Meeting Mania (Autumn, 1993) ---------------------------- Here's the latest in the ongoing Pentagon City Mall/Secret Service scandal that involved attendees of the Washington D.C. 2600 meeting in November 1992: The Secret Service has admitted possessing six previously unacknowledged documents relating to the breakup of the meeting. In conjunction with that admission, the agency filed an affidavit that provides the most information received so far as to just what was going on. According to the affidavit, "the Secret Service received information from a business indicating that that business' PBX had been manipulated," and that the business provided the agency with "certain information concerning the individual(s) who had entered the system." Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Washingtonbased organization that has been relentlessly filing Freedom of Information Act requests since this sordid affair started, translated the available data into the following possible scenario: 1) the "victim business" had some reason to believe that the individual involved had some relationship to 2600; 2) the business passed this information on to the Secret Service; 3) the Secret Service knew that people associated with 2600 met at the mall on a regular basis; and 4) the Secret Service recruited the mall security personnel to identify the individuals attending the monthly meetings. Also of interest is the admission by the Secret Service that "the records which are at issue in this case were provided to the Secret Service by a confidential source and were compiled by the Secret Service...." Towards the end of the summer, the Secret Service took the unusual step of filing an "in camera" deposition. The contents of this deposition are sealed and the only information we've been able to glean from it is that it s at least 56 paragraphs long. CPSR is filing papers to reveal the contents of this deposition. Its existence is considered highly unusual in FOIA cases, but fairly standard in cases of national security. The plot thickens. More Meeting Fun 2600 meetings continue to spring up around the planet. There are almost always strange people watching the hackers but in most cases nothing comes of it. At the July Seattle meeting, however, security guards at the Convention Center and Seattle police officers harassed and even arrested an attendee who wouldn t show identification. He was released almost immediately, clearly showing that the whole thing was an attempt to intimidate the attendees. It didn't work and subsequent meetings have occurred there without incident. Sometimes the funniest people show up. In one city, an intoxicated MCI employee came by and said he was going to bomb all of the hackers' computers by using the system batteries. Among his other memorable quotes was, "We didn't have time for this kind of stuff in Vietnam."