From Wetware Diversions:
--------------------
Item 17 by Eric P. Scott (epsilon), on Sat, Mar 10, 1990 (19:45)
Is Wetware Diversions next in line at the executioner's chopping block?
Jolnet was a public access UNIX system (not unlike Wetware
Diversions) that was seized as evidence by federal authorities
investigating its use for illegal activities by a group calling
itself the Legion of Doom. Several other similar systems have
also been shut down, including attctc, which wet once had a uucp
connection to under its former name _killer_. My understanding
is that in none of these cases were the owners/operators aware of
what their users were doing. These are people of integrity, and
in their interest to protect the privacy and individual rights of
their user community, found themselves at odds with a government
that didn't appreciate this.
Wet has been an "open" system for as long as I've been associated
with it; while the ability of anyone to run "newuser" and receive
instant access does much for accessibility, it also means that we
are vulnerable to the same kind of abuse. Wet represents a
substantial investment in many people's time (and one person in
--More--
particular's money). When a large number of our users are
schooled on the streets [i.e. BBSes], their ethics and morals may
not be in line with our best interests. There is no practical
way given the size of the user community that we could even
consider monitoring users' _private_ activities on this system,
nor would I want any part in such an intrusion.
Faced with this situation, there aren't many attractive choices:
continue as we are, and risk losing everything, or impose
restrictions that could severely impair our efforts to reduce the
financial burden Wetware Diversions creates. Unlike the big-time
(and big-cost) commercial timesharing services, we do not have
the resources to pay lawyers to argue for years.
The following appeared in TELECOM Digest; an electronic publication
available through the usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.
TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Feb 90 11:00:00 CST Special: Wither Jolnet?
Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson
Fate of Jolnet (David Svoboda)
What Happened To Jolnet? (David Tamkin)
Ramifications of Jolnet's Trouble (Bill Kuykendall via David Tamkin)
[ Two segments deleted as they are not germane to this item --EPS]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 10:04:49 CST
From: David Svoboda <motcid!violet!svoboda@uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Fate of Jolnet
Reply-To: motcid!svoboda@uunet.uu.net
Moderator said, at sometime or other:
>[Moderator's Note: ... No further discussion here, please.
>I have no desire to see eecs.nwu.edu wind up like the late Jolnet,
>which it is doubtful will be back on line anytime soon. PT]
What exactly happened to Jolnet? I have not been able to read any
netnews for a while, so I may have missed it.
Dave Svoboda, Motorola CID, RTSG, 1510 W Shure Dr., Arlington Heights, IL
uucp => {uunet|mcdchd|gatech|att}!motcid!svoboda 60004
internet => motcid!svoboda@chg.mcd.mot.com
Don't listen to me, I'm just a puppet of individuality.
[Moderator's Note: What happened was the feds cracked down on Jolnet when
they discovered cracker/phreak messages in the files there. They shut him
down and seized all the equipment; quite rudely, I might add, based on
David Tamkin's report which follows. David was on line at Jolnet when
the feds raided the Andrews' home and pulled the plug. PT]
------------------------------
From: David Tamkin <point!dattier@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Subject: What Happened To Jolnet?
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 10:44:45 CST
Gordon Meyer wrote in TELECOM Digest, Volume 10, Issue 118:
| Could someone post a summary of what "troubles" Jolnet has seen
| because of this LoD/e991 flap? Was it closed down, and by what agency
| and under what charges? From my understanding it merely acted as a
| conduit of the information and closing it down would be akin to
| shutting down CompuServe if somone sent a copy of WordPerfect to my
| mail box.
That is what the rest of us understand as well: that Rich Andrews (the
system administrator of Jolnet) has not been charged, but that his
equipment has been seized as evidence. Jolnet served as a news and
mail feed for several downstream sites, including a junior college, so
those have had to do without links to the rest of the net or had to
find new feeds.
I was logged into Jolnet on the afternoon of February 3, reading
netnews with rn. The article selection prompt began to show "(Mail)"
but I kept reading news, figuring that I'd check mail when I was done.
I was starting to display a new article, and after its header I
pressed the space bar to see the first page. Before any text of the
article came through there was a system message that the box was
coming down in two minutes and that we should log off immediately to
prevent corruption of files; that was followed by the first page of
the netnews article, the pager prompt, and NO CARRIER. So I have
unread mail there as well as some personally important files; I'll
probably never see either.
Jolnet has a Lockport mailing address but an Orland Park telephone
number, so it probably is in Homer Township of Will County. I have
been under the impression that its location is the Andrews' home.
Rich pretty much ran it alone, with some assistance from two of his
sons. I'd been a user there since January 29, 1989, and I had met
Rich once, that being June 10, 1989, at the home of another local
public site administrator.
Rich was always a person who stayed out of controversies; he got along
just fine with people who were at each other's throats. Other site
administrators I have known love to jump into the fray or to forment
the trouble in the first place, so it's rather sadly ironic that it
was a nice, easygoing fellow like Rich who got burned. It's hard to
say that it was his very lack of interference that got him in trouble,
since all the illegally disseminated information appears to have been
spread via email.
Jolnet's login lines have gone unanswered since February 3, 1990.
There is a contact phone number in its map entry, but I have not tried
it yet. It looks like a business number in form, and I have the
feeling that it, too, would ring without answer now. The Andrews'
home telephone number is unlisted, and I don't know it. It's probably
the only line still operating at Jolnet's location.
On Sunday, February 4, there started to be news about the 911 break-in
with references to "a Lockport, Illinois, bulletin board system."
When Jolnet had been down for several days I started to wonder whether
there was a connection, since after all, Jolnet's mailing address was
in Lockport. By that Thursday there was talk about it on Chinet (a
public site on the Northwest Side of Chicago), stating that Jolnet had
been closed by federal agents because of its involvement.
Jolnet was an AKCSNet site, but only a handful of AKCS posts came from
there, mostly from three or four of us. Few people posted to Usenet
from there either, at least as far as I could see in the groups I
read. (In fact, except for control messages from Rich, test messages,
and chi.forsale and chi.wanted [Chicago area groups], I cannot
remember the last time I saw a Usenet article from Jolnet that I
didn't write.)
A large part of its usage came from silent readers, from uucp
connections, from people who were writing, compiling, and testing
code, and from people playing games like nethack and yahtzee on line.
I had the impression that a significant group of the gaming crowd were
friends of the Andrews' boys, but I never really knew. Others PCP'ed
to Jolnet (it was dialable from ILCHI) from across the country and
there were a few accounts with addresses in other countries. In
total, there were 5% of the users of whom I could say that I knew what
they used Jolnet for. If someone had asked me whether kracking and
phreaking information was being exchanged there, I'd have said, "Not
that I know; maybe in email but certainly not in public postings."
Now I'd have to change that to "So I heard after it shut down but not
that I ever saw while it was still running."
Jolnet was my net.home; I'm now reading TELECOM Digest on Point and
netnews on Gagme. I've decided to write to Rich Andrews on paper and
ask what is going on with his family and his legal situation, but I
cannot guarantee when or whether he will respond.
Bill Kuykendall (pronounced "Kirk'ndall"), administrator of The Point
(point.UUCP, from which I am submitting this), put up a system news
item about how Jolnet's problems will affect The Point. He's given me
permission to send it to the Digest, but this submission is already
getting very long, so I am sending it under separate cover.
David W. Tamkin dattier@point.UUCP ...{ddsw1,obdient!vpnet}!point!dattier
BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591
P. O. Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 Other point users may disagree.
------------------------------
From: David Tamkin <point!dattier@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Ramifications of Jolnet's Trouble
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 11:11:07 CST
Reply-To: point!wek@ddsw1.uucp
The Point is a public access AKCS and UNIX site in Chicago, Illinois.
On Wednesday, February 21, 1990, its administrator, Bill Kuykendall,
posted the following as a system news item in the wake of the seizure
of jolnet. With his permission I am submitting it to TELECOM Digest.
Mr. Kuykendall requests copies of any responses. He is reachable at
wek@point.UUCP or ddsw1!point!wek.
----------------- text of announcement follows ---------------------
New Restrictions at The Point
-----------------------------
By now you may already be aware that 'Jolnet', one of The Point's
sister systems on Usenet, has been seized as evidence in a prosecution
of one or more users of the system. As far as I know, no allegations
of wrongdoing have been made against Rich Andrews, Jolnet's owner, at
this time. Nevertheless, Rich is without his computer until the
authorities see fit to give it back to him.
They may of course, opt to press some charge against him as an
accomplice to the crimes of the guy they're really after. There is no
guarantee that Rich's life will return to normal any time in the near
future. We all wish him the best, believing that he's done nothing
wrong -- except perhaps in being too generous with his personal
computing resources, and trusting that appreciative users would use
his system for the purposes he offered it for.
Today, there is no law or precedent which affords me, as owner and
system administrator of The Point, the same legal rights that other
common carriers have against prosecution should some other party (you)
use my property (The Point) for illegal activities. That worries me.
By comparison, AT&T cannot be held liable should someone use their
phone lines to transmit military secrets to an enemy. Likewise, Acme
Trucking is not vulnerable to drug trafficking charges should they
pull a sealed trailer of cocaine to some destination unknowingly. Yet
somehow, I am presumed to be cognizant of the contents of every public
message, mailed message, and file upload that passes through this
public access system. On a system this size, that may be nearly a
gigabyte (1+ Billion characters!) of information a year.
I fully intend to explore the legal questions raised here. In my
opinion, the rights to free assembly and free speech would be
threatened if the owners of public meeting places were charged with
the responsibility of policing all conversations held in the hallways
and lavatories of their facilities for references to illegal
activities.
Under such laws, all privately owned meeting places would be forced
out of existence, and the right to meet and speak freely would vanish
with them. The common sense of this reasoning has not yet been
applied to electronic meeting places by the legislature. This issue
must be forced, or electronic bulletin boards will cease to exist.
In the meantime, I intend to continue to operate The Point, with as
little risk to myself as possible. Therefore, I am implementing a few
new policies:
o No user will be allowed to post any message, public or private, until
his name and address has been adequately verified. Most users in the
metropolitan Chicago area have already been validated through the
telephone number directory service provided by Illinois Bell. Those of
you who received validation notices stating that your information had
not been checked due to a lack of time on my part will now have to
wait until I get time before being allowed to post.
Out of state addresses cannot be validated in the manner above. I am
considering a U.S. Mail registration scheme, but I am skeptical about
the amount of additional work involved, and the potential ways to beat
the system. The short term solution for users outside of the Chicago
area is to find a system closer to home than The Point.
o Some of the planned enhancements to The Point are simply not going to
happen until the legal issues are resolved. There will be no shell
access and no file upload/download facility for now.
The philosophy behind these changes is simple. I cannot (and would
not want to) censor the content of all users' messages on The Point.
I can encourage self-censorship, and introduce another level of
accountability by removing the anonymity of the author. Shell access
and file transfer would afford other opportunities for abuse of the
system, and I would prefer to put any time that might be spent
policing users' directories toward obtaining common carrier status for
The Point, and other systems like it.
My apologies to all who feel inconvenienced by these policies, but
under the circumstances, I think your complaints would be most
effective if made to your state and federal legislators. Please do
so! Thanks.
Bill Kuykendall
wek@point.UUCP
-------------- end of text --------------------
Submitted to Telecom Digest by
David W. Tamkin dattier@point.UUCP ...{ddsw1,obdient!vpnet}!point!dattier
BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591
P. O. Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 All other point users disagree.
------------------------------
[I've omitted the remainder of the issue, but you get the idea. --EPS]
End of TELECOM Digest Special: Wither Jolnet?
******************************
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