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From:      Jim Thomas
Subject:   MARS BBS Sting a Prank
Date:      5 October, 1990

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***  CuD #2.06: File 3 of 5: MARS BBS STING A PRANK              ***
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Ok, boys and girls, we've been had--the rumor of alleged Secret Service
involvement in the MARS BBS at Mississippi State was a bit of a prank. It
was not malicious, not intended to be deceptive, and not without a few
lessons.

For those who have read the post from Ed Luke, the sysop of MARS, a BBS
accessible via ftp, the gist of the story was that the Secret Service had
busted the board, but allowed it to return as a sting board. According to
the post (reproduced at the end of this file), the names and the
up/downloads of allegedly "obscene" .gif and .gl files were kept and turned
over to the SS. The post circulated across the nets during the past week,
and most of us were concerned about the implications of the story, if true.
We tried calling Ed during the week, but couldn't reach him (he was not
hiding--he was studying for seven hour exam), which delayed explanation of
the prank.  Some might be angry at the prank for the consternation it
created among a lot of people. Was it tacky, in bad taste and outrageous?
Of course it was. But, in context, it was also rather funny (for those of
us who prefer Emo Phillips' view of the world to Kant's moral imperative).
Here's the story as Ed relates it:

MARS BBS began at Mississippi State on a university computer system.  Ed
had been asked to work on a BBS program for a friend, and he set it up as a
demo board called "Resource Pirates Bulletin Board."  The name was intended
as a campy take-off on pirate boards, because they were "pirating" the
nets, not software. Ed was explicit in re-affirming that, whatever his own
personal views of proprietary information (he favors "knowledge to the
people"), he takes his administrative obligations very seriously, and
respects the laws restricting what can and cannot be placed on a university
board (see related story on censorship in the next issue).  The original
software could accommodate about 50 users, and was quite small. It was a "no
rules" board, but it became quite popular, something he had not
anticipated.  He made arrangements to obtain a legitimate board through the
university on a legitimate machine and reworked the software.

"I had no idea what I was getting when I started," Ed said in explaining
that he was surprised at the number of users (currently over 1,400) and the
amount of work involved in keeping up with the volume of traffic and the
file transfers.  The board was down for awhile when it was switched from an
Athena to a MARS system. Numerous .gif (graphic pictures) and .gl (animated
pictures) were uploaded, many of which were sexually explicit.  His
position was not to monitor or censor, even if the sheer volume of files
would allow him time to do so: "How do I determine what's obscene? It
becomes my responsibility to make that judgement call on everything. And I
don't want to make that call," he explained.  The gif collection grew, and
they dominated communications on the board and ftp traffic.

Although Ed doesn't know how the National Science Foundation (NSF) became
aware of the files, there were complaints and threats by the NSF of
curtailing access to the nets, because the NSF provide some of the net
backbone. It was not a fight that Ed felt he could win, or one that he felt
he could make a strong case for, so he removed the files.  That's when the
fun began.

He began receiving a number of messages, and some of the "ridiculous" ones
prompted the prank. He received numerous notes and complaints, and there
was what he describes as "lots of paranoia" about why they were taken down.
>From mail we received at CuD, Ed's observations are accurate, because some
MARS users suspected that the temporary hiatus during the change in systems
was the result of a bust. In response to some of the more strident and
conspiratorial messages he received, Ed wrote the following post:

******START POST**********

Posted By: lush (Ed Luke)
Date:      Sat Sep 29 21:54:03 1990
Title:     The story about the GIF files.

Ok, since everyone has been asking about the gif files, here's the story of
what happened with the gifs...  It seems that the secret service under
direction of Pres. Bush is on a campaign against computer crime. You've
read about some of this probably.  It's called  Operation Sun Devil.  Some
of the older users will remember when this bbs was called the Pirates
Resource BBS and was on athena.ee.mssate.edu.  Well we eventually got shut
down in a fashion similar to that of the victims of operation sun devil.
However, in our case, since we were such an allegedly large center for
computer criminal activity, the Secret Service, along with the National
Computing Defence Council decided to conduct an ongoing investigation.  If
you want to catch mice, you don't just plug their holes.  You lay traps.
Well they allowed us to set up again at mars on the strict requirement that
we would do strict accounting.  We have been keeping records of every
(timestamped) upload and download that's been made to this board. In
addition, in hopes of cooperating with the Feds for obvious reasons, I
instituted the monitoring system software on mars.  When anyone did an ftp
it logged the date, did a finger on the system that was connecting and
snarfed up the userid via ftp protocol and made a complete record of all
files downloaded and uploaded.  Also, users that download files from the
bbs had the machine name they were connecting to, and any other evidence
collected in a similar manner.  After enough information was collected, we
gave them the reams of data files and removed the gifs, giving yall the
bogus NSF story.  So there it is.  The GIFS and GL's aren't the biggest
part of the story, but they are illegal in some states and the FCC has been
interested in cracking down on computer obscenity for a long time.  I can't
say I like it, but that we have to live with it.

Later,
Ed Luke

*******END POST*******

Ed emphasizes that we wrote the post under his own name, as a user, which
he feels gives him the latitude to be more playful, and *not* as "sysop."
He offers several reasons for the post:

First, it was a response to the numerous messages he received.  Second, and
more importantly, it was an experiment in the level of paranoia that exists
on the nets, and he was surprised when he continued to discover the paths
through which the post was spreading. Finally, it was a test of the scope
of the BBS. He found that the latter two were significant: "Never
underestimate the level of paranoia and the power of the nets," he
observed.

Ed stresses that he had absolutely no intention to deceive the CU community
and that his act was done in good humor, not ill will.  But, the sexually
explicit files *will not* return, because he feels the board provides far
to many other beneficial services to jeopardize it.  The MARS board is
ftp-accessible at 130.18.64.3, but if the numbers continue to grow, access
may be difficult.  Type "bbs" at the prompt and follow the instructions
from there.  It is a true BBS, and files can be ftp-ed or transfered with a
variety of protocols, including kermit. On line chat, a lively message
section, and an array of free (legitimate) software is available. Those
wishing to obtain a copy of the BBS program may download it from the board
(free), and are encouraged to tinker with it and make changes, but
improvements or suggestions for them should be passed back to Ed.

We see two important lessons to be learned from this.  The first we will
address in the next issue of CuD and relates to prior censorship. Ed (and
others) agree that many of the files were in bad taste because of their
sexual explicitness.  The issue, however, is by what means files are
determined to be "obscene" and the process by which even agencies with a
legitimate interest in the contents of files should or may intervene to
remove them. We do not yet know the circumstances of NFS involvement and we
do not challenge the right of those with a legitimate interest to assume
responsibility for standards. But, given the current lack of protections
for cyberspace media, anything that smacks of censorship should at least
raise the question of "how" and "why."

The second lesson is more frightening. Although some astute readers were
sharp enough to suspect a prank, even they were fully aware of the
possibility of Secret Service meddling.  This is frightening: Rather than
say "no way! The SS would never do *that*," few people would have been
surprised at the scenario outlined in Ed's post.

Are those who believed the worst gullible or naive? We think not.  In the
1960s, it was quite common for law enforcement agents to collect lists of
"radicals" (defined as anybody who opposed the Viet Nam war) and use these
in highly disruptive ways. For example, in 1977 one CuD moderator was part
of a class action suit to obtain "Red Squad" files from the Michigan State
Police, which included documents of numerous local, state, and national
agencies that detailed surveillance mechanisms. One of the more ludicrous
was the practice of listing the license plates of cars in parking lots near
anti-war or other meetings, running these plates through the DMV, and then
listing those that turned up more than once.  The owners of those vehicles,
according to these documents, would find themselves added to the list of
"suspects" on a Red Squad list, and this type of information demonstrably
cost people jobs, promotions, or subjected them to other forms of
harassment.  A series of law suits and legislative actions curtailed the
worst of these abuses. However, the questionable tactics of the Secret
Service in Operation Sun Devil hardly inspires confidence in voluntary
restraint against the Computer Underground.  The 15 hours of video tape
that were obtained from the room of an alleged informant at Summercon '88
are one example of questionable surveillance--How far are law enforcement
agents willing to go on their war against the "hacker menace?" If they are
video taping a bunch of under-age kids drinking, if they seem willing to
circumvent Constitutional limitations in indictments and searches,
then running a sting board and listing users seems fully plausible.
As we have cited in previous articles, sting boards are encouraged
as a legitimate option for both state and federal authorities.

The tragedy of Ed Luke's prank is not that he pulled it off, but rather
that, in the current climate of legitimate paranoia created by a few
over-zealous law enforcement agents, few of us would have been the least
bit surprised if it were true.  What does this say about the respect for
law that such actions as Operation Sun Devil have created?

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