💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › magazines › CUD › cud0730.txt captured on 2022-06-12 at 10:58:06.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Computer underground Digest Sun Apr 16, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 30 ISSN 1004-042X Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Copy Desecrator: Emo Shrdlu CONTENTS, #7.30 (Sun, Apr 16, 1995) File 1--Kevin Poulsen Sentenced to 51 Months File 2--When Doctors go Bad File 3--CDT POLICY #8 -- Leahy Introduces Alternative to CDA (fwd) File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Mar, 1995) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1994 11:19:03 CST From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@mindvox.phantom.com> Subject: File 1--Kevin Poulsen Sentenced to 51 Months National Public Radio reported this past week that Kevin Poulsen was sentenced in federal court in Los Angeles to 51 months in prison, a new record for "hacking" crimes. Poulsen was also orded to pay $58,000 in restition for rigging the telephones of Los Angeles radio stations to win prizes that included cash and a Porsche automobile. Poulsen still faces federal charges for alleged espionage. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 20:17:38 -0400 (EDT) zodiac@interlog.com . Thanx. Subject: File 2--When Doctors go Bad WHEN DOCTORS GO BAD One of Toronto's legendary net.ranters rants and raves about net.ravers and ravers by K.K.CAMPBELL Just over a year ago, TC! brought you a thrill-a-minute story I wrote about "Doctor"Joe Baptista -- the government-irritant who was mercilessly faxing-bombing [Ontario legislature] Queen's Park through his email-to-fax setup, supposedly ringing up $3.5 million in paper/administrative costs. Since then, Baptista's partner, "Doctor" Robert Riley, has led an attack on another front: Freedom Of Information requests. The provincial government actually rewrote the FOI guidelines so that no single person could have an excessive number of FOI requests at any one time. Call it the "Doctor" clause. Recently, five police chief from larger Ontario cities asked the Ontario government to permit them to ignore further requests from either Baptista or Riley -- a move which immediately interested the newsmedia and civil rights groups. The "Doctors" made the front page of the Globe and Mail [Canada's second largest daily newspaper]. They call themselves "The Doctors" because Baptista says that when he uses the attribution, he gets better tables in restaurants. No member of the Doctors is a conventional doctor. (NOTE: Toronto sysadmin and devout Courtney Love Math Boy Ken Chasse dubbed him !Dr Baptista -- using the programming operator !, which means "not." Thus he's Not-Doctor Baptista. The term !Doctors is commonly used today.) Baptista's height of Internet noteriety came when he teamed-up with netter Tom Evans (evans@reptiles.org). This dynamic duo grated on the nerves of thousands in Ontario (and beyond). The !Doctors practically owned newsgroup ont.general for a while. In August, Baptista was voted Kook Of The Month in Usenet newsgroup alt.usenet.kooks . But it all fell apart shortly thereafter. The two had a very public falling out in Usenet. Acting as a sort of !Doctor anti-matter, Evans mercilessly ridiculed Baptista into relative silence. To Ontario Usenetters, it was a rather surreal site. Today, Baptista rarely posts -- and when he does, Evans usually appears and roasts Baptista alive; in response, Baptista mumbles something like "We have nothing to say to you," and the thread dies. Thus ended the reign of Ontario's first (and some think greatest) net.loon. On the anniversary of that TC! article, I called up Tom Evans for an interview. Evans is editor/publisher of a net ezine called Net.scandal -- which chronicles the weird and wild and wacko aspects of the net.community. Evans is hoping to finally get some dedicated bandwidth he can use to provide free accounts to "wayward kids" -- to let them create mayhem online, not on the streets. * * * * * KKC: I must admit, Tom... last April or so, When I first saw you posting in ont.general, in full !Doctor mode, I thought you were a... you know... a fucking asshole. TE: [laughs] Ya, that's the way I came across. The Doctor thing never completely fit with me. I didn't know anything about netiquete. And I didn't give a shit about it. I'm just an outlaw from nowhere, as far as they knew. And I acted like an asshole. I'm the first to admit it. KKC: What drew you to Usenet? TE: I'd just stumbled out of the Fido world. I came to Usenet, plodding around in hipwaders in these newsgroups bellowing "HI!" -- a complete clueless newbie. But I watched what was going on, and some particular people caught my interest: the bigmouths! [grins] The ones causing the trouble. I could tell who was arguing a conservative position and who's a radical and who's just an idiot. KKC: How did you get involved with the !Doctors? TE: I was on Magic BBS one night. It uses First Class software. As I'd been on FidoNet, I didn't know how to parse a header to post to the newsgroups. Plus I was using a DOS machine that I had never used before. Since there's a chat feature in First Class, I saw 45 people on at midnight, I thought I'd ask someone for help. What name, of all those people, do I just happen to pick out? Robert Riley. Didn't know him from Adam. Complete coincidence. He says. 'Sure, what's your phone number, I'll phone you up.' He does and we yap away, and he finally says, 'Hey, I live just down the street. Want me to come over and show you how to work your machine?' I shrugged, sure. Drop over. I didn't know he was this major gay boy yet... So over he comes and sets my machine up with Q-Term and all the rest of it. Ran smoothly. After, he's sitting in the chair, and we talk, until he asks, 'Ever hear of Joe Baptista?' I said, 'God, that's really funny that you mention that name because I was just busting a gut laughing today when reading an article about this guy in Toronto Computes!: 'The Beast That Stalks The Government.' I had the best fucking laugh reading that. Rob says, 'Oh, that's us!' What'ya mean, that's us? 'We're Doctors! We've been doing this for quite a while.' Doing what? 'Ohh, we have fun. And we use fax machines...' So picture it: here I am, a complete clueless newbie, without ANY idea of the net, and meet these guys, who seem to be activists and have a beef with Canada. Rob gives me Joe's number and I phone the next day. We talk and swap addresses. Joe promises to drop over sometime and smoke a joint. Sure enough, he's there the same night. And we got along _famously_. We were_pals_. I supported him _completely_. KKC: You guys must have spent some nights getting high and roaring with laughter at the reactions from the humorless tightass conservatives on the net... TE: Oh God! I'd split my sides! Joe was one of the biggest sources of comic relief in my life! But remember, I am a naive kid from St Catharines who keeps forgetting there are often darker motives behind people's actions. I was completely bedazzled by these !Doctor guys who seemed to know so much. And they really stirred up the pot. As for all these names I kept seeing in groups like ont.general, howling about the horrible things the !Doctors were supposedly doing, to me they were just a bunch of conservative assholes in need of a good kicking anyway. Fuck them. My thing was reposting stuff I thought funny from other groups to ont.general. I didn't know anything about how threading works -- I'm using a First Class site, at tvo.org , right? KKC: And you thought ont.general is just some local BBS group, where you post anything and everything... TE: Exactly. "Here's a funny article from alt.best.of.internet ! Read this, gang!" Naturally, people then flamed me, saying, "Look, we can get this stuff by reading alt.best.of.internet ourselves, so stop reposting it to ont.general. Well... That just FUELLED me! [laughs] It made me want to do it more! And Joe was saying, 'Oh, great! Just keep bugging them. Do whatever you want.' KKC: You starting calling yourself "Doctor Tom Evans, PR director." How did that happen? TE: I proposed I be Joe's "PR manager". I mean, I got a few smarts going. I worked in the advertising biz for eight years. Master of misinformation. So I went out to Ontario newsgroups banging Joe's drum for him. And damned if I didn't start coming up with some fans for the guy! We were getting attention. Even from the media. Shift magazine phoned us up for an article and wanted to meet for lunch. I choose to have it in the cafeteria at Toronto General Hospital -- what better place for the Doctors, right? (Shift didnt do a story, though... I think they thought we were too "out there" for the Ontario General Arts Council, or whoever it is who funds them.) KKC: It would certainly seem that since your departure from the !Doctors, Baptista's star (or anti-star) set... TE: Hmmm. I think the !Doctors that to themselves. And I warned Joe about it. Fun is fun, but I'm a man of integrity. I won't call in the cops to harass people. I began to see that darker nature in him, threatening people on a personal level. Getting them in trouble in real life. I said, "Joe, that's just malicious." I'm not interested in destroying things or people. I'm interested in ridiculing the piss outta someone in Usenet, and cause them so much grief they never want to login again, but I'm _not_ interested in getting them into legal trouble with the police or disrupting their personal lives or getting them fired, or_anything_ like that. I don't want to take this thing out of cyberspace. And I don't want the police at _my_ door. I made it clear that if Joe was going to cause me real life grief, then I couldn't have anything to do with the !Doctors. Of course, the reason _Joe wanted_ to use my name and phone number as PR man at the bottom of his faxes and net posts was because he had to move back into his Mom's house. Joe is Portuguese. With some Latin men, the most important person in their lives is "Mom." The one thing you do not do is shame your mother in any way or you go straight to hell. Problem is: what Joe loves _most_ in life is seeing the _reaction_ to what he does. For him to do a fax spam, and for there not to be a contact number for him, is just completely pointless. What's the point if you can't hear the complaints? KKC: Hear the echo... TE: Ya, hear the echo. Joe tried a few fax-spams with no number at the bottom -- because he couldn't use _Mom's_ number, and his _own_ phone was cut for owing 800 beans to Ma Bell. So he wanted to start adding my number, since I'm the "PR guy." I said, "Joe, I'm- I'm- I'm not sure. I don't THINK so... I don't know if I would end up liking that." Because I'm a low-profile guy. I'm an eccentric that doesn't want to be in the public eye. Unless it's on my own terms [like the net]. I don't want someone else's publicity dogging me around. And I do NOT want The Steam at my front door. But I agreed to give it a shot and see. Well, first fax-net press release he used me on was the [member of provincial parliament Donald] Cousens article. Joe had some phone spat with Cousen's secretary. He issued a "press release" calling her a human larvae. KKC: That's the one where he says she's in heat... TE: Ya, that she acted like she was a 'bitch in heat.' KKC: And that's the one that got him elected KOTM. TE: Right! And damned if that isn't the first one with my name and phone number on the bottom as the PR Director! So MPP Cousens and 15 other people --including the Globe and Mail -- phoned me! I sure didn't like the feedback from that. Cousen's secretary herself even called me, insisting this was hate mongering, subject to Canada's anti-hate laws. I got scared. That's my bottom line: I don't like cops, I don't like jail, I've never been in jail, and I'm never gonna go. So I replied I had nothing to do with it. Naturally, she asked why my name was on the bottom. I said: "Welllll, I'm the PR company..." She said: "Then I suggest your _company_ finds out exactly who the heck you are PRing." I replied: "Good point. I will. Thank you very much for calling." I phoned Joe immediately and said, "OK, that's the end of that. I'll let this one fly, you had fun with Cousens, fine. I don't want my name on any more." And, indeed, Joe stopped -- _for the moment._ KKC: Until after the Doctor-Q. The trigger of your split... [NOTE: The "Doctor-Q" was a barbeque bash held last summer at Evans' downtown Toronto house. It was attended by Homolka-trial-ban-breaker Gordon Domm, the net's own Homolka-rumor-monger "Abdul" (abdul@io.com) and various other personages. It was a mellow substance-drenched event.] TE: Right. I did all the work for that party. I paid $800 to get that beer and food and got $725 back. In retrospect, it's real lucky that was ALL I lost. My fault, though. I don't blame anyone else for that. But then Joe starts bugging me for money from it, figuring I pocketed a profit! And then he starts demanding money, and later an "accounting." He didn't lift a finger for the bash. He didn't stay to clean up. He didn't do a frigging thing. He's a lazy pig. He's a slug. He's a complete slug. His excuse, of course, for being a slug is [in whining Baptista impersonation] "Well, I have this condition, I was hit over the head, and I can't remember anything..." KKC: He told me that once. _Does_ he have a "memory condition?" TE: Well... He _did_ get beat up by a landlord. But let me tell you, he sure knows how to remember if you owe him ten bucks from three months ago. KKC: He called me once saying he thought it was Monday -- it was Friday. TE: I think it all started as kind of a joke. But I also think people have the capacity to programme themselves that they actually _are_ brain damaged if they work hard enough at work. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. But there's no big scar on his head. Not that I've seen. As I understand it, he just got a couple of good swats in the head from his landlord. No one's ever told me about "The tragic day Joe had to go to intensive care." I mean, the kind of memory loss we're talking about here suggests, to me, severe head trauma. KKC: But "brain damage" aside, you were impressed with !Dr Joe's ability to mercilessly irritate civil servants. TE: Oh yeah. He WAS a chartered accountant, remember. That's the reason he knows how to get at government. First thing you learn as an accountant is that paper can cost a company more than anything else. The administration. And that's exactly his attack. Some people think Joe is perceptive and remarkable and all that, Joe is just doing what an accountant does -- sends papers to places he knows have to file and respond. KKC: Bob Allisat seems to have taken up Baptista's mantle as Toronto's reigning net.kook. How did he fit into the !Doctors. TE: Bob was never a full Doctor, because he never really liked or trusted Joe. When I first saw him, Bob was on all the First Class BBSs. I saw him at Magic, ranting about Magic sysadmin "Merlin," how his stuff was being censored... or calling Matrix administrator child molesters or whatever. It was vicious stuff. Lamer stuff. But Bob was a _true_ ranter and a raver. I worked to pull all these guys together because _I love ranters_. I love them! [laughs] They're my entertainment! I brought Bob into the circle. Here I am the Net.Scandal PR man, and all these guys fit perfect into the net.scandal. I aimed to compile rant talent and drum up such a stink that something entertaining had to come of it! So I got Allisat on the blower and said, "We gotta meet, Bob! I like what you've got to say." Bob CAN write. If he got rid of his self-centred attitude -- and the whiney "Ohhhh, everyone is picking on me" -- he'd be a star. Another thing about Bob is that he never resorts to stupid threats -- like physical violence. Not like stupid people, like this "Alexmac" asshole at Internex, who threatened to have Bob's knees broken. People who don't have a higher education resort to violence. But Bob's whole "Captain Parkdale" thing makes me laugh -- he hasn't lived in Parkdale that long. And anyway, the real energy in Parkdale right now isn't the sad cases living on welfare, it's the booming artist community living at Liberty and Atlantic and King St. It's the highest concentration of art in the city. I used to live at King and Dufferin and everybody in there is a cracker artist of some sort. It's booming. So I told him: 'THIS is the what the new Parkdale is, not this idea you have for connecting all the nuts at 999 Queen.' [NOTE: Right around this time, someone from Allisat's system uploaded an anonymous post about a Portuguese community priest -- calling the priest a "Nazi, thief, child molester," etc. Baptista saw it and faxed it out to everyone, adding Tom Evans' home phone number on the bottom, implying Evans wrote it. Evans emphatically denies having anything to do with it.] KKC: Didn't Allisat delete you from his system? Censor you? TE: Yes, he did. Bob's biggest fear is being sued. He got rid of me at psc.org because he feared a big lawsuit was coming over the Portuguese priest thing. And at the same time, UUNet Canada had cut off Baptista's system. It's my opinion that Allisat put two and two together and figured I was going to get SO vocal over both events that he would get sued. So he killed me. Joe's putting my name on the bottom of that Portuguese priest story was as dirty as you can get. He sent it out to everyone in the friggin Portuguese world. I sure got lots of calls from Portuguese people. People had long been warning me: you are NEVER going to get government/private sponsorship for your idea of putting rebellious youth on the net if you have Baptista in your ranks. "You're not going to get it." They were right. It would never happen. KKC: Two other !Doctors -- Rob Riley and Bruce Lloyd -- tried to convince the police to raid and shut down Interlog Internet Services last September. It was personal revenge against Interlog owner Matt Harrop (mharrop@interlog.com), but they fooled CITY TV into thinking they were "caring citizens worried about child porn." Turned out they uploaded tons of vile material themselves. TE: Exactly. And that's the whole thing with the !Doctors. There's an 'honor among thieves' code in cyberspace that cannot be broken. They broke it. And that's why Joe and Rob are not welcome in my home anymore. They don't have that honor, don't even understand what it is. I've told them that if they could distinguish between friends and enemies, they'd be at the top of the charts. The real enemy isn't the grunt in the trench, like say [Toronto UNIX guru] Jim Mercer; the enemy is the overblown, overpayed, overstuffed, over-egoed politician. KKC: So you think "The Doctors" are gone for good? TE: Yes and no. Joe has almost no support from anyone in the net.community at all anymore. But they aren't gone. This freedom of information thing with the Ontario governmenthas a lot of play in it. The !Doctors have simply regrouped and gone quiet. That's partly why Joe's just shut his fat little mouth. KKC: Many people call you a "prankster." You call it irritainment, I believe. TE: Ya, I do. And it's so easy. It doesn't have to involve technical tricks, just knowing human nature. For instance, I know Joe's biggest fear, almost obsessive worry, is that his stuff is being cancelled. See, Joe's only weapon in life is Usenet. The threat that his words are going to be canceled is paramount. So I thought, dandy, I'm going to fan those flames. I used along dead account of mine at [Ken Chasse's] Sonic Interzone to start the rumor, saying, "Goodness, I can't see posts from Joe anywhere!" And the Doctors freaked! It's like fishing. And all these little tricks we try to write about in Net Scandal. Sometimes you get bites and nibbles. But you are always hoping you get the hook right down the throat so you can really haul on them. [laughs] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 22:56:14 -0500 From: jim thomas <tk0jut1@CS.NIU.EDU> Subject: File 3--CDT POLICY #8 -- Leahy Introduces Alternative to CDA (fwd) ------- start of forwarded message ------- From--jseiger@cdt.org (Jonah Seiger) Date--7 Apr 1995 15:46:59 -0500 ---------------------------------------------------------- ****** ******** ************* ******** ********* ************* ** ** ** *** POLICY POST ** ** ** *** ** ** ** *** April 7, 1995 ** ** ** *** Number 8 ******** ********* *** ****** ******** *** CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY ---------------------------------------------------------- A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online --------------------------------------------------------- CDT POLICY POST 4/7/95 Number 8 CONTENTS: (1) Senator Leahy Introduces Alternative to Communications Decency Act (2) Leahy Statement on Introdcution of S. 714 (3) Text of S. 714 (4) About the Center For Democracy and Technology This document may be re-distributed freely provided it remains in its entirety. -------------------------------------------------------- SUBJECT: Senator Leahy Introduces Alternative to Exon/Gorton Communications Decency Act Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) today introduced the "Child Protection, User Empowerment, and Free Expression in Interactive Media Study Bill" (S. 714). The bill represents an alternative to Senator Exon (D-NE) and Senator Gorton's (R-WA) "Communications Decency Act", which would criminalize the transmission of any content deemed "obscene, indecent, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or harassing." Leahy's bill would direct the Department of Justice, in consultation with the Commerce Department, to conduct a study to address technical means for empowering users to control information they receive over interactive communications systems such as the Internet, commercial online services, independent BBS's, and future interactive media. The bill is being co-sponsored by Senators Bob Kerry (D-NE) and Herb Kohl (D-WI), and is expected to generate support across party lines. The Communications Decency Act, which Leahy seeks to replace, is now pending before the Senate as part of the "Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995' (S. 652). In a statement announcing the introduction of the bill, Senator Leahy urged Congress to carefully consider the implications of imposing content restrictions on interactive media. "Heavy-handed efforts by government to regulate obscenity on interactive information services will only stifle the free flow of information, discourage the robust development of new information services, and make users avoid using the system" Leahy said. Instead, Leahy urged a careful consideration of possible alternatives before Congress attempts to legislate in this area. Under the legislation introduced today, the Department of Justice, in consultation with the Department of Commerce, would examine: