>From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson)
Subject: Near term story (reposted--sorry0
Date: 20 Nov 91 03:33:33 GMT

[repost--I blew it and put this one into the wrong place--Sorry.]

     I am not much into writing science fiction--too busy living it,
involved with cryonics, nanotech, memetics, politics and hacking, most
recently hacking assembly code for the robotics of a monster CD ROM
jukebox.  But cryonics got me involved with the legal and political
aspects of electronic mail after some of mine was taken in a raid on the
Alcor Life Extension Foundation early in 1988.  That led me into the
technical and legal issues of encryption.  (The county eventually paid us
$30k because the coroner deputies violated the email privacy laws.)

     This fragment of a tale was written shortly after I came back from
the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference earlier this year.  It is
placed in the time period between now and the usual time frame of
Gibsonian cyberpunk.  It was written to help me think about the social &
legal responses we might see when encryption is more widely available--
and used.  This is a situation I expect to see in a few years.

     As written there is relatively little action, though obviously there
is plenty of potential in a story with a sabotage background!  The
technology is near term stuff.  If it is too far from the mainstream of
this group, let me know.  If people like it, I will try to find time to
go further in the story, if not, well, I am too busy anyway.

HKH 11/18/91

(The usual conditions of posting to this group apply--copyright H. Keith
Henson 1991)



                Green Rage  by H. Keith Henson

     "'Nother hour and I can 'crypt and email this mess."

     Lenny closed the forth of five files: maps, diagrams, schedules,
assignments, and instructions.  It was a four person monkey wrench
project for destroying a big piece of a paper mill and (he hoped) making
it look like an accident.  It was due to take place on the east coast in
a few weeks.  Lenny had never met any of the people who had scouted out
the plant, nor the bitter, out-of-work engineer who had figured out how
to wreck it, and none of the operators who were involved would meet each
other.  Made for hard-to-crack operations.  Some people on the east coast
did the same for the covert side of the GreenRage group that paid Lenny.
The tofu sandwich he had for breakfast was a dim memory.

     "Lunch first." Lenny thought.

     As he headed out to pick up a vegetarian pizza, he looked through
the little glass panels in the front door.

     "Oh, shit, suits outside,"

     Lenny said it with feeling, but kept his voice down.  He turned on
his heel in the hall leading to the front door and ran back into the
grubby GreenRage office in the dining room of a rented house in San
Samon.  He managed to hit the power switch on the PC at Stel's desk
before the door opened.  Stel was in the bathroom.  Whether she heard the
warning or not, Lenny could get no help from her, and Marge was out on
errands.  The door was opening--there was no chance to get to the other
two computers or to take down the '586 file server in the kitchen--he
looked up and in his best bright and cheerful voice (which to Lenny
sounded hollow and rehearsed) said, "May I help you?"

      The first of the four suits, a beefy dude in a grey outfit spoke up.

     "Yes, you can.  We're from the CCA.  (The Computer Control Agency):
We have a court order to copy all the computer files in this building,"
(he held up an official looking piece of paper--more trees destroyed,
thought Lenny.) "so unless you want to be charged with contempt, you can
step back from that computer, and don't touch anything till we are done."

     Lenny stepped back.  He wasn't as terrified as he could have been,
though his heart rate must have been close to 120 and his mouth was dry.
He had been through raid drills and a few real confrontations with the
law at pickets and bleed-ins.

     "At least it isn't a search warrant, we might keep operating" he
thought.  Then remembering the drill, spoke up:

     "Can I see the order?"

     The beefy one handed it over while his three leaner and younger
companions fanned out to the computers.  They obviously knew where the
computers were, but that did not necessarily mean rot in the
organization.  How well they coped with the 'puters would say something
about that.

     The paper was about what he expected, an order signed by a judge to
copy every storage device in the GreenRage's office to an encrypted WORM
drive.  The box for paper documents wasn't checked, so they knew they
wouldn't find anything useful on paper.  Bad sign, it meant they knew
more about GreenRage than Lenny liked.  "Waste as much time as I can,"
Lenny thought to himself, and in a very polite voice he asked:

     "Can I see some ID for you and your men?

     The closest of the technoids, as Lenny thought of them looked up in
disgust after putting his hand on the back of the ancient '386 clone
Lenny had just killed.

     "Its been turned off in the last 2 minutes.  Did you do it when we
came in?" he said this looking right into Lenny's eyes, while digging out
his badge. Lenny didn't lie with his reply,

     "Its Stel's, she was about to go out, and we try to save power by
turning them off when we go out."  He said this as loud as he dared,
hoping that Stel would hear him in the bathroom, then spoke up even
louder,

     "Stel, we have official visitors, so don't make any sudden moves."

     At 200+ pounds, and fifty plus years, Stel didn't make many fast
moves, unless they were on young guys.  In view of the constant water
shortage, the chances were only about one in four that she would flush
the toilet, and less than even that Stel would wash her hands.  Without
any running water sounds, she come out.

     "Pigs, huh."  Stel had been politically imprinted as an anarchist at
Madison over thirty years ago in the late '60s and early 70's.  When it
suited her, she could be one of the most obnoxious people Lenny had ever
known.  At least it diverted the attention from him, chances were low
that the cops would grill Stel on who shut off the power on her computer.

     Beefy, whose' badge claimed to be one Dan Barker, and technoid #1
(Lenny never did get a name for him, flashed their badges. Lenny grabbed
a whiteboard marker (almost dry, and the only non computer writing device
permitted in the office) and scribbled Barker's name and badge number on
the edge of a badly cluttered whiteboard.  The other two technoids had
fanned out, one to Lenny's desk, and the other to the kitchen.  The
kitchen one came back shaking his head.

     "No damn keyboard or display on the server.  Have to go in through
the other ones to dump the disk."

     Technoid #2 moved the mouse on Marge's machine, but thank the green
mother, thought Lenny, the screensaver program had timed out, and the "I
NEED A PASSWORD!" message came up.  That meant the password was gone from
memory on that machine.  Technoid #3 hit paydirt on Lenny's machine: the
screen was still alive.  He hit the space bar, and pulled out a little
alarm timer which he set to go off every 3 minutes. "Damn, damnit"
thought Lenny, "I should have set the timeout shorter, has it really been
less than 5 minutes since I got up?"  And he was mentally kicking himself
for not wiping the password when he got up.

     Technoid #3 noted the directory (ACIDRAIN/TRMINATE) where Lenny had
been working and went back up, a level at a time to the main directory on
the file server.  He seemed prepared to deal with a no printer machine,
pulling out a pad of paper from a little portfolio (more trees!) and
started making notes on the directory structure.

     Technoid #2 looked up from Marge's machine and asked Lenny,

     "I don't suppose you would know the password?"

     Lenny shook his head and then looked the agent in the eye.

     "No sir! I certainly wouldn't know Marge's password to get into her
personal machine!" And wouldn't admit it if I did know, he thought.

     Technoid #2 looked over at Stel frowning at the machine on her desk
and asked mildly,

    "I don't suppose you would remember your password?"

    "Fuck off sharp one," Stel said with a straight face.  Even in a near
state of panic, Lenny got a flash of amusement as Beefy started to spit
out a hot reply.  Beefy checked himself as he saw #2 write down
fuckoff#1.  Stel grinned slightly; she had almost scored one on the
agents.

    Without making a move toward Stel's machine, #2 asked #3,

    "Shall I try it, Jim?"  Jim was engrossed, paging through directories
but he mumbled:

    "No, let's see what I can get before we risk a password given under
duress." And, half a minute later,

    "This is going to be a bitch, I can't find any programs to dump
memory, no debug, no basic, no smalltalk, no turbo, nothing."  Lenny
grinned, and straightened his face with an effort.  The crypt program had
come with instructions to delete or encrypt under a special key a long
list of compilers and interpreters-- not that he understood exactly what
they were anyway.

     "Bob, could you have one of the uniformed officers get the camera
out of the car?  Looks like we are going to have to photograph some of
this."  Beefy went to the door and tried to get the attention of one of
the uniformed cops that had come with them.  No luck, they were both out
back, keeping an eye on the building power switch so no one could turn it
off.  It was less distance to the car, so he just walked out to the car,
rummaged around in the back seat and brought back the camera kit.  Jim
waited for him, typing a space every 3 minutes.

     "Take it easy on the polaroid, damn film costs two dollars a shot,"
as he handed the camera kit to technoid #3.  Technoid #2 came over to
help and started clicking shots of the screen as Jim worked his way
around in the directory tree.  There were *lots* of interesting directory
and file names.  Stel, Marge, and the three masked visitors from back
east had spent a whole evening making up provocative names like HIT_LIST
(Lenny's address book), and $LAUNDRY (data for a spreadsheet program
Marge used), and a lot of disaster names like HINDENBG, and TEX_CITY.
Since the crypt program left the directories in the clear, they thought
they might as well make them amusing.  At the moment, with cold sweat
dripping down his back, Lenny wished he had made the directories a little
*less* provocative.

     Once in a while, technoid #3 or Jim as Lenny was beginning to use to
identify him--gotta scribble that name on the white board--would give the
command to type out a file to the screen.  He either got a mess of
published material from decade-old anarchist newsletters, some of which
they carefully photographed on the screen, or computer-generated random
bytes (which, of course, they thought was encrypted material).  One or
the other of the technoids not sitting at the screen kept themselves
shielding the power switch and plug.  Stel was sitting on the grubby
couch waiting for the technoids to either break into the system or screw
up.  Lenny went over and joined her, feeling miserable about the agents
getting in through _his_ system and unwilling to watch any more and give
away by body language when they were about to trip.  He glanced at his
watch.  The damn cron program should ask for the password in another 20
minutes.  "Jeez," he thought, "I hope they don't get anything."

     "There are _10_ copies of something which looks like a word processor
on the server hard drive--they all have the same byte count and date, and
there is _NO_ 'path' set," technoid #3 bitched loudly enough for Lenny to
hear.  (Happened that this was an accident.   Lenny had found that if he
copied the word processor into each directory he made, it worked fine.)
The server had a 700 Mbyte drive, and a few copies more or less of a half
Meg program made no big difference.  However at the moment, the technoids
had concluded that this was a clever hack, that the system would wipe the
password out of memory if they tried to run the wrong word processor
program.  They outfoxed themselves: any one of them would have worked
fine.  ("Type" or "copy" to the screen wouldn't work because the WD*11.0
stored files in compressed binary.)

     "Well, Bob, it is moment of truth time.  We can take a 1 in 10
chance of starting up the word processor and looking at the files, or we
can try to load in a program to extract the key from this thing's
stinking memory.  What say?"

     "You guys are the experts, don't ask me."

     After a short conference, technoid #3 fished a diskette out of his
pocket, kissed it for luck, and stuck it in the drive on Lenny's machine.

    "Here goes nothing." and he typed "dir a:".  The crypt program was
watching for diskette access, and came back with:

                  "I NEED A PASSWORD!

     "Shit."  whispered a dejected technoid under his breath.  "Know
anybody at NSA?"

----------------

     Lenny put the back of his palmtop on the microphone of a payphone
and hit the dial button.

     "That will be one dollar for the first minute."

     Bong, bong, bong, bong.

     "Thank you for using ESJI, you have one minute."  Buzz-click,

     "Hello, there is no one here at the moment, but you can record a
message."

     "Here" was a little module of code in an automated PBX/voice mail
machine watching for incoming calls after working hours on a line deep in
the list of numbers assigned to a small corporation.  It was an old
machine, and unlikely to get another software upgrade.  After taking a
call, it would not take another for several hours, and it rotated through
several recorded messages.

     Lenny hit the next button down on the palmtop.

     #-Beep, 4-Beep, 3-Beep, 6-Beep.

     "confirm with password.

     L-beep, E-beep, N-beep.

     "Record message.  End with any key."

     Beeeeep.

     "Nancy, its Murray, just called to say hi.  Get back to me sometime
when you get a chance."  #-beep.

    "Message confirmation number 36, repeat 36," and a click.

     The PBX made a local call to a paging company and transmitted what
looked like a phone number.  The phone number digits added up to 36.

     Lenny punched 36 into his palmtop and hit the enter key.  It came up
with an address, a description, and a phone number.  It was the phone
next to the K-mart entrance about a mile away.

    "K-mart will be closing about the time I get over there," he thought.
"Could have taken the bike."  He closed the palmtop.  It sensed the
closing and erased its encryption password.

     Lenny got back in his tiny 5 year old "B-car," the 60 mpg car some
rich dude had been force to take in a package deal when he bought a 20
mpg Lincoln Towncar.  He twisted the key.  The lights dimmed as the
catalytic convertor came back up to heat on the battery.  There was a few
seconds' wait to let the battery recover, and the car started.  Lenny
watched for cops as he drove over to the K-mart, but he didn't drive
*too* cautiously.  That was one sure way to attract attention.  There
wasn't much of a mob leaving the closing K-mart on a weekday.  Lenny
parked near the phones and walked over.  He was about 20 feet away when
the one on the left rang.  He picked it up and said,

     "36."

     "What's the problem?  If you forgot your key, I can't help."

     The voice on the other end sounded odd.  It was probably going
through some blind location in Mexico where the automatic number
identification had not yet been installed.  It also had the quality of
digital speech.  Original words of the speaker were being converted to
phonemes and back to words.  Not a hint of the speaker's real voice
quality came through, though this dodge did not affect word choice and
rhythm patterns.

     "Agents," Lenny said.  The CCAs came in early this afternoon.  I
don't think they got anything, but I needed someone to talk to."

     "Dumb idea if they are watching you, but tell me what happened
anyway."

     Lenny related the events of the afternoon up to the point where the
agents lost the password on his machine by trying to load a memory dump
program from a diskette.  And then he went on.

     "After that, they popped the cover off the server, hooked up their
gear and copied the 700 Meg disk, a few dozen 60Mbyte SMs, and a few
dozen 3 meg floppies.  One of them had your crypt package.  They didn't
mention my palmtop, and Marge keeps the backup tapes at home.  Only
took them about 2 hours. They put the covers back on and left me with
what they called a PK encrypted 2.4 Gig WORM cartridge.  They took one
just like it, and even made me choose which one I got.  The order said I
was required to take one of them.  It has all kinds of legal seals and
signatures on it.  They said take it to our lawyer.  One of us took it
over about 5 pm.  None of us have a way to read it.  Are we in trouble?"

     There was quite a delay.  Then, the digital voice spoke up.

     "Even if they were able to track me down, *I* am not in trouble. I
make a point of posting all the programs I ever give out.  In source code
yet."

     "I don't think you are in trouble from what they took with them.
The copy they left with you is the data off your disk, encrypted with a
half-key the judge issued.  Until the hearing they can't read it because
they lack the other half of the key. The only use for it is to keep them
from making a copy of data, changing the data and making another one of
those write-once cartridges.  So, you are ok till the hearing."

     There was more delay, then the funny sounding voice on the other end
of the line went on.

     "Presuming the passwords are not compromised, even getting the other
half of the key from the judge to look at what they took should not be a
big problem.  But since they came in at all, I would say you are in big
time trouble.  That was a piece of dumb luck that they didn't try WD* on
your files.  Of course they always have the option to give you blanket
immunity and force the key out of you, but by the time they get around to
doing that, you can forget the key.  I sure would.  I presume you had the
machine convert all the files after they came in to a new password?"

     "Not yet.  I haven't let anyone put a password into any of the
machines since they showed up.  I'm afraid they will have a camera bug
looking over my shoulder.  About a month ago, I read in the paper that
they did that to a bookie in St Paul."

     "Not likely for you--but possible.  Hmmm, did they leave any
judicial orders about not moving the machines?"

     "Not from what I read on the court order.  I can ask our lawyer.
Our lawyer may be good at filing objections to logging company projects,
but I think he is out of his depth if they go after us criminally.  I
can't afford a criminal lawyer.  I called around and the best deal I
could get was $100k retainer, cash or gold, no checks."

    "They have already gone after you criminally.  You don't get a data
search order from a judge without a fairly good reason.  On the other
hand, it was not a search warrant.  It is arguable that they shouldn't
have gone looking at stuff in your files, but who needs to argue?  They
either don't have enough on you for that or they are waiting to see what
you do and who you talk to after the DSO.  I don't know and don't want to
know what you are doing, but there must have been something that tipped
them off."

     "I can't think of anything--even if the people we are sending email
to on the east coast had all been turned, I can't see how they could have
traced it back to us.  Mail to them was going through about 10 blind
links, sometimes took 3-4 days to get cross country, it was deep 'crypted
all the way, and somebody donated the digital stamps."

     "Never like to use digital stamps I haven't bought myself with cash,
and then only from a reputable Swiss bank.  But I can't see how that
would have done any harm . . . . is there any chance the stamps might
have been 'used?'  That would certainly compromise your traffic, though
not the messages."

     "Nope, a few of the messages circulate back to us.  They wouldn't if
the "stamps" were no good."

     "Not necessarily true.  The mom and pop forwarders often accumulate
stamps for a week or more before sending them to the bank.  You just
can't check with a bank on dollar or sub-dollar amounts--connect time
eats you up.

     "The first link was Telesis, and I know they are on line to the bank
that issued the stamps . . . .  Unless they are . . . . in on it. . . ."
Lenny was looking right at the Telesis logo on the phone.

     "Yeah, '/Paranoia strikes deep/' . . . .  Did the court order say
anything about why they were going after you?"

     "No, there was a note on the order that the supporting affidavits
were sealed."

     "You guys rate!  There hasn't been a sealed affidavit for a DSO I
know about in the last ten years.  The stink around the Steve Jackson
warrant took years to wear off!  Well, they have to unseal them before
the hearing.  The hearing has to be within the next three weeks if I
remember right."

     "You do, it's on the 9th of next month, 20 days from now."

     "Well, the first thing you should do is change the password, so you
can start forgetting the old one.  How much clear stuff was on the disk?

     "None that I know about . . . . well actually about half the disk
was filled with the nastiest old published stuff we could find--rabid
libertarian literature and anarchist newsletters, public domain stuff off
a CD ROM. The rest was filled with random numbers from a noise card when
your guy set it up last year, then we deleted about half of it to give us
working space.  But far as I know, there was nothing to worry about in
the clear.  Snooper hasn't been complaining about unencrypted files when
I run it on startup every morning."

     "There is a hole in that program, but it takes some very special
circumstances for it to fail.  I kind of doubt you are being watched.  If
they were going to go to that much trouble, a search warrant instead of a
digital search order would have been the way to go, but if you are really
worried about them looking over your shoulder, take your machine and the
server to a random motel you've never been to before.  Lets see, if you
had to do the whole disk, it would take maybe two hours.  You shouldn't
lose anything if you have to interrupt the process in the middle--wait,
yours is a 3 person office?"

     "Yes."

     "Main password, and then one for each of you?"

     "Yes."

     "Option 4:7 is what you want to use.  It will decrypt only through
the old main password, and reencrypt through the new password.  Data
never comes up to clear.  Try that."

     "Ok.  Should I take it off to a motel?"

     "Suit yourself.  You know how good or bad you have been.  But do
keep me informed.  Hasn't been a case this interesting in years.  Random
route Email by preference, but call if you need to, same method."

   -------------

     Lenny and Marge checked into a motel which had definitely seen
better times, but was happy to take cash.  A lot of people had quit using
credit cards, especially for checking into a motel on the hourly plan.
It was just too easy for people to tap into credit card records.  The
swimming pool was dry in July, but what the heck, they weren't here for
swimming.

     "I can't believe this, Marge, this power outlet has only _two_
holes."

     "Lenny, this place was built before they invented grounding plugs,
what do you expect."

     "Well, what the heck are we going to do now?"

     "First we look around.  No problem, the socket in the bathroom is a
3 pronger."

     Lenny plugged in the powerstrip while Marge plugged the pieces of
the PCs together and connected a short network cable between them.  Lenny
joked to keep down his nervousness;

     "Wonder what they thought of us."  Not many couples bring in couple
of Pcs to do perverted things in the dark."

     "Lenny!" Marge said sharply.

     "No, Marge, I meant the _Pcs_ will be doing things in the dark, not
us."  Marge picked up on the joke by looking disappointed. She really
wasn't.  Lenny was one of those rare guys who just did not care about sex
with anybody.  Her regular boyfriends knew she was not getting any at
work.

--------------

     The 'crypt program rejected the first three passwords Lenny tried as
too simple.  Which to him meant easy to remember.  He finally got it to
accept anhtre spelled a@n7t%h7e$r (the password program would drop the
final r).  Lenny's first password had been sesame.  He had used
variations on opendoor, opendore, openwindow, enterhere, portculius,
drawbridge, safedoor, gateway at various times.  If anybody had a list of
his passwords, they would be a long way up on selecting attacks.  He felt
he was doing the best he could to make them complex, but still
rememberable.  He left the duress password (bugout) alone.  It was one he
had kept using for years, and never had needed.  Lenny wasn't certain he
would use it if he got a chance.  Even though Marge backed up the disk
every week, he would lose a lot of work if he used the duress password
and wiped the disk.

-----------

     They crammed the computers back into the tiny car five hours later.
Marge dropped the key in the slot by the office and they drove back to
the GreenRage office where Marge and Lenny set up the machines and Marge
started the backup program.  The CCA observer made voice and printed
notes of their return on his palmtop from the stakeout location inside a
furniture company office about a block down the street.

---------

     The office never got up to full productivity over the next five
weeks, but Lenny did finish and email the project--with notes to the
effect that the enclosed was chapters from a book he was writing, and a
true-to-life description of the data search order being carried out.  He
left it up to the folks on the other end.  If they wanted to carry out a
project which was in the hands of the cops, it was on their heads.

----------

     The DSO hearing went about as expected.  The judge granted a two
week extension over the protest of Bruce, the GreenRage's lawyer.  When
the day came, Lenny, Marge, Stel, and Bruce were all looking more
respectable than they usually did.  Even Stel was wearing a dress (long
out of style, but the only decent one she owned).

     The hearing at the federal building started in open court with a
request from the US Attorney for the judge to review the CCS's material
in camera.

     "Mr. Mulronny, I have already looked over the affidavits you sent
over, and I can't do it.  I already granted you an extra two weeks, and
the law can only be stretched so far.  You either have to make a case and
let these people defend their data, or you have to drop it."

     Mulronny looked unhappy, but was prepared with the unsealed
affidavits.  He gave one to Lenny, one to Bruce, and one to the judge.
The judge looked at Bruce,

     "Your honor, this is only about 11 pages, I think my client and I
can review it during a short recess, or you could take up other actions
while we review this."

     Court matters were running a little ahead of schedule that morning,
so the judge had the clerk pencil them in after the next two short
actions.  They went out in the hall, not worrying about snoops except
being overheard.  The last time a judge found out that someone was
bugging the courthouse, the head of the agency that did it spent time in
the drunk tank for contempt.

     Lenny had read the affidavit almost through when they reached the
far end of the hall.  Bruce waited till he finished, and said,

     "Well?"

     Lenny shook his head,

     "They're after someone else.  I've read about some of the events
they are citing, but I sure don't know anything about them."

     That wasn`t entirely true.  One of the "events" was one Lenny had
put together, but when it didn't come off within a year, he had decided
they had chickened out.  Since the project he had put together took out
much of an oil refinery, he was not surprised.  Industrial sabotage on
that scale took more than a little guts.  When the plant finally blew up,
Lenny watched the papers for weeks, but never found out if it was ruled
accidental.  The feds did not seem to be sure either, they only mentioned
it as a possibility.  The other accusations were split between cases
where Lenny strongly suspected sister organization had done the deed, or
industrial accidents where some organization had taken credit for what
was probably an accident.

     Back in court Bruce complained to the judge that there was nothing
substantial in the affidavit supporting the DSO, and that while his
client did not have anything to hide, the government was asking to break
into the confidential business records of a public interest group.  And
if they would not just forget the whole thing, he wanted more time to
respond.

     The US Attorney would have asked for more time to respond if Bruce
had not, so he was agreeable.  The clerk set a date for 6 weeks off.

--------

     Lenny was paralyzed from the neck down.  The judge was asking him
for the password, and he could not remember it.  The bailiff, clerk,
Bruce and Mulroony were all talking in a huddle and he could not make
sense out of anything they said, no matter how hard he tried.

    "This will do it!" one of them said, and jammed a furry dead fish
under his nose.

    Lenny found he could move as he pushed it away.  He woke up to find
the cat had been licking his face and smelling of fish flavored cat food.

[To be continued--perhaps]