|
Crypt Newsletter #18
NOTICE: TO ALL CONCERNED Certain text files and messages contained on this site deal with activities and devices which would be in violation of various Federal, State, and local laws if actually carried out or constructed. The webmasters of this site do not advocate the breaking of any law. Our text files and message bases are for informational purposes only. We recommend that you contact your local law enforcement officials before undertaking any project based upon any information obtained from this or any other web site. We do not guarantee that any of the information contained on this system is correct, workable, or factual. We are not responsible for, nor do we assume any liability for, damages resulting from the use of any information on this site.
CRYPT NEWSLETTER 18
Aug-Sept 1993
Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
INTERNET: [email protected]
COMPUSERVE: 70743,1711
[The Crypt Newsletter is a monthly electronic magazine
distributed free to approximately 12,000 readers
on the Internet. It features media handling of
issues dealing with computers and society, news in science
and technology, and satire.]
IN THIS ISSUE: The OBIT computer . . . FEATURE: the National
Reconnaissance Office - still secret after
all these years . . . Computer Culture and Media Images . . .
Mr. Badger's fiendish IQ Test: Do you suffer from "Information
Highway". . . IN THE READING ROOM: "Kipper's Game" by Barbara
Ehrenreich greases Gibson's latest . . . much more.
COMPUTERS, THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT AND THE OUTER LIMITS!
In the Summer 1993 issue of Open Forum, published by the
ACLU of Southern California, outgoing LAPD police commission
president Jesse Brewer comments on the OBITS, a computer
system which would be used to pinpoint violent officers
within the organization. According to Brewer, the Officer
Behavioral Indicators Tracking System (OBITS), costs $700,000
dollars for the complete system, or $92,000 for a scaled-down
one.
So far no money has been earmarked for OBITS by the new mayor
of Los Angeles, Dick Riordan. Brewer adds that the police union
has fought the installation of the system "aggressively," and
that currently problem officers are tracked by hand. Brewer
supports installation of the OBITS computer.
Such "computer matching" programs have been used throughout
government to try to catch tax deadbeats, loan defaulters
and others thought to be abusing the system in some manner.
Many privacy advocates consider such systems overly intrusive
and prone to abuse by bureaucracy and citizens they are designed
to serve.
Those with a mind for the weird may remember another anti-
privacy computer system called OBIT, for Outer Band Individuated
Teletracer, first unveiled in a 1963 episode of "The Outer
Limits." The script, written by Meyer Dolinsky, outlines the
OBIT as a demonical surveillance system designed to track spies
and other agent provocateurs. Instead, it cracks the will of the
government scientists and workers who think it is a good idea.
In "The Outer Limits: The Official Companion," Dolinsky explained,
"I'm very much in love with freedom . . . The political focus
of OBIT is all mine . . . These people, far from helping a
free society, are really its worst enemy, in the sense they
breed so much hostility and fear that they curiously accomplish
the very thing they are trying to prevent. Witch-hunting is
the wrong way to go about it."
It turns out the OBIT is an ingenious weapon in an invasion
plan, seeded into society by space aliens bent on conquest.
Managing OBIT is menacing character actor Jeff Corey as
mysterious g-man, Byron Lomax. Lomax terrifies his superiors and
subordinates until the climax, when he is revealed as one of
the Cyclops-like aliens. The OBIT is smashed and Lomax disappears
in a flash of light, but not before delivering a disturbing speech:
"The machines are everywhere! Oh, you'll find them all; you're
a zealous people. And you'll make a great show out of smashing
a few of them, but for every one you destroy, hundreds of
others will be built, and they'll demoralize you, break your
spirit, create such rifts and tensions in your society that
no one will be able to repair them! You're a savage, despairing
planet. And when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized
flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired.
You're all of the same dark persuasion. You demand, _insist_
on knowing every private thought and hunger in everyone -- your
families, your neighbors, _everyone but yourselves_!"
We now return control of your television set to you . . .
CRYPT NEWSLETTER FEATURE: THE NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE,
STILL SECRET AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
[Portions of this article were originally published by Times-
Mirror, Inc. in 1991. They appear with permission.]
It was just another mid-summer sunny day near Santa Barbara, this
year, when one of the most secretive organizations in the US
military screwed up big-time in plain sight of American
taxpayers, again. A Titan-4 ICBM lifted out of Vandenberg,
carrying a National Reconnaissance Office Lacrosse radar-imaging
spy satellite. Less than a minute later, it was $1-2 billion worth
of twisted metal garbage when the Titan carrying it blew up, as
they're wont to do, in flight. For the most part, the press yawned,
well-trained after decades of being told the NRO didn't exist
and that it was uncool, maybe even unpatriotic, to rudely insist
on talking about it.
After all, it was only in September of 1992 that the Bush
administration quietly declassified the organization's _name_
and became the first presidency to publicly identify its
head, then Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space,
Marty Faga. Associated Press was the only news organization
which noticed, barely, turning out a boring paint-by-numbers
announcement.
None of this is particularly surprising, but it is eminently
depressing considering the NRO, which runs the nation's spy
satellite programs, is one of the largest intelligence
organizations in the country and controls significant taxpayer
money - at least $6 billion/year in 1993 by some estimates.
What National Reconnaissance Office, most would say?
You never heard that here, buddy - as a livid Hans Michael
Mark, one of its past chiefs told investigator William
Burrows in 1986 during preparation for the book, "Deep Black."
Founded late in the Eisenhower administration, the NRO still
operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy which has
existed for over 30 years.
Created as a joint Air Force-CIA effort to run spy satellites
for the intelligence community, the NRO was, paradoxically,
first envisioned as an unclassified operation. But operating
from offices on the fourth floor of the Pentagon, it quickly
became the holiest of secrets during the Kennedy administration,
when Cold War tensions with its target, the Soviet Union,
escalated precipitously.
It played the central role in keeping tabs on that Cold War
adversary, supplying information on everything from targets
for US nuclear forces to little-known catastrophes at defense
installations in the Russian hinterland. Even now, NRO-
controlled satellites keep watch on Saddam Hussein and
the Korean peninsula.
The Bush administration's appointee to head the NRO, Marty
Faga, inherited the organization just in time for the war
with Iraq. John Pike, a military space analyist at the
Federation of American Scientists, was quoted in The
Washington Post to the effect that the volume of data
coming down from the skies on Saddam's Iraq, was flooding
the eyes of commanders in the field.
In a rare public announcement, Faga commented in the same
article, "Every satellite that we own that has an application
of value in that part of the world is employed for that
purpose," an example of exactitude and verbosity by NRO
standards. Faga added that US forces were relying on "many tens"
of orbiting spacecraft. What he didn't add - and which has
never been widely publicized - is that Saddam and his generals
were more aware of the NRO than most Americans, having been
the recipient of some NRO largesse while the Reagan administration
was helping to prop Iraq up during its war with Iran.
Nevertheless, when Pentagon flack Pete Williams fielded a
question on spy satellites during the war he answered with
the party line, "These [programs] shall be eternally
classified."
Despite having had its name declassified, the only sop
the agency has extended to the public is an official
phone number in the Pentagon, according to Steven
Aftergood, an expert on secrecy and classification, also
at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, DC.
Now you can call the phone number and reach someone who will tell
you it's the NRO. That's progress!
So, how big is the NRO?
Well, consider the agency:
>>operates fifteen-ton infrared and visible-light
satellites the size of Greyhound buses, called KH-12'-
with KH standing for "Keyhole" - which in addition to
close-look capability, generate the digitally calibrated
terrain maps which program the Tomahawk missile's guidance
system.
>>runs orbiting radar imagers which work at night and
through bad weather, code named LACROSSE. And it blew
one up this summer, estimated bill: $1-2 billion.
>>has Block 14 Defense Support Program (DSP) infrared
early warning satellites. These two-and-a-half ton
babies are responsible for detecting ballistic
missile launches and surface or atmospheric nuclear
detonations worldwide.
>>maintains telecommunications eavesdroppers operated
for the NSA, code-named MAGNUM and VORTEX.
>>administers ocean-scouring spy platforms operated by
the Naval Space Command, code-named WHITE CLOUD.
And it operates from installations that include The
Office of Space Systems in Los Angeles, the Satellite
Test Center (or "Big Blue Cube") near Sunnyvale, CA.,
the Naval Space Command in Dhalgren, VA., the Defense
Communications Electronics Evaluation and Test Activity
in Fort Belvoir, VA, Buckley Air National Guard AFB
near Denver, CO and a component within the CIA's
Directorate of Science & Technology.
Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Tim
Weiner estimated in 1991 that the NRO draws $5.4
billion/year - an amount derived from a line cryptically
labelled "selected activities" in the Pentagon's
budget. This was slight change from the NRO's past
cover, "special activities," a name which lead outside
observers to label it the "Special Activities Office"
in the early '70's.
Other estimates now range from $6-8 billion, well in excess
of the 1991 CIA tab for $4-5 billion.
Since its inception in 1960, taxpayers have funded the agency
to the tune of about $115 billion dollars, according to
a number of unclassified sources.
And, if that isn't enough, "the public is _disinvited_ to
the debate on expenditures for the NRO," laughed Aftergood.
Although completely beyond accountability, this is not to
say there is _no_ debate. There is. But it's all secret
argument over control, down-sizing in the post-Cold War
period and who will get to do what, when and where. Such
decisions, which won't be reported, are liable to have a big
impact on the NRO's major vendors, TRW and Lockheed, centered
in Southern California, a state already hard hit by the
current depression. Ironically, when these "black budget"
workers are finally given pink slips, it will be difficult,
even uncomfortable, for them to complain about it to the
media.
Not getting the shove this year is Jimmie Hill, deputy director
of the NRO, who has been around the organization "forever,"
according to Aftergood. Nevertheless, it was only until
recently that the Pentagon would admit Hill exists, although
he's the agency's right hand until the Clinton administration
names a successor to Faga.
A call to the NRO phone number bounced me into the ubiquitous
Pentagon public information office. An NRO public-information-
officer (n.b.: alert newsletter readers will savor the subtle
paradox of this title) had to be summoned. She called me back,
confirming that Faga's successor is likely to be Robert Fossum,
former head of DARPA under Jimmy Carter and a professor of
electrical engineering at Southern Methodist University in
Dallas, TX.
When and if Fossum comes to power he will have to take up
the Titan 4 project, a trouble-plagued program the NRO
has been fixing, and fixing . . . and fixing for almost
a decade.
Using Titan 4's - like the one that smashed the Lacrosse this
summer - started with nation's biggest engineering
debacle, the Challenger explosion. When the Challenger went up
like a Roman candle in front of the world, it took with
it the NRO's ability to put 15-ton photo-intelligence
birds into orbit at a time when close surveillance of the
Soviet Union was of highest priority to the Reagan
administration.
During Faga's tenure at the NRO, he was forced to wrestle
with the task of restoring the capability, an effort that
had been beset with screw-ups when Titans were thrown
quickly into the breech. The missiles failed catastrophically in
the aftermath of Challenger, destroying themselves and two
Keyhole satellites, a Hexagon in 1985, and a more advanced
model known as a Kennan, the following year.
In April 1991 Faga testified before Congress on another
Titan mishap, a static test in which a booster motor
failed.
The NRO has limped along on the project, expanding its
facilities at Vandenberg, CA, and Cape Canaveral, FLA.,
so that spy satellites can be launched from either coast.
Calls to Faga's NRO office during work on the story in 1991,
netted only his mouthpiece, PIO Air Force Captain Marty Hauser.
Hauser initially asked for a list of questions, which was
sent. Although Hauser said Faga would speak briefly,
further calls handed the writer off to an adjutant mouthpiece,
who generously offered to launder my copy for content prior
to publication.
Steve Aftergood at the FAS laughed when this was recounted.
"That was to make sure you didn't get anything right," he said.
Faga, a 1964 graduate of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA,
is now at MITRE Corp. (MIT Research & Engineering), yet another
super-secret federally-funded corporation just down the road
from the CIA. MITRE has been the Air Force's think tank for advanced
technology programs during the Cold War. It should be
comfortable to him, since he worked there in the early-70's
after a stint as a technical representative at Perkin-Elmer's
highly classified optical division in Danbury, Conn. Perkin-Elmer
developed the Hexagon spy satellite's 6-foot reflector-equipped
Cassegrain focus telescope in the early '70's. Hughes now owns
and runs the division.
The NRO remains a target rich in irony. Consider that had
the Titan destroyed a $2 billion dollar NASA satellite
this summer, the press wouldn't have hesitated to draw their
long knives on the techno-bumpkins at the US civilian space
agency, no doubt even calling into question their reason
for being. If more evidence is desired one needs only look to
the doomed Mars Explorer for an example. However, since we're
talking about the NRO, government secrecy is supposed to make it
all, somehow, OK. Are you annoyed, yet?
While squabbling over the technical lapses of the Hubble
telescope a few years earlier, the press studiously ignored
everything associated with spy satellites - even more singular
when one finally realizes that the NRO was orbiting its
predecessor of the Hubble - then called "Big Bird" - as early as
the mid-'70's. Of course, these telescopes were pointed in the
opposite direction.
When I first learned of the ultra-secretive National
Reconnaissance Office a few years ago, I thought that it had
to be doing a good, necessary job - its leaders fine men.
In 1993, this strikes me as naive, indeed. Americans, I think,
deserve better than stonewalling by a group enjoying a situation
which is the envy of all. Consider, if your boss won't even admit
your name is on the payroll, it would be mighty hard for anyone to
drag you to a public microphone and ask for a detailed explanation
on why $6 billion, maybe more, ought to be dumped in your
pocket even _after_ the evaporation of credible strategic threats
to national security. Americans are finer people than that and
have little need of hide-and-seek agencies which install
dead-end phone numbers as their sole concession to public
accountability in 1993. And until organizations like the National
Reconnaissance Office are truly brought into the light, until
idiot savant secrecy in the military-industrial complex is shown
the door, there will be no real democracy in America.
Call the National Reconnaissance Office and talk to its
"public-information-officer" at: 703-979-6472.
COMPUTER CULTURE AND MEDIA IMAGES
By George Smith
[Originally published in Computer underground Digest 5.65,
an electronic magazine edited and published by Northern Illinois
University faculty member, Jim Thomas. It reaches an
audience of approximately 80,000 twice a week.
Used with permission.
This review was drafted after a reporter for The Contra Costa
Times in central California profiled a series of public bulletin
board systems in the San Francisco Bay area known as the NIRVANAnet.
The news piece was remarkable for its naivete, insinuation that the
network was involved in illegal activity and the complete failure of the
newspaper to allow the managers of the network to speak for
themselves.]
"I've had enough of that crummy stuff. Crummy stuff, crummy
stuff, crummy, crummy, crummy, crummy, crummy stuff." (from
"Crummy Stuff," by The Ramones)
After reviewing numerous stories on the computer underground dating
back to 1990, Mike Liedtke's Contra Costa Times piece on the
NIRVANAnet BBS's comes off as another example of the genre:
paint-by-numbers journalism, so predictable it's a cliche. The locales
shift, the names change, the breathless "maybe something shady's going
on here" tone stays the same.
Unfortunately, so does the expertise of the reporters. Seemingly
locked into some kind of "computer neophyte from Hell" never-never
land, there never seems to be a lack of writers who turn in stories
which are painfully unsophisticated, sensational and . . . crummy.
It's damnable, because the picture which emerges is one of mainstream
journalists who ought to be starting to get the lay of the land, but
aren't.
By contrast, this lack of know-how hasn't stopped reporters, or even
slowed them down, in generation of countless fluffy, trend stories on
the information superhighway, this year's bright and shiny cliche.
So, that the users of the NIRVANAnet systems think the news media
arrogant is not a scream of wounded pride or the surprised squeak of
slimy characters exposed when their rock is turned over. It's
justified.
Why?
Take for example a news piece which appeared in 1990 in The Morning
Call newspaper of Allentown, PA, a continent and three years away.
The Call had discovered a now long gone "underground" bulletin board
in nearby Easton, PA. I lived in the area at the time and Liedtke's
Contra Costa Times piece was uncannily similar to the one Morning Call
reporter Carol Cleaveland delivered for the Call's readership. The
same ingredients were in the mix: a couple of textfiles on how to
make bombs, a regional lawman explaining about how hard it is to nail
people for computer crime and a tut-tutting sysop of another local
"public domain" system acting as a tipster, warning concerned readers
that he sure as Hell wouldn't want such a system in his backyard.
Just like Liedtke's Contra Costa Times piece, there was not a shred of
comment from the sysop whose system was being profiled. Nothing ever
came of the nonsense. The system continued online for a couple of
more years, no criminal charges were filed, and the local businesses
appeared not to go up in flames at the hands of unknown hackers or
bomb-throwing, masked anarchists. So, this was news?
Now, fast forward to The New York Times on January 25 of this year. In
an 'A' section article, reporter Ralph Blumenthal profiled "Phrakr
Trakr," a federal undercover man keeping our electronic streets safe
from cybernetic hoodlums too numerous to mention singly.
A quick read shows the reporter another investigator from the
mainstream who hadn't gotten anything from underground BBS's
first-hand, relying instead on the Phrakr Trakr's tales of nameless
computer criminals trafficking in "stolen information, poison recipes
and _bomb-making_ [emphasis MINE] instructions."
While not dwelling on or minimizing the issue of phone-related phraud
and the abuse of credit card numbers on underground BBS's (which has
been established), Blumenthal's continued attention to text files for
"turning household chemicals into deadly poisons, [or] how to build an
'Assassin Box' to supposedly send a lethal surge through a telephone
line" was more of the same. It was the kind of news which furthers the
perception on the nets that reporters are rubes, reluctant to use
their mental faculties to analyze material of dubious nature.
Most anyone from teenagers to the college educated on-line seem to
recognize text files on a BBS as usually menacingly written trivial
crap or bowdlerized, error-filled reprints from engineering, biology
and chemistry books. In either case, hardly noteworthy unless you're
one who can't tell the difference between comic books and real news.
So why can't we, make that why SHOULDN'T we, expect the same critical
ability from mainstream journalists? Of course, we should.
And it's not only the on-line community which is getting mugged. Just
about every sentient, reading mammal in North America was fed a
continuous line on the Michelangelo virus for the first three months
of 1992 courtesy of the mainstream press. In the aftermath, the
perception seeped in that inadvertently or not, most reporters had
been played for suckers by software developers. However, there was no
informed skepticism when it counted.
Recall, newspapers around the country ran headlines warning of
imminent disaster. "Thousands of PC's could crash Friday," said USA
Today. "Deadly Virus Set to Wreak Havoc Tomorrow," said the
Washington Post. "Paint It Scary," said the Los Angeles Times.
Weeks after the grand viral no-show on March 6th, reporters still
insisted the hysterical coverage prevented thousands of computers from
losing data. John Schneidawind of USA Today claimed "everyone's PC's
would have crashed" in interview for the American Journalism Review
but was unable to provide any evidence to back it up.
Even The San Jose Mercury News credited the publicity with saving the
day. There was, however, little mention that corporate wallets were
swollen with payouts from worried consumers or that most of the
experts used as sources came from the same circle of businessmen
benefiting from the panic.
In the aftermath everyone blamed John McAfee, the nation's leading
antiviral software manufacturer. After all, it was McAfee who told
many reporters that as many as 5 million computers were at risk,
wasn't it?
However, a look back at some of his comments to American Journalism
Review in May 1992 expands the limelight a little. "I told reporters
all along that estimates ranged from 50,000 to 5 million," he said. "I
said, '50,000 to 5 million, take your pick,' and they did."
"I never contacted a single reporter, I never sent out a press
release, I never wrote any articles," he continued. "I was just
sitting here doing my job and people started calling."
"Before the media starts to crucify the antivirus community," he
continued, "they should look in the mirror and see how much [of the
coverage] came from their desire to make it a good story. Not that I'm
a press-basher."
Why does this happen? What drives one of these "good stories"?
John Schneidawind of USA Today, when interviewed shortly after
Michelangelo said John McAfee was always available to explain things
from the early days of the Silicon Valley. There was a sense, said
Schneidawind, that "we owed him." That's even-handed reporting!
Obviously, a great many news stories are hung on a sexy hook, too.
Often this has little to do with reality. Put yourself in a
reporter's shoes, fire-balling these leads past an editor.
Techno-kids running amok in cyberspace, crashing the accounts of
hapless businessmen, playing fast and loose with the law, fostering
the dissolution of community in the suburbs! Or, computer virus
plague set to incinerate data world wide! Or, government BBS flouts
public interest, aids computer vandals in high-tech predation of
nation's information superhighways! Whoosh! Bang! Who wouldn't bite?
Now imagine trying to sell an on-going series dealing with the warp
and weave of the networks, touching on everything from dating BBS's to
encryption to virus distribution to electronic publishing, copyright
law and free speech. Frequently, you'll need more than 40 column
inches per topic to do it right.
If you're a reporter you might hear these responses as reasons NOT to
get into such a project.
1. We don't have the space. (There will, however, always be 40 inches
of space for the latest equivalent of "Jurassic Park.")
2. We can get that off the wire. We can't afford to get involved in
specialty journalism.
3. No more long stories - our readership won't follow them. (Policy
at USA Today.)
4. No one is interested in computers. (Believe it or not, this was a
popular one in 1992 at The Morning Call in Allentown, PA.)
5. I don't understand all that, our readers won't either.
6. Where's the hook?
So, proactive news stories, particularly on computers, are a hard sell
many reporters aren't up to. Conversely, most have no trouble selling
what Carl Jensen, journalism prof at Sonoma State in California, calls
"junk food news."
Junk food news is, he writes, "sensationalized, personalized,
homogenized trivia . . . generic to [some] of the following
categories: Madonna's latest sexscapades . . . the newest diet craze,
fashion craze, dance craze, sports craze, video game craze . . . the
routine freeway pile-up . . . the torrents of rhetoric pouring from
the mouths of candidates, pledging to solve unemployment, reduce the
deficit, lower prices, [and] defy foreign invaders . . ."
Junk food news soaks up a lot of effort on the part of reporters. And
there is no shortage of junk food computer news, either.
Take, for instance, almost anything using the word "cyber." The August
15th issue of The L.A. Times Sunday Magazine devoted three-quarters of
a page to "Hack Attack - Cybersex." "Cybersex," in the finest
gosh-oh-jeekers style, went on about yet another budding entrepreneur
who's puzzled out there's a market in putting $70 worth of sex
animation on CD-ROM. Only such a junk food news piece _could_ close
with a quote from the businessman so ludicrous it would be laughed off
the table in any self-respecting barroom. "This is a powerful
medium," said the computer sex movie-maker. "The potential is there
for people prone to become alienated to become alienated. But we also
envision virtual reality sex as a vehicle for people to interact with
others in a way they might not feel comfortable in reality."
The week before, the same magazine ran a story on cyberpunk Billy Idol
and how callers to The Well were dissing him for being a phony.
That's news!
Other computer junk food news stories include, but are by no means
limited to:
--Just about anything on Jaron Lanier and data gloves.
--Tittering, voyeuristic "human interest" pieces on local
lonely-hearts BBS's that DON'T mention that 50 percent of the data
storage is devoted to color photos of hideously obese men and women
screwing, young models licking each other's private parts and other
similar stuff which, if warehoused as magazines in a windowless,
beige-colored building on the publisher's block, would be the target
of a picketing team from the metro section of the same newspaper.
--Flogging the latest Steven Spielberg project which involves using
50-gazillion megabytes of computer power and more cash than the gross
national product of the Ukraine to make a TV show on some kind of
virtual reality living submarine with tentacular arms and talking
porpoise sidekicks.
--Anything on the information superhighway with the usual pro forma
hey-even-I-could-think-of-that quotes from Ed Markey and Mitch Kapor.
--Gadget stories - actually, unpaid advertisements - on the newest
computer-chip controlled stun gun, the newest computer-driven home
studio, the newest useless morphing software for amusing and cowing
your friends, the newest wallet-sized computer which doesn't exist,
the newest whatever-press-release-selling-it-came-in
-through-the-fax-machine-today device.
Ah, but these are easy shots to take, being mostly the handiwork of
features and entertainment reporters, long regarded as the soft white
underbelly of the news media.
What about front page news? Take a look back at Joel Garreau's
Washington Post expose of Kim Clancy and the AIS system.
It's reliance on the usual he said/she said reporting resulted in the
trotting out of source Paul Ferguson who was able to pose as two
people at once. This, perhaps, would not have happened had Garreau
been more familiar with the complexities of computer security. As it
was, the pursuit of the news from a human interest angle resulted in a
set-up, or "official scandal" as its called by Martin Lee and Norman
Solomon in a devastating criticism of journalistic methods,
"Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias in Newsmedia" (1990,
Lyle Stuart).
According to Lee and Solomon, "official" scandals as reported by the
press, have certain hallmarks.
1. "The 'scandal' [came] to light much later than it could have." So
it was with AIS: The hacker files were removed from the BBS
weeks before the story was retold by The Washington Post.
2. "The focus is on scapegoats, fallguys, as though remedial action
amounts to handing the public a few heads on a platter." Kim
Clancy, the administrator of AIS, was the fallguy, er, fall-lady,
here.
3. "Damage control keeps the media barking but at bay. The press is
so busy chewing on scraps near the outer perimeter that it stays
away from the chicken house." While the news media was chewing on
AIS, it neglected to discover Paul Ferguson doing double-duty,
anti-virus researchers helping themselves to dangerous code on
AIS while complaining about it to others, and the ugly truth
that much of the virus code and live viruses on amateur BBS's
throughout the U.S. can be traced to AIS's opponents, a few of
the same complaining researchers.
4. "Sources on the inside supply tidbits of information to steer
reporters in certain directions -- and away from others."
5. "The spotlight is on outraged officials." In this case,
"anonymous", Paul Ferguson, Ed Markey, etc., -- asking tough,
but not TOO tough, questions.
Because it ran in The Washington Post, Garreau's story immediately
touched off a wave of pack journalism. The Associated Press digested
all the wrong, flashy aspects of Garreau's work. Specialty
publications catering to corporate computer users published weird,
warped tales on AIS, culminating in Laura Didio's August 9th feature
in LAN Times which called Computer underground Digest "a BBS" and had
the ubiquitous Ed Markey claiming that the AIS system had infected
itself with a virus, a serious falsehood. This from a reporter, no,
make that a _bureau chief_, who works for a computer publication!
So if the NIRVANAnet BBS operators are angry with Mike Liedtke for
blind-siding them in the pages of The Contra Costa Times, good for
them. If they think mainstream journalists have been doing a rotten
job on computer stories, they have the ammunition to prove it.
It is right for them to expect more from journalists than the passing
on of whatever received wisdom is currently circulating about the
computer underground. It's perfectly legitimate to expect more from
reporters than junk food computer news or dressed-up press releases.
They're right if they think they're being patronized by news
organizations which assign reporters who don't know what a modem is,
have only been Prodigy members or who believe that being a "people"
person is sufficient qualification to report in this beat.
Good journalists are obliged to be responsive and receptive to the
beats and communities they cover. So it should be with the computer
underground. It is not considered cool to use ignorance or
inexperience as an excuse for slipshod work, to take the path of least
resistance, to rely only upon sources who are mainstream professional
acquaintances or whose names are right near the telephone. Those who
think otherwise are jerks.
BUREAU CHIEF MR. RAOUL BADGER ADMINISTERS
NATIONAL IQ TEST - ALL FLUNK, CITIZENRY DESPONDENT, PRONE TO
ALCOHOLISM
Readers of my regular diatribes may be relieved to know
that this is the time of year Mr. Badger abandons the highways
and byways of cultured life and retires to the piney woods of
the south east. Western Civilization can only improve as a result.
[Of course, the thought of Mr. Badger patrolling the woods with
high powered rifles in hand is not for the faint of heart, but
let the residents of the South Carolina Piedmont worry about
that . . .]
In a moment of reflection, and detoxification, I discovered a
New York Times Book Review (August 29, 1993) cover story on
hypertext works of fiction [known as Hyperfiction, doubtless a
contribution from the Bill Gates school of marketing]. As one
would expect, the emphasis is on the novels themselves, as opposed
to the medium in which they are delivered. The reviewer in
question is Mr. Robert Coover, a fiction writer and teacher
at Brown University in Rhode Island. Mr. Coover has been conducting
workshops in the use of hypertext for the writing of fiction
for the past three years, and his experience shows.
A sidebar article entitled "And Hypertext Is Only the Beginning.
Watch Out!" might sound naive and sensationalistic, but I get
the feeling that shame for the headline can be laid at the editor's
feet, because the article is a well balanced and fairly thorough
introduction to everything from the what, how, and where of
hypertext to the underlying implications of a format that allows
the reader to select a plot line. A sample quote
shows Mr. Coover's obvious fondness for the medium and his
awareness of the realities of its use.
"It is the irresistible instructional power of hypertext that most
convinces me of its inevitability as a medium for art, narrative
and otherwise, for hyperfiction itself is off to a somewhat more
hesitant start. For the narrative artist, hyperspace has all the
charm of a starry sky in august: the weather's comfortable, the
twinkle's alluring, but the vista's intimidating and there are no
reliable star charts. It is pretty empty out there, too."
For those interested, look it up. It includes reviews of
a dozen hypertext works and has a follow up article on William
Gibson's "Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)". [Which no one in
IBM-clone land has actually seen because it was priced so only
the aristocracy could afford it.]
Normal reviews of the ubiquitous "Information Highway" articles have
been suspended. One would have to be a Trappist monk to have
missed them for never in the course of human events have so
many, with so little knowledge, written so much to the annoyance
of all. Our grand and glorious nationwide data and communications
network might be coming, but in the meantime talk about it has
clogged the bandwidth in half a dozen markets.
Now, those who have dared to read such dreck know that two perilous
outcomes await the unfortunate reader:
---> BAD: Drinking too much booze and getting a killer hangover.
---> WORSE: Not drinking enough and having the recollections of yet
another insipid article haunt your sober hours.
But never fear, for Mr. Badger feels compelled to share his
personal guide to recovery from the flotsam and jetsam of
"Information Highway." Yes! With this guide in hand YOU can
safely traverse any article on the most popular non-existent
news event of the season. Yes! Follow our lead and YOU will
know exactly how much alcohol is needed to restore your sanity
and self-esteem.
But be warned, this test not only measures the weakness of
the piece in question, but your ability to handle the brave, new
cyberworld. So gird your loins and prepare to keep score.
Onward and forward! Hours of experimentation guarantee
reproducible results!
>>TEST BEGINS HERE!<<
1. To read this newsletter, you are using:
-a hardcopy printout (Go to #6)
-an unregistered file utility (Go to #5)
-a commercial/registered package (Go to #4)
-a pirated commercial package (Go to #3)
-"C:>TYPE CRPTLT.R18 | MORE" (Go to #2)
2. Lamer! This test has standards, and you failed the first one.
Abort test. Reload in six months.
3. The Info Highway isn't even paved yet and you're already
speeding? I like that. Start with 0 points. Cruise on
over to #9.
4. The Info Highway don't need no blue-haired grannies clogging
up the road. Start with 20 points. Find your way to #9.
5. One of those that'll keep it within 10 miles/hour of the speed
limit, huh? Doubtless the Info Highway will be cluttered with
such as yourself. Start with 5 points. Go to #9.
6. You're kidding, right? Oh, you're not! O.K., did you:
-print it at office/school (Go to #7)
-use a friend's printer (Go to #8)
-use your own printer (Go to #2)
7. In that case, we'll cut you some slack. Anybody who's already
freeloading has his heart in the right place. Start
with 10 points. Go to #9.
8. Mooching off friends already? Nobody wants to be in a bus
line for lamers on the Info Highway. Start with 15 points.
Go to #9.
9. The article in question on the Information Highway:
-doesn't mention Mitch Kapor (Go to #10)
-quotes Kapor once (Go to #11)
-quotes Kapor 2-4 times (Go to #12)
-is an interview with Kapor (Go to #14)
-is an interview and has his
picture on the cover (Go to #13)
-I thought Kapor's were something
you found in sauces &
appetizers (Go to #10)
10. Man, did you luck out. Mitch Kapor is usually seen more
often than Elvis at a Memphis shopping mall. No additional
penalty points added. Go to #18.
11. Only once? You get out easy with 5 points added to your total.
Go to #18.
12. Ouch! Add 5 points per quote. Go to #18.
13. ABORT TEST NOW! You are now a [dis]honorary Kapor Catamite.
When the Info Highway arrives, it'll find you by some sleazy
off-ramp, dressed in high heels, torn hose, and a leather
miniskirt, you cheap cyber-slut.
14. Man-o-man! You're in trouble now. Did you:
-read the entire article (Go to #17)
-glance over it (Go to #16)
-look for laughs (Go to #15)
-buy it for the interview (Go to #13)
15. What are you trying to do, steal Mr. Badger's job?!?!?
Remember kiddies, this is a job for professionals.
Do not attempt in the home environment. You've been warned!
Go to #18.
16. You're still skating on thin, thin ice. Ten additional points
need to be added to reflect you're obvious lack of judgment.
Go to #18.
17. After reading the article, you feel,
-Kapor is a pioneer, a leader,
and a vital voice for the
future of American computing (Go to #13)
-Better Kapor than nobody else (Go to #16)
-Thank God he isn't Bill Gates (Go to #15)
18. The Information Highway is presented as:
-A total package for
the future consumer (Go to #19)
-A total package that
doesn't exist yet (Go to #20)
-An non-existent package
and nobody knows what will
be in it (Go to #21)
-The latest techno-scam (Go to #22)
19. Yeah, right. 20 point naivete penalty. Go to #23.
20. Better, but still too rose-colored not to require a penalty.
Add 10 points and go to #23.
21. Actually, probably the most accurate assessment possible. Go
to #23 with no penalty.
22. Ahh, such corrosive cynicism is fine relief from the standard
utopian pipe dreams. Subtract 10 points from your current
tally. Go to #23.
23. Add/Subtract points for each of the following:
-10 for each quote from Emmanuel Goldstein
-5 for each quote from an obscure, unknown technoid
-3 for each quote from obscure corporate CEO scum
-1 for each quote from a think tank/consultant
+5 for each quote from Vice-President Gore
+7 for each quote from Congressman Ed Markey
+10 for each quote from Bill Gates
Go to #24.
24. The article:
-doesn't mention ISDN (Go to #27)
-mentions that the Bells (Go to #26)
won't market it
-explains that the initials (Go to #25)
stand for: "It Still
Does Nothing."
25. Stop. Send article to Mr. Badger. He won't believe it unless
he holds it in his grimy little paws. Suspend test
pending independent verification of your truthfulness.
26. Subtract 10 points. Go to #28.
27. Add 20 points. Go to #28.
28. In the article, the Baby Bells:
-want to run the info
highway (Go to #29)
-want to run it and be
free to create much of the
programming (Go to #30)
-will probably get "channel
hopping" banned as "unlawful
use of a carrier." (Go to #25)
29. This is news? They want to run everything. Add ten points and
go to #31.
30. Yawn. Old news. Add 5 points. Go to #31.
31. In the article, the cable companies:
-want to charge for the info
highway (Go to #32)
-want to run it and charge
for even more channels (Go to #33)
-are in a poor position to
provide interactive services,
already gouge consumers, and
will doubtless want the public
to pay for either fiber optics
or new compression standards (Go to #34)
32. This is news? They want to charge for everything. (Compare
with #29.) Add ten points and go to #35.
33. Surprise, surprise. Could only be news to a true Gomer Pyle.
Add 5 points. Go to #35.
34. Don't bother sending the article to Mr. Badger. Even reporters
know that the cable industry is run by creatures that have
cirrhosis-scarred livers for a conscience. We'd give a penalty
for old news, but we enjoy hearing the truth about the weasels
too much. Go to #35.
35. You've reached the end of our handy little guide. Compare your
running total with the chart below.
0 or below: hard to believe, but you've managed to read an
article on the Information Highway without needing
any alcohol by the time you finished. Mr. Badger
suspects that you started reading while already
heavily intoxicated and skewed the results.
1 to 10: A few glasses of champagne should elevate your
spirits. If you wish, you can substitute any of
those adjective/noun drinks. [You know, Salty Dog,
Pink Lady, etc.]
11 to 20: Beer. Drink it steadily. You should recover by
the time you have trouble opening the bottles.
21 to 30: Long Island Ice Tea. Drink a pitcher with reckless
abandon.
31 to 40: Good vodka. You're already in pain and there's no
point wasting time. Don't let the ice in the glass
melt.
41 to 50: Cheap vodka. Don't even bother with the ice.
51 to 60: Wild Turkey/Jack Daniels/George Dickel. Don't even
bother with the glass.
61 to 70: Tequila. Go until the worms start to taste good.
71 to 80: Everclear/Ouzo/Agua Ardiente. Don't worry about
where you drink it, you'll inevitably wake up
elsewhere.
81 to 90: MD20/20 -- Thunderbird. Don't worry about where
you drink it, you'll end up hospitalized.
91 to 100: Make sure your medical coverage is current. Work
your way through ALL of the aforementioned.
100+: Rubbing alcohol/Isopropanol. Don't worry, the
damage to your mind and soul are already done.
Submit results to Andy Lopez (Mr. Badger) at Crypt InfoSystems.
IN THE READING ROOM: "KIPPER'S GAME" BY BARBARA EHRENREICH
Let us now gore a sacred cow in favor of a new book
you'll not want to miss. It's Barbara Ehrenreich's "Kipper's
Game" (Farrar Straus Giroux, $22.00) and it greases William
Gibson's "Virtual Light" as it backs its way, almost by
accident, into the "cyberpunk" genre. Gibson,
despite earnest efforts, has become a cliche, right down
to the cyber shades on the cover of his new "Virtual Light." An
_OK_ read that book, but not even close to "Kipper's Game" whose
author is better known as a sharp social critic ("The Worst Years
Of Our Lives") and a prattling essayist for TIME magazine
who likes to talk about her daughter too much for the
lip-reading Philistines which make up its subscribers.
But the flogging of crap for TIME hasn't hobbled the talent
that went into "Kipper's Game," a story that pukes hackers,
epidemiology, and scheming Nazis into a future pot which, for
reasons I haven't figured out, evokes the same gray doom as
Ursula Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven."
"Kipper's Game" drops you immediately into a world of
petrified academics where aging blowhards perform like dancing
bears for the vacuous while their research is propped up
by cynical post-docs and graduate students. Sounds like it could
be real!
The central character, Della Markson, is a woman whose life
is crumbling, perhaps just like yours. Her son, Kipper, is
missing - on the lam from unknown evil after developing
a computer game which leaves its users wrecked.
"He would not kill another human being. But there was the
game. The game was hard to explain. She had to admit that
most people would stop if they designed something addictive,
something that could leave people stupid or dead, they would
not keep going with it, perfecting, refining," reads part
of the book.
Ehrenreich hurls a rotting disease which hotwires the brain
while it savages the body into the mix, too, something I
haven't seen done effectively since Thomas Disch's
"Camp Concentration." And, of course, no future dystopia
would be complete without a nest of Nazi masterminds gone
corporate, in this case - the "Erntegruppe," lurking behind
every rock.
By the end of "Kipper's Game," everything is hammered shit;
even the Supreme Being has shown up, blown its bugle and
disappeared, unnoticed amid the squeal of TV talk shows,
information overload and grasping bit-characters.
Don't cry for William Gibson as you give him the boot from
your library - there's always "Beyond 2000" and OMNI
magazine. Virtual, shmirtual - "Kipper's Game" is
the genuine article.
--------------------------------------------------
Crypt Newsletter editor George Smith lives in Pasadena,
CA. He has been on National Public Radio's "TechNation:
Americans & Technology" and contributed to American
Journalism Review.
©opyright 1993 Crypt Newsletter. If you wish
to use portions of this publication, ask first.
|
|
