(Fwd) FC: U.S. National Information Emergency declared!

["Arne Haeckel" <Arne.Haeckel@softcon-its.de>]

Hallo,
weiß jemand genaueres über den "Information Infrastructure Defense
Act (IIDA)"? Und was genau bedeutet ein "national
information emergency"?
Jedenfalls wurde schon vor Tagen behauptet, daß organisierte Hacker
an verschiedenen Stellen in den USA in "sensible" Bereiche
eingebrochen seien. Speziell auf den Rechnern der Armee und der
Navy, wo eingebrochen worden war, existierte aber nur "unclassified
Material".
Hier nun der "Beweis": es wurden etliche Hacker in USA und
UK festgenommen. Ob sie organisiert sind, geht aus der Meldung
nicht hervor.
Gruß Arne
PS:
Ach ja, bevor ich es vergesse, die Hacker wurden ausfindig
gemacht und festgenommen, ohne daß vorher Kryptographie verboten
worden war.


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:30:02 -0500
To:            politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From:          Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:       FC: U.S. National Information Emergency declared!
Reply-to:      declan@well.com

===

Subject: Info War Emergency
   Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:46:06 EST
   From: WMadsen777@aol.com

U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION EMERGENCY DECLARED


Hamilton, Bermuda  -- Radio Free America at 2000 UTC -- (February 24, 1999) -
FBI director Louis Freeh, Jr. today announced a nationwide crackdown on
Internet abusers as President Clinton invoked  new authorities granted him
under the Information Infrastructure Defense Act (IIDA) of 1998. White House
Press Secretary Monica Lewinsky said the President declared  a national
information emergency at 9:23 last night. The emergency automatically lasts
for 100 days. The President may then seek an extension after consulting with
three members of Congress. The FBI's Indication and Warning Threat Center in
Newington, Virginia first reported an 850 percent increase in illegal Internet
access attempts last Thursday, prompting Mr. Freeh to ask for the presidential
emergency declaration. Among the sites hacked were the White House's Automated
Oval Office Visit Scheduling System; the Democratic National Committee's
Insta-Donation System; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Tennessee
Summer Picnic Reservation System; the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team's Seventh Day
Adventist Watch Network (also known as "Deep Six the Sevens Net"); the
Electronic Pearl Harbor Visitors' Center;  the Arkansas Attorney General's
Cases-Disposed -Without-Further- Investigation System; the Embassy of  China's
"Rent-a-Prez" system; and the Indonesian Embassy's Rupiah-to-Dollar Laundromat
Net.
        The nationwide sting of Internet intruders began at noon yesterday
when the
New York field office of the Secret Service arrested 25 members of the
Brooklyn Cyberspace Liberation Front at their regularly scheduled Tuesday
meeting at a Bayside Cyber CafÈ. Secret Service spokesman Biff  "Buck" Arew
said, "it took us a while to figure out when they were going to be in one
spot, but after we employed our best investigative techniques, we had them
right where we wanted them. The arresting part was easy." The Secret Service
is a designated  information infrastructure law enforcement agency under the
1998 legislation. It was joined by elements of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals'
Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Postal Inspection
Service, the Park Service, the Border Patrol,  the Enforcement Division of the
Federal Communications Commission, as well as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in
the coast-to-coast operation. Meanwhile, special FAA security officers on loan
from Microsoft were busy at the nation's airports searching the notebook and
palmtop computers of air travelers for illegal software programs.  At the
Pentagon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "the military now
reserves the right to move forward on the information super highway." He said
he considers the Internet similar to the nation's interstate highway system.
"When you have a bunch of stalled cars from a high-altitude combination
electromagnetic and gamma-ray burst littering all the passing lanes and on-
ramps, our armored vehicles just need to push them aside and move on."  The
general, who escaped a recent international war crimes indictment resulting
from his peacekeeping duties in Angola, did not elaborate on the meaning of
his comment.
Other mass arrests of hackers were made in Chicago; New Orleans; Sunnyvale,
California; Tampa; Atlanta, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and St. Louis. Some
of the arrested individuals are noted opponents of the government's policies
to control the flow of information on the Internet.  Internet users report
that some controversial web sites are no longer accessible, although the FBI
refused to confirm whether their operators were among those arrested. The
inaccessible sites include those of the Libertarian Alliance, USA; Cascadia
Green Party; Outer Banks Secessionist Party; Ashcroft for President 2000;
Supreme Court, Free Crypto Home Page;  First Amendment Enforcement Coalition;
United We Stand (Marxist-Leninist); SPAM Prohibition League;  Virtual
Zapatista, and the Arizona Naturist Home Page.
Federal officials stated that the number of arrests totaled more than 900.
Critics of the government action claim the number is much higher. An Amnesty
International spokesperson in Teheran said she thinks the number may be well
over 15,000 but that it was "difficult to get news from America under the
present circumstances." The National Security Agency's National Information
Warfare Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, reported that the identities of
several overseas hackers had been passed to their respective governments for
possible prosecution under U.S. law under the mutual law enforcement and
extradition provisions of the IIDA. Scotland Yard said it had arrested 17
intruders in the greater London area while Europol was preparing to make
several arrests in France, Italy, and Austria.  At a press conference at the
U.S. Embassy in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair, upon leaving a cabinet
meeting, said he was in close communication with President Clinton during
"this extraordinary emergency" and that "he fully understood what the
Americans were ordering him to do."
The government of Burma summarily executed 153 members of the Rangoon Computer
Club. In Ottawa, the RCMP said  the FBI's Canada Law Enforcement Extension
Task Force was investigating several groups in Montreal, Halifax, and
Vancouver and expected to make a large number of arrests "soon." The RCMP
official admitted that, "because we do not normally get involved in FBI
matters on Canadian soil, I cannot give you precise details about the
operation."
        If convicted, the arrested hackers face a maximum penalty of 25
years in
prison and/or a $200,000 fine. Freeh said that he anticipated further arrests
would be made as federal investigators sifted through more communications
records, America On Line profiles, and escrowed encryption keys. The stored
keys are used by federal agents to read scrambled e-mail messages sent by
hackers and the 12 independent special counsels investigating the
administration.
        Vice President Gore issued a statement in which he said, "I praise the
valiant efforts of our federal investigators in isolating and terminating the
disruptive actions of individuals and groups who were bent on interfering with
our precious national information thoroughfares." Gore said he hoped the
government's action would "send a clear signal to others who believe that such
activities will go unpunished. The government has a controlling legal
authority to address these threats." Gore, an announced candidate for
president in 2000, said one of his first acts would be to create a Secretary
of Information cabinet post that would regulate the use of electronic
information throughout the country. "Just as we created a Department of
Defense in 1947 to confront the nuclear threat, we must have a Department of
Information in 2001 to face the millennial cyber threat," Gore declared.
        Gore has been criticized for attending a recent southern California
fund-
raiser sponsored by a major Information Infrastructure Protection contractor.
Paid in South African currency, the Vice President said he was impressed that
the company had enough clout to get its name printed on the South African bank
notes.




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