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TELECOM Digest     Fri, 15 Sep 95 16:16:30 CDT    Volume 15 : Issue 386

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    AOL and Expectations of Privacy (A. Padgett Peterson)
    Re: FBI Arrests America Online Users (Daniel Rosenbaum)
    Re: FBI Arrests America Online Users (Grover McCoury)
    Re: FBI Arrests America Online Users (Bob Izenberg)
    Re: FBI Arrests America Online Users (Steven Lichter)
    Re: FBI Arrests America OnLine Users (Richard F. Masoner)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Greg Abbott)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Andrew C. Green)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Eric Ewanco)
    Re: Dialing 911 Instead of Police's 7D Number (Gordon Baldwin)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------



PAT writes:

> I don't know about you, but I'm going to purge all the AOL sofware 
from
> my computer today. Child porn does not interest me in the least, but
> having AOL scanning my mail and checking up on my in private 
conversations
> with other users there is of great concern. It is hard for me to 
imagine
> how any online service could violate the trust of their users in this 
way,
> by getting into their email and personal files, regardless of the
intentions.

Think this is a bit simplistic. The Internet is the world's biggest
party line. Unless you encrypt your transmittals, a great many people
can read them. This is something that many of us have been aware of
for years.  (read RFC 1281 for some pointers).

Personally, I *expect* that lurkers read whatever is sent and take
precautions whenever sensitive matter is sent (ViaCrypt PGP - plug).
The fact is that E-mail is not like a sealed envelope, and though the
courts in this country have yet to decide (and there have been a
number of cases -- in each case I know of the "lurker" has been
acquitted.) I would not be surprised to find that E-mail is considered
to be the same as a postcard and with no expectation of privacy (might
also look at the DoJ suggested logo -- essentially says the above plus
reports of illegal behavior will be made to appropriate law enforcement.

So don't pull the plug on AOL unless you are prepared to pull the plug
on *every* provider.


Warmly,

Padgett

------------------------------



You wrote (among other things):


> How come Compuserve -- around three times as long, and just as large 
if
> not larger -- never seems to have ruckuses like this?    PAT]

First of all, AOL is bigger than Compuserve: something like 3.5 million 
users for AOL and two to three million for CIS.

Secondly, AOL has pitched its services directly to the mass market,
while CIS is sold largely to professional business users. (That is
probably about to change, for what it's worth.)

Thirdly, CIS's method of file exchange has long been on the hostile
side; if you're looking for simple ease-of-use, AOL is where you go.

All of this is by way of explaining why AOL seems to be having more
trouble with this stuff than CompuServe. It's an inevitable result of
adding eight million commercial on-line users to the net in a single 
year.

As for the rest of your rant -- AOL's power-tripping monitors, and the 
like -- it seemed light on evidence and cites and heavy on suspicion and 
implication. If you have a real problem, document it.

This is a high-quality, high-signal group; you do a great job here, Pat. 
Pleae don't raise the noise level by posting paranoia.


Best,

Dan Rosenbaum
Editor    NetGuide
drosenba@cmp.com   drosenbaum@panix.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about this for documentation of
sorts ...  of over 100 doors kicked in on Wednesday by the FBI, a
grand total of *twelve* arrests. Now a point could be raised about
the incompetence in general of our Federal Bureau of Investigation
(certainly they have had long enough to catch Mister P.M. Unibomber
and lord knows they have been time and again pointed at him) and the
fact that 12 out of 100+ is only about ten percent of the names on
the list provided them by Steve Case. I wonder whatever happened to
the concept of probable cause?  Ten percent does not come close. 

By the way is it true that a group of those who were confronted by
the FBI -- then dismissed out of hand after the FBI had inspected
their computer and ransacked their houses, etc. have now consulted
with an attorney about a *class action* against AOL?  That's what
I am hearing over here, that they intend to file a lawsuit charging
false and malicious defamation of character, invasion of privacy
in their email, etc ... charging that AOL with callous disregard
for facts of any sort caused their arrest and albiet temporary 
detentions.

By the way, two of the arrested parties were here in the Chicago area.
Eric Zemke, age 31, 5200 West Agatite, Chicago, was released Thursday
on his recognizance (that is, his promise to appear in court as
ordered) and electronic home monitoring. An affidavit filed in 
U.S. District Court here by FBI agents stated that Zemke admitted
distributing child pornography via AOL, and agents further stated
that the same was located on his computer. Zemke, a computer consultant,
surrendered to the United States Marshall after learning that his
home had been searched in his absence. Zemke pleaded guilty in an
earlier 1986 case to child molestation. As a condition of his release
on bond pending trial, he has been ordered to have no contact with
children without another adult present, including his own three year
old child. 

Also charged was Craig Zucker, 5100 Winona Lane, Gurnee, Illinois.
Gurnee is a small town in the north suburbs of Chicago. Zucker was
not present at the search of his home, and his whereabouts remain
unknown. A federal warrant has been issued for his arrest. 

In affidavits filed, FBI agents said both Zemke and Zucker were tracked
down through telephone numbers used to connect them to the AOL network.
Undercover agents allegedly recieved ten electronic pictures from 
Zemke depicting young boys in various sexual activities. An AOL 
informant
turned over to the FBI three pictures involving young girls in porno-
graphic settings which the AOL informant claimed were sent by Zucker
in email. 
 
But only twelve out of a hundred?  Come on Steve Case, you should have
been more careful putting your list together. Now it looks like you
are going to get sued by a few of the people you defamed.    PAT]

------------------------------



Suspect your on-line provider may be snooping into your personal Email
messages? There is an easy solution! It's called PGP. If I used AOL,
Prodigy, Delphi, etc. I would *assume* that they would snoop when they
wanted to *therefore* I would utilize an encryption scheme.

Yet another $.02 worth from...


Grover C. McCoury III
 @ Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.
 physical: P.O Box 6850,  ATL-52D
         Norcross, GA  30091  USA
 audio: 770-806-7702
 electronic: grover.mccoury@sciatl.com

------------------------------



In TELECOM Digest Volume 15 Issue 385, PAT replied to Joshua Cole:

> ...it just seems to me they are going a bit beyond the call of
> duty as 'good citizens'.

They're only good citizens some of the time.  Ask any Usenet reader
how many chain letters and other forms of fraud come out of aol.com .
I hope that AOL is as vigilant in informing law enforcement officials
of this less headline-worthy type of crime as they are in going after
child pornography distributors and consumers.  Both are worthy of
investigation.


Bob Izenberg                          home: 512-442-0614
bei@io.com         work voice/fax: 512-250-4227/250-6424


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As they say, ROFL ... I am laughing so
hard my side hurts. Sure they will ... sure they will.   PAT]

------------------------------



Joshua Cole <jcole@access.digex.net> writes:

> If you read Steve Case's note to the America Online Community dated
> September 13, 1995, you will see that he states:

> "When material is forwarded to us which we believe is illegal, we
> notify law enforcement and upon receipt of a court order or subpoena,
> we cooperate fully."

Now if they would only police their members that spam the Internet
with all this "LEGAL" "REALLY" chain letter. Of the 30 or so I
have seen in the last several month 23 of them have cpome from AOL and
all always have the same 20 names on them. I know that they are not
the only ones and they claim to be the largest but they should be able
to stop or limit it since each user is given the rules of conduct


The above are my ideas and have nothing to do with whoever my employer 
is.
SysOp Apple Elite II and OggNet Hub (909)359-5338 2400/14.4 24 hours,
Home of GBBS/LLUCE Support for the Apple II. 
slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu

------------------------------



In article <telecom15.383.1@eecs.nwu.edu> you wrote:

: Although child pornography certainly is not allowed in public areas of 
AOL,
: according to Ms. McGraw it 'usually is transmitted in email between 
users,
: or in private chat rooms'. She did not indicate how AOL's interception 
of
: email for the purpose of examining it for 'pornography' or their 
monitoring
: of private conversations between subscribers could be reconciled with 
: various privacy laws, apparently because it can't be. 

Is this for real?  AOL reading private mail?  Where'd you hear this?

(You didn't give any citations of your sources; not that I don't
believe, I'd just like to know where this came from)


Richard

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Her press release, printed by myself and
lots of other newspapers said "It is not in the public areas. It is
usually transmitted in email between users."  My question is, **how
would she know that?** How do I know what email you send to someone
else unless one of you reveals it (very unlikely) or I intercept it and
read it.   PAT]

------------------------------



In message Thu, 14 Sep 1995 14:05:07 -0500, TELECOM Digest Patrick
Townson <telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> writes:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something I have never been able to 
under-
> stand in Chicago is the apparent contradiction in instructions given 
on
> the one hand by 911 supervisors (themselves police officers) and the
> instructions given at the local police station level. On the one hand 
we
> are told that 911 is for *emergency use only* when immediate 
intervention
> by police/fire/paramedic people is required; ie. my house in on fire 
now
> or I am having a heart attack now or someone has invaded my home and 
is
> standing here with a gun pointed at me now. We are not to use 911 for
> trivial matters. That makes good sense!  But on the other hand, when 
we
> attempt to discuss trivial (by comparison) matters with the police at
> the local district police station on their direct phone, we are told 
we
> must call 911 to get a police officer to come out.
>
> Now no matter how you look at it, if you come home from work and find
> your home was burglarized while you were gone, or your car stolen 
sometime
> in the past day or so, that is *not* an emergency. It is certainly an
> important matter, but it is *not* a life-or-death situation which 
requires
> *immediate* police intervention. Our phone books tell us to use 911 
only
> for emergencies. The local police stations in Chicago on the other 
hand
> tell us to use 911 for everything.  Who is correct on this?
>
> It is probably just more of business as usual in Chicago, since here 
in
> our village of Skokie on the other hand, both 911 and 708-982-2800 get
> the village police. The same police officers will come out after a 
call
> to either number, but they tend to come with sirens blaring and lights
> flashing on 911 calls while driving more slowly and taking a bit 
longer
> to arrive on calls to the other number. Do you think you people who 
are
> in charge of 911 could clarify this once and for all?  Should people 
in
> Chicago really be calling 911 when their cat gets stuck in a tree and
> they want the Fire Department to send someone with a ladder?  Maybe 
part
> of the reason 911 takes so long to answer at times -- although in any
> dire emergency, a few seconds seems like an eternity -- is because of
> all the foolishness they have to deal with.    PAT]

You're right Pat, you will get different instructions from different
people.  Like Skokie, we have a hunt group of "non-emergency" line
(217/333-8911) which rings into the same room and is answered by the
same people as the 9-1-1 lines.  At every public presentation and on
almost all of our handout material, we try to stress that this number
should be called for the non-life threatening emergencies.  These
non-emergency lines are typically answered as fast as the 9-1-1 lines
(when things are quiet).  But when things are busy you can see them
ring for 45 seconds or longer while the operators are all taking 9-1-1
calls.

Our main concern is that everyone's idea of an emergency is different.
To you and I, a fire and a heart attack are clearly life-threatening
emergencies.  To one of our neighbors though, a car parked blocking
the fire hydrant in front of their house may be a life-threatening
emergency.  I remember one night when I was still a dispatcher and I
got a call from a lady who had called a couple other numbers before
calling our non-emergency line.  She started off saying that she
didn't want to bother me by calling and asking if I was busy.  I
assured her she wasn't bothering me, nor was I busy.  She then started
to tell me about how she had been to the mall and then had to stop by
the grocery store to pick up a cake because it was her grandson's
birthday and she had just gotten home.  I asked her how I could help
her.  She said she was getting to that.  She continued that her
grandon was 8 and her daughter had moved away with her husband when he
got a good job with a software company in St. Louis and they had not
been back here for a visit in three years and this was the first
birthday party that she had hosted for her grandson in some time.  I
asked again what the problem was.  She said she didn't know if it was
an emergency or not, and she didn't want to **CALL** 9-1-1 and bother
those nice people... but when she came home she found her husband
laying on the floor of the kitchen and she didn't know what was wrong


                                                                                                                            

with him.  ARRRRRGG!  Then, like I said in the previous message, we
get calls from people who's toilets are backing up on 9-1-1 lines, so
you see, everyone's idea of an emergency is different.

In short, every public safety official will probably tell you a
different method by which to report a crime or situtation.  It is
certainly up to each jurisdiction as to how they will handle calls and
who will answer them.  I have seen cops here on campus drive down the
street and when flagged down by a burglary victim or something they'll
just tell the citizen to go to a phone and call 9-1-1.  The problem is
one of public education for the citizens and public safety officials
alike.

One more story:

A very foreign speaking man calls on night (on 9-1-1) and we can just
barely understand what he is saying but he is pretty excited and keeps
saying something that sounds like "explosion".  We trace the line and
send police, fire and medical units screaming that way (not knowing
what was wrong and knowing how excited he was acting we didn't want to
take a chance on not having the right equipment there for whatever
they were to find).  Well, it turns out the one piece of equipment
they needed ... they didn't have ... a plunger.  It turns out this guy's
toilet was backing up into this bathtub.  To him an emergency,
certainly for any of us a stressful situation, but certainly, by no
stretch of the imagination a call for 9-1-1.


                           99999     11     11
          GREG ABBOTT      9   9      1      1     INTERNET: 
GABBOTT@UIUC.EDU
       9-1-1 COORDINATOR   99999 ==   1 ==   1     COMPUSERVE: 
76046,3107
                               9      1      1     VOICE: 217/333-9889
METCAD                         9      1      1     FAX:   217/384-7003
1905 E. MAIN ST.               9     111    111    PAGER: 800/222-6651
URBANA, IL  61801                                          PIN # 9541

------------------------------



Greg Abbott <gabbott@uiuc.edu> writes:

> The main idea behind 9-1-1 as the nations emergency number is so
> people don't have to know the local emergency numbers if they need to
> call for assistance.  In this situation, had you not been from the
> area and known the emergency number, you would have had to probably
> call the operator who would have had to determine where you were
> calling from and then transfer you to the appropriate agency.

I sense that this is missing the point somewhat; the original poster's
complaint was that he couldn't get the police department he wanted
until the 9-1-1 operator who answered his phone figured out where he
was.  Imagine the problems if he _was_ from out of town and neither he
nor the operator knew exactly where he was.

On a side note, our Moderator comments:

> Our phone books tell us to use 911 only for emergencies. The local
> police stations in Chicago on the other hand tell us to use 911 for
> everything.  Who is correct on this?

I'm sure it varies from place to place; the thing to do would be to
call the non-emergency number for your community beforehand and simply
ask.  In the suburb of Arlington Heights, for example, if you want to
temporarily park on the street overnight for a few days, you must call
in your license plate and car description to the police ... by calling
9-1-1. Why? Because after hours, the only public service people at the
town hall are at the 9-1-1 emergency services console, where a three-
ring-
binder for overnight parking info sits on the desk. It doesn't make much 
sense to me to do it that way, but if that's how they want us to use
the 9-1-1 system, that's the way we'll do it.


Andrew C. Green            (312) 266-4431
Frame Technology Corporation
Advanced Product Services
441 W. Huron               Internet: acg@frame.com
Chicago, IL  60610-3498    FAX: (312) 266-4473

------------------------------



TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: 

> instructions given at the local police station level. On the one hand 
we
> are told that 911 is for *emergency use only* when immediate 
intervention
> by police/fire/paramedic people is required; ie. my house in on fire 
now
> or I am having a heart attack now or someone has invaded my home and 
is
> standing here with a gun pointed at me now. We are not to use 911 for
> trivial matters. That makes good sense!  But on the other hand, when 
we
> attempt to discuss trivial (by comparison) matters with the police at
> the local district police station on their direct phone, we are told 
we
> must call 911 to get a police officer to come out. 

That reminds me of my experience when my car was stolen (in the
Oakland section of Pittsburgh).

I spent a good long period of time trying to find the right seven
digit number to call, because the phone directory only listed "911"
for police and finding the appropriate non-emergency number was not a
trivial task.  I think I had to look it up alphabetically in the Blue
Pages or something.

So I called that number and they referred me to another seven digit
number.  (Apparently I had reached some sort of administrative office
or something.)  So I dialed that SEVEN DIGIT NUMBER and imagine my
surprised when I hear, "911, please report your emergency."  What
ensued was a somewhat tense conversation, because I was understandably
confused as I stayed on the line and argued that I didn't call 911,
but a seven digit number.  (In retrospect I probably should have just
apologized and hung up.  Understandably the dispatcher was a bit curt
as she explained that I had dialed the seven digit number which
patched into the 911 system.)

> Now no matter how you look at it, if you come home from work and find 
> your home was burglarized while you were gone, or your car stolen 
sometime
> in the past day or so, that is *not* an emergency. It is certainly an
> important matter, but it is *not* a life-or-death situation which 
requires
> *immediate* police intervention. Our phone books tell us to use 911 
only
> for emergencies. The local police stations in Chicago on the other 
hand
> tell us to use 911 for everything.  Who is correct on this?

Well, I think that with the shift of emphasis to 911, the organization
and promotion of seven-digit police numbers has become chaotic through
neglect. 911 is put on the front page whereas the seven-digit numbers
are relegated to alphabetical listings in the middle, with no indication 
which ones are for police dispatchers, which ones are administrative,
which ones are for which communities, and so forth.  The telephone
pinball I had to put up with in this experience was inexcusable, as
one number directed me to another and another, or maybe nobody answered 
or whatever.  Part of the fault lies with the police department then,
I think, for failing to provide a clearly defined and effective
alternative to 911 for non-emergency numbers.

Hence it may be no wonder that people are more inclined just to dial
"911" when they want the police for whatever reason.

I think the solution is to clearly identify emergency and non-emergency 
numbers, and under what circumstances they should be called, and then
make sure that the people who answer them can direct them correctly.


Eric Ewanco    eje@world.std.com
Software Engineer, Xyplex Inc.
Littleton, Mass.

------------------------------



Pat sez:

> Now no matter how you look at it, if you come home from work and find 
> your home was burglarized while you were gone, or your car stolen 
sometime
> in the past day or so, that is *not* an emergency. It is certainly an
> important matter, but it is *not* a life-or-death situation which 
requires
> *immediate* police intervention. Our phone books tell us to use 911 
only
> for emergencies. The local police stations in Chicago on the other 
hand
> tell us to use 911 for everything.  Who is correct on this?

I had a similar situation to this. About ten years ago I lost my
wallet in downtown Seattle. When I got home I decided I should call
the police to report it missing. Well I dug up my phone book and
finally located the non emergency number and after being transfered
about a half dozen times ended up talking to the right person. They
then told me to call back and report if the wallet was found. Ok fine,
what number should I call to avoid the transfer mess I just went
through? "Just call 911."  This was at a time when there were news
reports about how busy the 911 system was and it shouldn't be used
except for emergency situations.


Gordon Baldwin    gbaldw@usin.com
Olympia Washington

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #386
******************************

                                                                                                               
