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If you call the US "IP cops" for a perceived violation of IP or copyright, then the response will probably involve DHS. The Department Of Homeland Security (DH

by Hoff 14y ago

If you call the US "IP cops" for a perceived violation of IP or copyright, then the response will probably involve DHS. The Department Of Homeland Security (DHS) is the home of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), and ICE has had responsibility for the enforcement of copyrights, intellectual property and related. ICE has had that role for a while now, too. Which means you see DHS listed on various postings. Here is one of many previous OMG-DHS-WTF kerfuffles: http://www.quora.com/U-S-Department-of-Homeland-Security/When-did-the-DHS-start-to-become-involved-in-copyright-enforcement http://www.quora.com/U-S-Department-of-Homeland-Security/Whe... Waving the latest round of DHS enforcement in front of nerds is probably great for the clicks, but not really all that newsworthy.

danielweber 14y ago
Thank you. I only learned recently that traditionally Customs was in charge of IP enforcement, because so much of it happened overseas. It was a little weird but similar to the way that the Secret Service that protects the President was (until recently) part of the Treasury Department. So when ICE was made in 2003, the same department stayed under it. And ICE is under DHS.
_delirium 14y ago
The U.S. has somehow historically been really bad at producing this kind of paranoia over computer-related stuff through strange assignments of responsibility. The fact that '80s hax0r kids were raided by the United States Secret Service, rather than by some normal-sounding police agency, added a whole layer of mythos to that historical episode.
- tptacek 14y ago
  They were raided by the US Secret Service because the Secret Service is/was actually the Treasury Police (the Protective Service assignment to the Secret Service is an accident of fate). In other words, it is/was weirder that the Secret Service protects the President than it was that they were involved in Sun Devil. And, as someone who came up close enough to Sun Devil to know a couple things (I graduated high school in '94 and went almost directly to working in vulnerability research): many of the people who got caught up in Sun Devil were ultimately good people playing MIT-style pranks that just got out of hand... but don't valorize it. For a good long chunk of time, people were routinely hacking phone switches and rerouting calls. Almost the whole phone infrastructure --- and EVERY Internet-connected Unix system --- was owned up. It was NUTS.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of that history. But naming a government agency "secret service" is just a mythology-building choice in any circumstances, regardless of having a good explanation. Though the later association with guys wearing earpieces and black sunglasses taking a bullet for the President didn't help, either. I don't valorize the '80s BBS scene per se, I just think the response was a bit over the top. Instead of fixing their shit, they tried to paint a bunch of teenage pranksters as some kind of apocalypse, as if these were uniquely evil geniuses, and raiding some BBSs and board game companies to incapacitate them was the real fix to the problem. If you're so wide-open that critical infrastructure is being owned by teenage kids of the level of technical sophistication that you find in '80s Phrack issues, there might be a bigger problem. If anything, the companies were lucky it was teenage kids and not, at that time, anyone more nefarious. As far as the "mythos" part, the writings are what's appealing to me, mainly; there's a certain breathless, naive technical wonder of discovery that runs throughout the '80s textfiles on the subject, which is somehow endearing.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Ok, you just heard me explaining why I think the situation was apocalyptic, right? You could not have had a successful commercial Internet built on infrastructure as thoroughly owned up as the early '90s telco networks were. I am also not talking about "the BBS scene" (which I was very much a part of). The BBS scene didn't own up switches. The BBS scene didn't have lists of X.25 outdials. The BBS scene couldn't rig you up a conference bridge. Lots of people posted comments on BBSs. Very few of them would know what to do with a DMS-100. I am not saying the people to whom I am alluding were evil. They were not. I'm saying they were much smarter than "the BBS scene" as a whole, and that the pranks they were playing got way out of hand. Also: I don't know why you're talking down early Phrack issues. Say what you will about today's Phrack, but in the early '90s, those were teenagers talking about how to reconfigure telco switches. The telco switches they had broken into and owned up. Also, "Secret Service" originally referred to "The Secret Service Division of the Treasury", which was the anticounterfeiting task force of the US Treasury. It is less ominous in context. I do agree, though, that the name is ominous when you strip away the context.
thinkingisfun 14y ago
Then why can't they simply respond?

by Hoff 14y ago

danielweber 14y ago

Thank you. I only learned recently that traditionally Customs was in charge of IP enforcement, because so much of it happened overseas. It was a little weird but similar to the way that the Secret Service that protects the President was (until recently) part of the Treasury Department. So when ICE was made in 2003, the same department stayed under it. And ICE is under DHS.

_delirium 14y ago

The U.S. has somehow historically been really bad at producing this kind of paranoia over computer-related stuff through strange assignments of responsibility. The fact that '80s hax0r kids were raided by the United States Secret Service, rather than by some normal-sounding police agency, added a whole layer of mythos to that historical episode.

tptacek 14y ago
They were raided by the US Secret Service because the Secret Service is/was actually the Treasury Police (the Protective Service assignment to the Secret Service is an accident of fate). In other words, it is/was weirder that the Secret Service protects the President than it was that they were involved in Sun Devil. And, as someone who came up close enough to Sun Devil to know a couple things (I graduated high school in '94 and went almost directly to working in vulnerability research): many of the people who got caught up in Sun Devil were ultimately good people playing MIT-style pranks that just got out of hand... but don't valorize it. For a good long chunk of time, people were routinely hacking phone switches and rerouting calls. Almost the whole phone infrastructure --- and EVERY Internet-connected Unix system --- was owned up. It was NUTS.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of that history. But naming a government agency "secret service" is just a mythology-building choice in any circumstances, regardless of having a good explanation. Though the later association with guys wearing earpieces and black sunglasses taking a bullet for the President didn't help, either. I don't valorize the '80s BBS scene per se, I just think the response was a bit over the top. Instead of fixing their shit, they tried to paint a bunch of teenage pranksters as some kind of apocalypse, as if these were uniquely evil geniuses, and raiding some BBSs and board game companies to incapacitate them was the real fix to the problem. If you're so wide-open that critical infrastructure is being owned by teenage kids of the level of technical sophistication that you find in '80s Phrack issues, there might be a bigger problem. If anything, the companies were lucky it was teenage kids and not, at that time, anyone more nefarious. As far as the "mythos" part, the writings are what's appealing to me, mainly; there's a certain breathless, naive technical wonder of discovery that runs throughout the '80s textfiles on the subject, which is somehow endearing.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Ok, you just heard me explaining why I think the situation was apocalyptic, right? You could not have had a successful commercial Internet built on infrastructure as thoroughly owned up as the early '90s telco networks were. I am also not talking about "the BBS scene" (which I was very much a part of). The BBS scene didn't own up switches. The BBS scene didn't have lists of X.25 outdials. The BBS scene couldn't rig you up a conference bridge. Lots of people posted comments on BBSs. Very few of them would know what to do with a DMS-100. I am not saying the people to whom I am alluding were evil. They were not. I'm saying they were much smarter than "the BBS scene" as a whole, and that the pranks they were playing got way out of hand. Also: I don't know why you're talking down early Phrack issues. Say what you will about today's Phrack, but in the early '90s, those were teenagers talking about how to reconfigure telco switches. The telco switches they had broken into and owned up. Also, "Secret Service" originally referred to "The Secret Service Division of the Treasury", which was the anticounterfeiting task force of the US Treasury. It is less ominous in context. I do agree, though, that the name is ominous when you strip away the context.

thinkingisfun 14y ago

Then why can't they simply respond?