HFPA Volume 1 Number 1 September 3, 1995 Welcome to the first release of the HFPA update. Actually we had a news letter come out a while ago but I have decided to start over with a new mission in mind. As you can see we are trying to become the largest collective of H/P information in the world. My main goal here is to provide a site that is well organized and easy to look through. A web page will be following as soon as I get my new computer from Quantex so I can work on this shit while I am down at school. Currently there are three people working hard to bring you this wonderful archive, pug_guy, medulla, and me. Pug_guy is local to me and is our webmaster. He is the one who is going to be making all of our psychedelic art work for the mega web site. Medulla, also known as halflife is our general maintenance man, he cleans up the system fixes security holes and basically runs the whole damn box. :) I am the d00d with the money paying for all the equipment and the 24/7 connection. I have a thing about making sure the people are protected from there bloated government. I figured the best way to do this would be to provide them with the information that the government has everyday. Sort of an even the score kinda thing. :). This first letter is going to introduce the comming of HFPA. In later articles we will discuss what is going on in the H/P world conferances, news, and general bullshit. We will also be posting a new Computer and Information Law every letter and maybe a couple in some. This will provide you with the information about how much you can do before it is considered "illegal" by our government. This way you can work within the law and still get whatever you want hahaha. Wouldn't that be nice. Okay folks well thats about it for an introduction here is your law of the week and my info if you need to get intouch. E-mail: henry@thepoint.com henry@hfpa.thepoint.net (Soon to be hfpa.org or .com) root@hfpa.thepoint.net tetsuo@hfpa.thepoint.net BSJOHNZ1@ulkyvm.louisville.edu bjohnson@thepoint.com Law for the Week: In seizing computer documents and electronic communications federal agents must comply with privacy and communication statutes. The Secret Service (SS) obtained an overbroad search warrant and confiscated hundreds of computer files and printed material of a games publisher, Steve Jackson Games, that also ran a public bulletin Board Service (BBS). The search violated the federal Privacy Protection Act that forbids search and seizure of any work product of persons resonably believed to be preparing material for public dissemination in any public medium. The SS also retained the materials for an unreasonable period, and refused Jackson's resonable request for immediate return of the materials or permission to copy the materials. The SS read Jackson's private and public E-mail, and deleted information contained in the files without consent. The SS further violated federal law relating to interception of stored wire, oral, and electronic communication. The BBS was a "remote computing service" and therefore agents could obtain the warrant only by disclosing to magistrate the relevance of the information to a "legitimate law enforcement inquiry." The SS's actions eliminated all safeguards and failed to give Jackson notice as to the basis of search warrant and Jackson's right to quash or modify the order, or eliminate or reduce any burden connected with it, including permission to make back up copies of the information seized. Held: The SS did not demonstrate "good faith" reliance on the court order or search warrant. In attempting to prevent Jackson from destroyuing evidence, the SS clearly exceeded its authority. Government officials must conduct resonable preliminary investigations and comply with all federal statutes, no matter how difficult this makes prosecution. [Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service., 816 F. Supp. 432 (WD Tex. 1993)] Next Newsletter the "Line Trap" law. :) Also would like to start a disscussion with people about the "Innocent parties may bear loss caused by hackers" This is about the AT&T vs. Jiffy Lube. Apparently a group of phreaks hacked a PBX from Jiffy Lube and Jiffy Lube tried to push the 50,000 dollar bill off on AT&T. The text of this law will be in the next issue also. If you have a comment or sugestion mail to henry@thepoint.com or henry@hfpa.thepoint.com and your mail will be posted in the public archive. OPEN YOUR OWN CHAPTER OF HFPA. Considering the small amount of bandwidth I can currently get 24/7 for a resonable price; downloads/uploads might tend to get slow. My solution for this is for several sites to run our file archives that way a recomendation for the fastest transfer times can be made by loging into the public ftp archive here. Or a hyperlink will be suggested for a quicker display of information. If you would like your 24/7 site to be an HFPA file distributor mail henry@thepoint.com. This will also allow the archives to grow gathering files as it moves onto new sites. All files will be exact duplicates of the files I have here. The directory structure should be the same but if it cannot be or the sysadmin chooses it not to be we will make a translation table from the home archive to the remote dist. site for your convienance.!! :) If you have anyfiles you would like to upload to the ftp archive please put them in /home/ftp/incomming. :) Thanks Happy Hacking!! Henry