SJ Games vs. The Secret Service

Posted by Tyler | Filed under Deep Thoughts, Links, Politics

Steve Jackson Games is one of my favorite game companies. They’re responsible for Chez Geek, Munchkin (and its spawn), and the greatest of all, Illuminati. These games are great! In my at-work news sniffing, I came across an old story involving SJ Games and the Secret Service. The Electronic Frontier Foundation apparently took the case, and there’s some interesting historical information in the EFF archives.

I found the archives a little difficult to navigate myself, so I’ve reprinted here the text to the background document by Shari Steele. Enjoy!

Steve Jackson Games Versus United States Secret Service
by Shari Steele

In a decision announced in Austin, Texas, on March 12, Judge Sam Sparks
of the federal district court for the Western District of Texas
announced that the case of Steve Jackson Games et al. versus the U.S.
Secret Service and the United States Government has been decided for the
plaintiffs. The decision in this trial may have critical implications
for our online communications.

But first, some background. Many years ago, telephone companies around
the country worked with local police and fire departments and hospitals
to create a system where telephone users could dial the digits “9-1-1″
to report an emergency. The telephone lines used for the 911 system
were separate lines, which were not used by the telephone companies to
route regular telephone calls, to ensure that the lines were always
available during emergencies. Sometime in September of 1988, a computer
intruder logged onto a Bell South computer and made a copy of a
telephone company document describing how Bell South’s emergency 911
system worked. Telephone company personnel became aware of the
existence of the unauthorized copy of this proprietary document and
called the United States Secret Service to help find the person who had
penetrated their computer. The Secret Service agents were concerned
that the integrity of the emergency 911 system would be in jeopardy if
computer intruders knew how to use the 911 lines, leaving emergency
callers with no access to the system when they needed it.

In reality, the document that was copied off the Bell South computer,
commonly known as the E911 document, did not contain passwords or any
other access descriptions. The document was, rather, a technically
written narrative containing information that was readily published and
available for sale from Bellcore and other telephone companies.

No matter . . . the Secret Service was on the case! And with the help
of telephone company personnel, the Secret Service attempted to trace
the location (or locations, as was the case) of the document. Sometime
in February of 1989, the young man who had copied the E911 document from
Bell South’s computer submitted it for publication to an online
newsletter named Phrack. Phrack’s editors cut the document down to
about half of its original size, taking out all references to telephone
company employees, telephone numbers and sensitive information about the
system. The E911document was then published in Phrack issue 24, which
was electronically distributed for its usual no charge, to various
computer users throughout the country — to about 150 sites in all.
Phrack issue 24 was distributed on February 25, 1989.

The Secret Service went wild. Copies of what they claimed was a
sensitive document had now been passed electronically throughout the
country. And on March 1, 1990, the Secret Service raided a fantasy
books and games producer named Steve Jackson Games, looking for the
document.

The Secret Service didn’t actually know whether someone at Steve Jackson
Games had received a copy of issue 24 of Phrack. The Service simply
knew that one of the employees there had received a copy of the
newsletter on his home BBS, and may have been involved with the young
man who had originally intruded into Bell South’s computer. When the
employee’s home BBS was no longer accessible to telephone company
personnel attempting to log in, a theory apparently arose that the
employee’s BBS was now being run out of Steve Jackson Games. And, in
fact, Steve Jackson Games did run a BBS, called the Illuminati.

The Secret Service, as it would learn later, was wrong. There was no
E911document on Illuminati, no issues of Phrack, and no BBS from the
employee’s home. The Illuminati BBS had been around for years and was
set up to be a place for those who enjoyed fantasy games to congregate.
The board was setup like most other boards — with bulletin boards,
conference areas and e-mail. But now the board was closed down — the
Secret Service physically removed it from Steve Jackson Games on March
1, 1990, and did not return it until sometime in the end of June of that
year. All in all, the Secret Service seized 3 computers, 5 hard disks
and more than 300 floppies from Steve Jackson Games on that fateful day.

No criminal charges were ever brought against Steve Jackson Games. Yet,
when the computer equipment was returned more than three months after
the raid, it appeared that someone inspecting the disks had read and
deleted all of the 162 electronic mail messages contained on the BBS at
the time of the raid. Not one of the users of the BBS was even under
investigation from the Secret Service.

Steve Jackson, owner of Steve Jackson Games, was angry. During the
three months his systems were under Secret Service investigation, he had
to layoff nearly half of his work force. Publication of at least one of
his games books was delayed, resulting in loss of revenues to the
company. He was written up in Business Week magazine as being a
computer criminal. Steve Jackson decided to fight back. On May 1, 1991,
Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games and three users of the Illuminati
BBS, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a civil
suit against the United States Secret Service, alleging that the search
warrant used during the raid was insufficient, since Steve Jackson Games
was a publisher, and that the privacy protections of the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)had been violated with regard to the
electronic mail on the system.

As I wrote in a previous column, ECPA consists of a series of amendments
to the federal wiretap act. It prohibits law enforcement officers from
intentionally intercepting, using and/or disclosing the contents of
private electronic communications without a warrant. The statute offers
the same privacy protection for communications that are stored
“incidental to the electronic transmission thereof.” The users of the
Illuminati board claimed that their unread e-mail was still in transit,
and therefore required a warrant specifically describing the messages to
be searched. The Secret Service claimed that the mail was no longer in
transit, and therefore no special warrant was required under ECPA.

On Tuesday, January 26, 1993, at a little after 1:00 p.m., U.S. District
Court Judge Sam Sparks began to hear the trial of Steve Jackson Games v.
United States Secret Service. By the third day of the trial, while the
judge had not decided the final outcome of the case, he had determined
that the raid and the subsequent investigation and non-return of
equipment had been inappropriate. While Special Agent Thomas Foley of
the Secret Service sat there simply replying, “Yes, sir,” the judge
barraged him with questions concerning the Secret Service’s conduct:
[Note: Some of this may be paraphrased.]

“How long would it have taken you to find out what type of business
Steve Jackson Games does? One hour? . . . In any investigation prior to
March1st (the day of the raid) was there any evidence that implicated
Steve Jackson or Steve Jackson Games, other than [the employee's]
presence? . . .You had a request from the owner to give the computers
and disks back. You knew a lawyer was called. Why couldn’t a copy of
the information contained on the disks be given within a matter of days?
. . . How long would it have taken to copy all disks? 24 hours? . . .
Who indicated that Steve Jackson was running some kind of illegal
activity? . . . Since the equipment was not accessed at the Secret
Service office in Chicago after March 27, 1990,why wasn’t the equipment
released on March 28th? . . . Did you or anyone else do any
investigation after March 1st into the nature of Mr. Jackson and his
business? . . . You had the owner standing right in front of you on
March 2nd. Is it your testimony that the first time you realized that
he was a publisher and had business records on the machine was when this
suit was filed?”

And so it went for fifteen minutes straight. The government lawyers
were visibly shaken by this interrogation — so much so that they
decided not to call any of the other witnesses who had waited for two
days to tell their stories. In the closing arguments, the judge
repeatedly asked the lawyers what his award of damages should be, since
it was apparent he believed that Steve Jackson Games had, in fact, been
damaged.

The judge’s decision was announced on March 12, 1993. Judge Sparks
awarded more than $50,000 in damages to Steve Jackson Games, citing lost
profits and violations of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980. In
addition, the judge awarded each plaintiff $1,000 under the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act for the Secret Service seizure of their
stored electronic mail.

The judge also stated that plaintiffs would be reimbursed for their
attorneys’ fees.

The judge did not find that Secret Service agents had “intercepted” the
electronic communications that were captured when agents seized the
Illuminati BBS in an early morning raid in the spring of 1990 as part of
a computer crime investigation. The judge did find, however, that the
ECPA had been violated by the agents’ seizure of stored electronic
communications on the system. The plaintiffs have decided to appeal the
interception claim.

The results of this precedent-setting litigation will clearly have
important consequences for users of computer bulletin board systems.
And, hopefully, the public reprimand of the United States Secret Service
will cause them to step back and think before seizing their next BBS.

Tags:

Permalink | July 27, 2004, 9:11 am

Leave a Reply