Private Sector Returning (January, 1986)
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Back Online Next Month but Many Questions Remain

The Private Sector bulletin board system (the official BBS of 2600 Magazine),
seized by New Jersey authorities on July 12, 1985, is in the process of being
returned. However, Tom Blich, the system operator, feels he is being forced to
plead guilty to a token offense.

When the board was taken, the prosecutors seemed to have little idea as to what
it was they were looking for. At a press conference the following week, they
claimed that Blich and six others were moving satellites in space with their
computers and doing strange things to the nation s defense department. Now, six
months later, this, or anything else, has yet to be proven in Tom's case.

On December 6, Judge Mark Epstein gave Assistant Prosecutor Frank Graves one
last month to find something in order to prove his conspiracy case, otherwise
the case would be thrown out. Graves only came up with a blue box program that
was originally discovered on the Private Sector's hard disk back in July. This
program was consequently defined as a "burglary tool." "Cat's Meow," the
program's title, can be used to generate blue box tones (MF tones), as well as
regular touch tones, speech synthesis, and other sound effects. Middlesex
County reportedly sent the program, along with Blich's whole computer system to
Bell Labs to see if it could produce the nasty MF tones. "Cat's Meow," written
by the Tempest, was approved by Bell Labs as a working blue box, as long as it
was used with an Applecat modem. Blich said it was given to him by an associate
along with other programs and that he found it entertaining because of the
noises it made and educational in that it taught him a little bit about the
phone network. He claims never to have used the program to make free phone
calls or do anything of a fraudulent nature. The program was not accessible to
anyone calling the bulletin board, either. According to the authorities, no
illegal calls have ever been traced to Blich and there is no evidence of any
illegal activity on his part. In New Jersey, though, under a particular
statute, it is illegal to possess virtually anything that can be used to
perpetrate fraud.

Blich was told that if he pleaded guilty to the fourth degree misdemeanor,
which would carry no sentence, his equipment would be returned and all other
charges against him would be dropped.

But none of this explains how various law enforcement departments could justify
searching his home and seizing his equipment, especially if it was based on the
possibility that Blich was undermining the security of the United States by
disrupting international telecommunications and infiltrating the Defense
Department, when absolutely nothing would point anyone with the intelligence of
a stone to this conclusion. More specifically, Prosecutor Alan A. Rockoff
stated that one charge was that the "young computerniks...threatened this
nation's defense" by stealing information on military tank parts manufactured
by a Connecticut defense contractor. Now, after no evidence is found, no
complaintants are found, and Prosecutor Rockoff's outlandish headlines have
worn away, Blich will be on probation for a year because he had a blue box
program and all this to cover up for some fool's overzealousness.

Will somebody please wake us up? Can this really be happening? Almost any
computer is capable of producing "illegal" tones. Programs that produce such
tones are commonplace, to say the least. Many people possess them just for the
sake of seeing what they look like and how they work. Are New Jersey
authorities now punishing people for being curious?

What if Blich himself had written this program? Are they now telling us it's
illegal to write certain things, because they could potentially be used in a
bad way? Clearly, there's something fundamentally wrong here.

It's easy to say that someone who has a blue box program is only going to use
it for illegal activity. But it's simply not true and it's also a very
dangerous assumption. If a program on disk can be construed as a burglary tool,
then why did the prosecutor send Blich a printout of the four-page program? 
Isn't this distribution of a burglary tool?

And what of the programs that appear in the Information Bureau section of this
issue? Possession of a gun is one thing, because there aren't all that many
things you can do with a gun, unless you're a collector. (Of course, possessing
a deadly weapon is legal, but we won't get into that.) With a computer program,
however, there are an infinite number of possibilities. Someone could possess
it for the sake of having an interesting program, so that they can learn how to
make sound effects with their computer, so that they can hear what these
magical tones actually sound like, and so on. Yes, there is the possibility
somebody could use this program for illegal purposes. But it's really just as
easy (in fact, much easier) to use a standard touch tone phone to commit fraud
these days. How is possession of a touch tone phone any less of a crime than
this program? They can both be used for legitimate purposes as well as
illegitimate ones. It's not hard to retrace the logic that is used to argue
this, but is this logic correct? Or is it potentially a danger to everyone, not
just us?

We feel threatened by such actions. How hard would it be to conclude that this
magazine itself is a burglary tool? Because we discuss how the various networks
work and because we expose the inadequacies and weaknesses, are we not paving
the way for criminals? Perhaps we are, but at the same time we re waking up an
awful lot of people. People who realize that their secrets aren't safe in a
particular computer or people who need to know how their phone system works - we
exist for the purpose of education alone. We cannot be held accountable for the
potential misbehavior of one of our subscribers - that is an unreasonable
expectation.

Fortunately, we're not yet at a stage where such affronts can occur at a
magazine. Why? Magazines are tangible, people generally understand them. You
can't hold a computer bulletin board in front of you, though. Most people don't
understand what a BBS is in the first place. It's so much easier to get away
with something if most people don't understand what you're really doing-this is
what the authorities have accomplished.

We've made some important progress in this case. We succeeded in getting the
prosecutors to reveal their true knowledge of the matter in front of the entire
world. And we convinced the American Civil Liberties Union to take up the case
of the Private Sector. We expect them to be involved in similar cases in the
future. Slowly but surely, we're getting through to people.

We hope to see this kind of thing stop once and for all. Too many innocent
people have already been victimized by these little-publicized Gestapo tactics.
Sensitive equipment has been damaged by careless law enforcement agents.
Valuable time has been lost, voices have been silenced, and people's lives have
been adversely affected. Please, folks, wake up those around you now! That's
our brightest hope.

We apologize about having to devote yet another article to this distressing
subject. Until we see some basic changes in attitude and evidence of real
protection for all of us, we must continue to speak out. We hope you do the
same, in whatever ways possible.

The good news is that at last the Private Sector is returning. At press time,
the estimate for having the board up and running is sometime in February.
(Extra time is needed to look for any damage and also to see if any "back
doors" have been installed while we weren't looking.)

In the interim and as a supplement, 2600 will operate a limited access
subscriber bulletin board from our New York office. All subscribers are welcome
to call and participate in discussions with other readers on topics such as
this. There will also be a facility for uploading articles to us, using XMODEM
or ASCII transfer methods. This board will be run on an experimental basis and
only between the hours of midnight and noon on Saturday and Sunday mornings
(also known as Friday and Saturday nights), Eastern Time.

To get onto this board, call our office line between these times. Leave your
subscriber code (those funny letters and numbers on the upper right of your
mailing label) or your name as it appears on our mailing list, along with a
first and last name of your choice and a random password. These will be
installed in time for the next day of activity. Don't worry about personal
information leaking out - we only need to see it once to verify that you're a
subscriber and then it will be destroyed.

If you call that number at any other time, you'll either get a human or
machine. If you reach the machine, leave a message so that we can pick up for
real if we're within earshot, which is more often than you might think.

We're also planning to have meetings in various cities throughout 1986. If you
think a particular city is well-suited for this, let us know and we will take
it into account.

We have a lot of fine articles just waiting to be printed and we're always
looking for more. Feel free to send us anything of interest.