Free Speech Online
page for the latest news.:
http://www.eff.org/br
* The judge's temporary restraining order (TRO) decision (made COPA
unenforceable until the more stringent preliminary injunction was
issued):
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/COPA/HTML/19981120_tro_order.html
* Our memorandum in support of the motion for a TRO (explains the
basis of our case and why the law is bad, in legal terms):
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/COPA/HTML/19981022_plaintiffs_tro_memo.html
_________________________________________________________________
EFF & Other Groups Oppose New Measures to Undermine Freedom of Information
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 10, 1999
Groups Supporting Openness Oppose Limits on Access to Public Information
Letter Adds Voices to Environmentalists' Outcry on Restrictions to the Public
Right-to-Know
WASHINGTON - February 10, 1999 - Yesterday, a group of civil
liberties, academic, journalist and public interest organizations sent
a letter to Representative Thomas Bliley, Chairman of the House
Commerce Committee, expressing concern over proposals to limit the
availability of public information about the potential for accidents
at chemical plants (EPA's unclassified Worst Case Scenarios data) on
the Internet. The text of this letter is available at:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Activism/FOIA/HTML/19990210_bliley_letter.html
This information has been readily available through the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) providing citizens with critical insight to
assess and improve the safety of their communities. As part of the
Clean Air Act, the information was to be made more readily accessible.
Under pressure from the FBI, Chairman Bliley and the chemical
industry, the EPA has stepped back from its initial proposal to
provide public access to the data through the agency's Web site. New
proposals would limit the basic access to this public information.
"Rather than taking advantage of the Internet's democratic potential
to allow citizens the ability to access public information," Ari
Schwartz, Policy Analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology,
said "these proposals view the Internet and its power to distribute
information as a threat."
The letter, signed by the American Association of Law Libraries, the
American Civil Liberties Union, Association of Newspaper Editors,
Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation
and OMB Watch, urged the Chairman not to retreat from the substantial
gains made in ensuring that citizens have access to public information
to monitor their government and its activities through the FOIA.
Recent amendments to FOIA, EFOIA, encouraged and promulgated the use
of communications technology to spread public information ensuring
greater openness. "The United States is a democracy, and the Freedom
of Information Act plays an essential role in guaranteeing that
citizens gain access to information that empowers us to make educated
choices, " Shari Steele, Director of Legal Services at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, explained. "Proposals like this one undermine the
very core of our society and are a threat to the exercise of true
liberty."
The groups' letter asked Bliley for more comprehensive hearings on the
subject to include members of all interested communities. A
legislative proposal is expected in the coming weeks. "This is just
the beginning of a battle to protect the ability to access public
information on the Internet," Schwartz said.
For More Information
* EFF's Freedom of Information & Open Government Archive:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Activism/FOIA
_________________________________________________________________
THE EIGHTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL EFF PIONEER AWARDS:
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
*Please free to redistribute this notice in appropriate forums.*
In every field of human endeavor,there are those dedicated to
expanding knowledge, freedom, efficiency and utility. Along the
electronic frontier, this is especially true. To recognize this, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation established the Pioneer Awards for
deserving individuals and organizations.
The Pioneer Awards are international and nominations are open to all.
The deadline for nominations this year is March 10, 1999. Nominations
must be sent to pioneer@eff.org.
In March of 1992, the first EFF Pioneer Awards were given in
Washington D.C. The winners were: Douglas C. Engelbart, Robert Kahn,
Jim Warren, Tom Jennings, and Andrzej Smereczynski. The 1993 Pioneer
Award recipients were Paul Baran, Vinton Cerf, Ward Christensen, Dave
Hughes and the USENET software developers, represented by the
software's originators Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. The 1994 Pioneer
Award winners were Ivan Sutherland, Whitfield Diffie and Martin
Hellman, Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Lee Felsenstein, Bill
Atkinson, and the WELL. The 1995 Pioneer Award winners were Philip
Zimmermann, Anita Borg, and Willis Ware. The 1996 Pioneer Award
winners were Robert Metcalfe, Peter Neumann, Shabbir Safdar and
Matthew Blaze. The 1997 winners were Marc Rotenberg, Johan "Julf"
Helsingius, and (special honorees) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil. The
1998 winners were Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Barbara
Simons.
The 8th Annual Pioneer Awards will be given in Washington, D.C., at
the 9th Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in April of
1999.
All nominations will be reviewed by a panel of judges chosen for their
knowledge of computer-based communications and the technical, legal,
and social issues involved in computer technology and computer
communications.
This year's judges are Mike Godwin, Bruce Koball, Hal Abelson, Lorrie
Cranor, Phil Agre, and Simona Nass.
There are no specific categories for the Pioneer Awards, but the
following guidelines apply:
1. The nominees must have made a substantial contribution to the
health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based
communications.
2. The contribution may be technical, social, economic or cultural.
3. Nominations may be of individuals, systems, or organizations in
the private or public sectors.
4. Nominations are open to all, and you may nominate more than one
recipient. You may nominate yourself or your organization.
5. All nominations, to be valid, must contain your reasons, however
brief, for nominating the individual or organization, along with a
means of contacting the nominee, and your own contact number.
Anonymous nominations will be allowed, but we prefer to be able to
contact the nominating parties in the event that we need more
information..
6. Every person or organization, with the single exception of EFF
staff members, are eligible for Pioneer Awards.
7. Persons or representatives of organizations receiving a Pioneer
Award will be invited to attend the ceremony at the Foundation's
expense.
You may nominate as many as you wish, but please use one form per
nomination. You may return the forms to us via email to:
pioneer@eff.org
Just tell us the name of the nominee, the phone number or email
address at which the nominee can be reached, and, most important, why
you feel the nominee deserves the award. You may attach supporting
documentation in Microsoft Word or other standard binary formats.
Please include your own name, address, phone number, and e-mail
address.
We're looking for the Pioneers of the Electronic Frontier that have
made and are making a difference. Thanks for helping us find them,
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
_________________________________________________________________
Calif. Library Filtering Case
Another Victory for Online Free Speech
Alameda County Superior Court judge George Hernandez dismissed the
lawsuit of Livermore, CA, resident "Kathleen R.", who, with the
backing of a religious organization, had filed suit against the
Livermore public library in an attempt to force the library to install
filtering software. The judge did not issue a detailed opinion.
This case is opposite, in some respects, to the Loudoun Co., VA,
library filtering case, in which local parents and other parties
successfully sued the county library board to have a pro-censorship
filtering policy ruled unconstitutional.
The Livermore case, by contrast, was an attempt by a single area
resident to impose filtering where it did not already exist.
Both cases raise the principal problematic issues of Internet content
blocking in public libraries:
* Filtering software does not block all "objectionable" material,
only some of it, with the result that mandatory imposition of
filters fails a constitutionality test that requires that such
restrictions be reasonably effective.
* Filtering software blocks much material that is not
"objectionable" under any rational definition - material that is
constitutionally protected even for the youngest minors. Sometimes
this misblockage is accidental, while other times it is a
politically motivated decision by the software producer.
* Libraries exist to provide access to material, not to act as
surrogate parents.
* It is up to parents to set rules for what their children may read
in the library or online, and to see to it that these rules are
obeyed. It is not the function of our government to discipline our
children for us.
* "Objectionable" cannot be defined. It is physically impossible for
these filtering products to only block access to material that a
court has found illegal, obscene, harmful to minors, or otherwise
legitimately censorable under the First Amendment.
* Mandatory filtering in libraries contradicts the Supreme Court's
finding in ACLU v. Reno that the Internet has at least as much
First Amendment protection as other media, including books.
Despite these clear signals from the federal courts on both coasts
that imposition of Net filters in public libraries is
unconstitutional, Congress will again be considering bills that will
attempt to force such libraries to use content-blocking software
nationwide.
For more information, see: C|Net News.Com article on the Livermore
case ruling:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,30979,00.html
EFF's Loudoun Co. Library Case Archive (major documents):
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/Loudoun_library
Censorware.net's Loudoun Co. Library Case Archive (all documents):
http://censorware.net/legal/loudoun
EFF's Library Filtering Archive:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Censorship/Academic_edu/Library_filtering
_________________________________________________________________
Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Freedom of Speech:
ALERT: Protest Jailing of Online Chinese Democracy Activists
Mainland Chinese software engineer Lin Hai was arrested on March 25,
1998 for providing 30,000 e-mail addresses to a pro-democracy Internet
newsletter. On January 20, 1999, he was sentenced to two years in
prison. Physicist and dissident Wang Youcai was sentenced on December
21, 1998 to 11 years in prison; the charges against Wang included
trying to organize a peaceful opposition party and sending e-mail
messages to dissidents in the U.S. For more detailed background
information, see:
http://www.dfn.org/Alerts/freesci/freesci.html
Digital Freedom Network and the Electronic Frontier Foundation urge
you to send protest letters to the Chinese media and goverment, and
you can do this right from the Blue Ribbon Campaign's Web site, using
and e-mail form (see Action Item #1 at the site):
http://www.eff.org/br
_________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, January 19, 1999
EFF's DES Cracker puts final nail in coffin of insecure government Data
Encryption Standard
RSA Code-Breaking Contest Again Won by Distributed.Net and Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF)
DES Challenge III Broken in Record 22 Hours
RSA DATA SECURITY CONFERENCE, SAN JOSE, CA -- Breaking the previous
record of 56 hours, Distributed.Net, a worldwide coalition of computer
enthusiasts, worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF)
"DES Cracker," a specially designed supercomputer, and a worldwide
network of nearly 100,000 PCs on the Internet, to win RSA Data
Security's DES Challenge III in a record-breaking 22 hours and 15
minutes. The worldwide computing team deciphered a secret message
encrypted with the United States government's Data Encryption Standard
(DES) algorithm using commonly available technology. From the floor of
the RSA Data Security Conference & Expo, a major data security and
cryptography conference being held in San Jose, Calif., EFF's DES
Cracker and the Distributed.Net computers were testing 245 billion
keys per second when the key was found.
First adopted by the federal government in 1977, the 56-bit DES
algorithm is still widely used by financial services and other
industries worldwide to protect sensitive on-line applications,
despite growing concerns about its vulnerability. RSA has been
sponsoring a series of DES-cracking contests to highlight the need for
encryption stronger than the current 56-bit standard widely used to
secure both U.S. and international commerce.
"As today's demonstration shows, we are quickly reaching the time when
anyone with a standard desktop PC can potentially pose a real threat
to systems relying on such vulnerable security," said Jim Bidzos,
president of RSA Data Security, Inc. "It has been widely known that
56-bit keys, such as those offered by the government's DES standard,
offer only marginal protection against a committed adversary. We
congratulate Distributed.Net and the EFF for their achievement in
breaking DES in record-breaking time."
As part of the contest, RSA awarded a $10,000 prize to the winners at
a special ceremony held during the RSA Conference. The goal of this
DES Challenge contest was not only to recover the secret key used to
DES-encrypt a plain-text message, but to do so faster than previous
winners in the series. As before, a cash prize was awarded for the
first correct entry received. The amount of the prize was based on how
quickly the key was recovered.
"The diversity, volume and growth in participation that we have seen
at Distributed.Net not only demonstrates the incredible power of
distributed computing as a tool, but also underlines the fact that
concern over cryptography controls is widespread," said David McNett,
co-founder of Distributed.Net.
"EFF believes strongly in providing the public and industry with
reliable and honest evaluations of the security offered by DES. We
hope the result of today's DES Cracker demonstration delivers a
wake-up call to those who still believe DES offers adequate security,"
said John Gilmore, EFF co-founder and project leader. "The
government's current encryption policies favoring DES risk the
security of the national and world infrastructure."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation began its investigation into DES
cracking in 1997 to determine just how easily and cheaply a
hardware-based DES Cracker (i.e., a code-breaking machine to crack the
DES code) could be constructed.
Less than one year later and for well under U.S. $250,000, the EFF,
using its DES Cracker, entered and won the RSA DES Challenge II-2
competition in less than 3 days, proving that DES is not very secure
and that such a machine is inexpensive to design and build.
"Our combined worldwide team searched more than 240 billion keys every
second for nearly 23 hours before we found the right 56-bit key to
decrypt theanswer to the RSA Challenge [III], which was 'See you in
Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999),'" said Gilmore. The
reason this message was chosen is that the Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES) initiative proposes replacing DES using encryption keys
of at least 128 bits.
RSA's original DES Challenge was launched in January 1997 with the aim
of demonstrating that DES offers only marginal protection against a
committed adversary. This was confirmed when a team led by Rocke
Verser of Loveland, Colorado recovered the secret key in 96 days,
winning DES Challenge I. Since that time, improved technology has made
much faster exhaustive search efforts possible. In February 1998,
Distributed.Net won RSA's DES Challenge II-1 with a 41-day effort, and
in July, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won RSA's DES
Challenge II-2 when it cracked the DES message in 56 hours.
_________________________________________________________________
EFF has prepared a background document on the EFF DES Cracker, which
includes the foreword by Whitfield Diffie to "Cracking DES." See:
http://www.eff.org/DEScracker/.
The book can be ordered for worldwide delivery from O'Reilly &
Associates at:
http://www.ora.com/catalog/crackdes
or call 1 800 998 9938 (US-only), or +1 707 829 0515.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the leading civil
liberties organizations devoted to ensuring that the Internet remains
the world's first truly global vehicle for free speech, and that the
privacy and security of all on-line communication is preserved.
Founded in 1990 as a nonprofit, public interest organization, EFF is
based in San Francisco, California. EFF maintains an extensive archive
of information on encryption policy, privacy, and free speech at:
http://www.eff.org.
_________________________________________________________________
Administrivia
EFFector is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
1550 Bryant St., Suite 725
San Francisco CA 94103-4832 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
Editor: Stanton McCandlish, Program Director/Webmaster
(editor@eff.org)
Membership & donations: membership@eff.org
General EFF, legal, policy or online resources queries: ask@eff.org
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged.
Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To
reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for
their express permission. Press releases and EFF announcements may be
reproduced individually at will.
To subscribe to EFFector via email, send message BODY of:
subscribe effector-online
to listserv@eff.org, which will add you to a subscription list for
EFFector. To unsubscribe, send a similar message body, like so:
unsubscribe effector-online
to the same address.
Please ask editor@eff.org to manually add you to or remove you from
the list if this does not work for some reason.
Back issues are available at:
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector
To get the latest issue, send any message to
effector-reflector@eff.org (or er@eff.org), and it will be mailed to
you automagically. You can also get:
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector/current.html
[end]
