Since September 11, the US government bears a new public mandate: prevent terrorism before it happens. With good reason, the American people expect officials to make the country less vulnerable to attack, and to make arrests before terrorist acts are committed. But in order to do so, government agencies have returned to J. Edgar Hoover–style intelligence gathering and surveillance, a style based on suspicion rather than evidence.
A move in that direction occurred with the passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act on October 26. Its purpose is to make it easier for law enforcement to fight terrorism, and it contains many sensible provisions to that end. But it also authorizes sweeping changes in the US legal code that should have received serious debate. Faced with enormous pressure from the Bush administration, Republican Party leaders pushed the bill through Congress without sufficient scrutiny. US Representative Barney Frank criticized the pending legislation during floor debate, saying "this bill, ironically, which has been given all of these high-flying acronyms — it is the PATRIOT bill, it is the USA bill, it is the stand–up–and–sing–‘The Star Spangled Banner’ bill — has been debated in the most undemocratic way possible, and it is not worthy of this institution."
Several of the law’s more troubling provisions relate to the Internet. Marc Connolly of the US Secret Service states that the act also "authorizes us to create a national network of electronic-crime task forces." The purpose of the new task forces will not be to rein in cyber-terrorists, who fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of Homeland Security, but to hunt down domestic electronic criminals. The law institutes harsher and broader penalties for hacking into a protected computer — even if no damage is done. This clause criminalizes less serious forms of computer cracking that have been overlooked in the past.
Tommy Wald, an Internet security expert with Texas-based Riata Technologies, questions the effectiveness of these clauses. "The whole idea of raising the penal code will eliminate a certain portion of hobby hacking and nuisance hacking, but it won’t deter more destructive international cyber-terrorism," Wald says. "It’s going to have a minimal effect." Instead, it will have an effect on people like Bob, who, under the new law, would face federal prison for his Hollywood-studio hack.
Another controversial provision of the USA PATRIOT Act allows increased use of Carnivore, a wire-tapping program for the Internet. Carnivore is installed on an Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as AOL, in order to monitor the e-mail and Web-browsing habits of a suspect under surveillance. Civil libertarians have long contended that this tool could be used to conduct unlawful surveillance of ordinary citizens. Now, the USA PATRIOT Act allows for the implementation of the Carnivore system — in some cases, without a warrant. "I can concede that there are times that the government has a legitimate need, even a mandate, to access communications on the Internet," says attorney Scott McCullough, counsel for the Texas Internet Service Provider Association. "But I consider [the USA PATRIOT Act] to be a huge overreaction. Terrorists who are organized enough to do what we saw on September 11 are going to use high-level encryption ... rendering Carnivore useless." Carnivore would be useful only against someone who had no reason to conceal the content of his or her e-mail. Again, the effect on combating terrorism will be minimal, but the potential cost to civil liberties could be very high.
THE USA PATRIOT ACT isn’t the only controversial measure taken by the government to increase security since the terrorist attacks. Several government Web sites have been shut down. Shortly after the attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission closed its entire Web site, pending review (some of it is now back online). Christine Todd Whitman’s Environmental Protection Agency was quick to follow suit, deleting from its site information that dealt with the potential risks of industrial accidents and the like. "The presence of this information could provide information to terrorists," says EPA spokesman Dave Barry. The trouble is, environmentalists have fought a number of legal battles to keep this information in the public eye since the mid ’80s, touting it as an important tool in keeping corporations accountable for their environmental practices. Now, without even a court hearing, it is gone.
Critics charge that the government is guilty of political opportunism, using a time of crisis to push an old agenda of greater regulation and increased federal power. In more peaceful times, the American people would not stomach such infringements on their civil rights. Now, it seems, Americans will stomach pretty much anything. "I am convinced that the government is using [the terrorist attacks] as an excuse to accomplish the same goals that it has stated for years," says McCullough. "Many of the new provisions don’t relate to what we perceive of as terrorism. They’re incredibly broad about what terrorism is." These provisions relate to minor criminals and people whose First Amendment activities might be deemed a threat to national security — such as hackers.
Jim Choate is one such threat. The 42-year-old software engineer at IBM is a principled, intelligent activist who believes that technology should have a more organic role in society. He believes in democratic solutions to our problems, the Constitution of the United States, using communications to promote consciousness, and a whole host of other things that fall just short of teaching the world to sing. And, incidentally, he exercises his First Amendment rights by distributing bomb plans on the Web.
"How many people have read [bomb plans] on the Internet and realized that a 12-year-old was collecting bomb materials, and stopped them?" Choate says. "It seems the potential for intervention is greater than the possibility for prevention."
For Choate, his exercise of free speech is a thumb in the dike holding back government monopoly of information — a growing threat. He’s part of the cypherpunk movement, a sort of hacker subgroup, a network of Internet-freedom-and-privacy advocates. Like most hackers, cypherpunks often run afoul of the law. In particular, they’re infamous for figuratively tweaking the noses of people who lack a sense of levity, such as the FBI. The cypherpunks’ idea of a good joke, for example, is releasing a classified federal document on their public listserv.
Like the cypherpunks, ¨ªark (pronounced "art mark") is an underground group that uses hacker tactics to bring about social change. They’re best known for the Barbie Liberation Organization prank of 1993, when they switched the voice boxes of talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, then returned them to toy-store shelves. In 1999, they organized a virtual sit-in — or "denial of service" attack — against eToys.com during the holiday season. ¨ªark was protesting a court-ordered closure of German art collective Etoy.com, which predated eToys.com by several years. To close down the eToys site, a large number of people logged in over and over, slowing the server to a crawl. The sit-in crippled the company’s sales during the all-important shopping season.
The success of the eToys sit-in starkly illustrated how effectively hacking may be used as a tool of the powerless against the powerful. The history of hackerdom is a history of chafing against authority. From the early days of computing, hackers were the anti-establishment. They were the spunky freedom fighters, and IBM was the oppressor. Over the years, although hackers’ motivations have varied widely, one characteristic has remained fairly constant: hacktivists have taken on everyone from Microsoft to MGM to Ma Bell. Now, in today’s unstable world, US sites seem to be prime targets for hackers.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, both anti- and pro-US hackers have mobilized, defacing Web sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. One of the first victims of this disorganized, unofficial cyber war? A Web site about Afghan hounds (a dog breed), which was defaced on September 12. Still, an October report from the National Infrastructure Protection Center said the possibility of a serious cyber attack from abroad remains low, although "the threat is higher than before September 11."
The domestic RESPONSE to the September 11 tragedy has been to circle the wagons, so to speak. Suddenly, the Internet’s potential dangers seem to outweigh its benefits. Attorney McCullough forecasts grim consequences. "I think the so-called controllers of wealth and power have decided that this plaything [the Internet] is a sharp instrument that children shouldn’t be allowed to run and play with," he says. "The most positive aspect of it will be taken away. We will once again be relegated to the role of passive consumer instead of active citizen."
If this happens, it won’t be without a fight. Software engineer Jim Choate is quick to answer when asked whether recent events would discourage him from posting bomb plans on the Internet. "Fuckin’ a! Hell no!" he responds. "We’ve got a First Amendment up there. We’ve got a Fourth Amendment up there. If [law-enforcement officials] don’t like what I’m doing, doesn’t that just validate it even more?"
This article was first published in the Austin Chronicle.
