1994 Internet porn & piracy scandal

A July 1994 news report about the Internet porn scandal at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a similar software piracy scandal at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Interviewees include Brian Behlendorf, Charles Cole, and Jeff Kahn.

Wrote K.K. Campbell in the Aug. 4 1994 issue of Toronto's Eye Weekly, "Couple of weeks ago, California nuclear research facility Lawrence Livermore Labs discovered one computer held some dirty pictures. An employee gave away a password. Someone used that access to store the images. People could connect and get them. Nothing was hacked. Big deal. But on July 13, CNN reporter Don Knapp swooped in to whip up hysteria. Doom was clearly imminent. 'Computer security specialists were surprised to find what may be the largest computer collection ever of hardcore pornography at the nation's top nuclear weapons and research laboratory,' Knapp intoned ominously. Almost 2000 megs! Gol-ly! (Incidentally, 99 per cent of it was individual shots of nude/semi-nude women, no sexually explicit acts. Playboy stuff.) CNN rang Wired magazine writer Brian Behlendorf and woke him at home, excited about 'a big break-in at Laurence Livermore.' Hackers and porno! If CNN was lucky, the hacker was a child molester. Behlendorf consented to an interview. CNN immediately asked him to 'find some pictures of naked women on the Net for us.' Behlendorf recounted the incident: 'I really wasn't
interested in doing that. I don't know of any FSP/FTP sites offhand anyways, and really didn't want to be associated with pictures of NEKKID GRRLS.' But amiable Behlendorf slid over to alt.binaries.pictures.supermodels and grabbed a picture of a model in a swimsuit. He also picked up a landscape, a race car and a Beatles album cover "to show that other images get sent over Usenet as well," naively thinking this point would be made -- though he stresses he by no means condones
distributing copyrighted images, "clean" or otherwise. Behlendorf was then made to sit beside a terminal displaying Ms String-Bikini throughout all his comments. 'They made me keep returning to that damn bikini image ... over and over.' But intrepid reporter Don Knapp assured us all is well -- for now. 'Spokespeople for the national laboratories insist that at no time were the pornographers, nor the software pirates, able to cross over from the research network into the classified network. The labs say that, while they are embarrassed, national security was not breached.'"

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• CNN
• Internet
• porn
• piracy

[OmegaWolf747]

So that's what those so-called scientists were spending our tax dollars on.

[chunkmanshaun]

lol if they only seen todays back then