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=  F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K.  =
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                                Zany Fedz!
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        Those zany feds. This is just a small file that insults our lovely
government, and in paticular, the secret service. And to be more precise,
the SS that deal with computers, investigating piracy, and fraud, and 
whatnot. The more you look at them, and the more you hear about them, the
more you have to question them. 
        First, I live in Lubbock. Texas, for those of you that have never
heard of it. This is a town of 250,000 or so people. The BBSing scene here
is pretty big considering the amount of people, and the intelligence around
here. We have a federal building with a SS office, with 4 agents employed
and working there. Their job, is to investigate many things, and among them
local BBSs. Second, the BBSing scene here is really layed back. Almost all
boards use handles, don't require real info(many tell you not to use real
info), and almost none do voice validation. Quite different from most other
towns/cities. Third, many of the BBSers around here know each other. They 
are often times friends, have met, chat on subs or whatever. There are around
30 boards at any given time, and despite the numbers, most people that BBS
frequently will know/recognize other handles. If a new handle pops up, then
it is quite obvious that it is a new person. Each month the BBSers meet at 
a local place and have lunch, introduce themselves, and chat. (that is for
later reference)
        Enough background. Ok. So the SS here decide they will stick their
nose in the BBS scene. Quietly at first. A handle pops up on a board, doesn't
post a message, doesn't mail anyone except the sysop. Through friends, the 
sysop finds out this is a SS agent. The handle itself is a slight giveaway,
a nickname of a federal agent in a movie. No big deal, and most people don't
know all this anyway. Next, the feds decide to set up a BBS. A BBS comes
up. The sysop, and co-sysop are unknown to the BBSing community. The board
had a 9600 baud modem(rare at the time), a CD Rom(Real rare at the time),
a perfectly modded and registered BBS package, 8 registred doors, and
various other little stuff that clued people in. They had the ANTIFED.TXT
as a disclaimer in their newuser login sequence. Any mail regarding warez,
asking about them, who they were, etc, were not answered. Any mail sent on
friday night, would not get answered to Monday morning usually(federal hours)
and on each monday, the sysop posted an excuse explaining why mail didn't
get answered. A few of the local BBSers decided to find out who these people
were, so they checked all the local boards, and did some other stuff. 
Basically, the sysop was only on one other board, and that account had not
been active for months, the number was unlisted, and when checked, was found
to be registered to a kid known to have had trouble with the law. At the 
monthly BBS lunch, two kids show up a little late and one says "We're from
Zog" (the name of the board was Planet Zog). They didn't introduce themselves
individually like everyone else. They left early and weren't seen again. So 
people thought about it, and came to the conclusion this was a fed board. So 
all the people that called(very few) started posting things like "fedz suck"
and other stuff like that. They posted ads for boards with "2 gigs of warez"
and "more codez than you can shake a stick at". The whole time, the sysops
never played the games, never posted, and barely answered mail about 
anything. Mail was sent to them saying "I can get you warez" and other such
stuff and that mail was ignored. They didn't say "sure" or "not interested"
but just ignored it.
        The point of it you ask? What the hell is their problem? I mean,
you have a group of people that are not very knowledgable about computers
(will tell more about that later), that come into town, and expect to bust
people that easy? There are people here that have been BBSing for 8+ years,
copying "warez", exchaning k0d3z, etc. They know computers, networks, modems,
phones, and everything else relating to it, a hellavu lot better than the
feds do. In the last two or so years, the fedz have busted 3 people for
BBS related stuff, and the only reason they got them was a) one was careless
b) one accidentaly led to the other two  c) blind luck. 
        I have talked with a few people about the bust, one of the guys that
got busted, and other people that are involved. When the SS busted the three,
they handled the whole bust with a severe lack of thinking. The story is
too long to tell details, and hopefully that will be a future file, written
by one of the guys who went down. While being questioned for the weeks after
the bust, one of the guys was asked several questions that showed the lack
of knowledge they had. The SS didn't even know about the pirate boards in
town, didn't know who all was involved, didn't know about many of the boards
until they got their hands on a list of them put out by one of the local 
BBSers. Their knowledge of equipment and techinical know-how regarding
computers and BBSs were severely lacking(once again, this is based on 
questions put to one of the guys who got busted.) 
        It all boils down to this. Why are they here? Shouldn't they be
getting some much needed training? Why are my tax dollars paying for them
to sit in an office and investigate something they have no clue about?
I am the last one who wants boards to go down, but I am one of the first
that wants his/her tax dollars to go to a GOOD use. Since the bust about 6
months ago, the only thing they have managed to do, is scare a few boards
into getting rid of adult GIF files. They made a point to scare a lot of
the locals into getting rid of GIFs with young "models" and making sure they
were not accessible to under age users. And it takes 4 agents to do all this?
The underground scene is mutating quite rapidly, and the users seem to keep
up with it barely, and the fedz expect to keep up with it just as well?
For example, the agent in charge didn't know a certain board went down until
a week later when he questioned one of the guys about it. Not knowing if a 
board is up or down?!? All it takes is a simple voice call to verify it, and
they don't even do that? Bah. Get some better trained monkeys. 
        Even though it may diminish the underground scene, it would almost
definitely keep it higher quality, and prevent lamers from ruining it. It
could present more jobs, or whatever, but what is the point? You stop one
person, and his friends, and two more boards pop up to take its place. 
I don't know where all this is leading, but if the SS are that undertrained
to take on the job of busting pirates and "k0d3z d00ds" then how bout the
rest of our government? What do they do? Are they trained better and prepared
to take on their job? I think not.

                                                        Dam


PS- "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny" - Apply that to the above discussion.


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