EFFector, Vol. 12, No. 1; Feb. 11, 1999

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!):

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."

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

EFF Members Named in the Case

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

THE EIGHTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL EFF PIONEER AWARDS:

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

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:

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,

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.

Both cases raise the principal problematic issues of Internet content blocking in public libraries:

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.

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

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