IP tracking is simply the logging of the IP address (Internet Protocol
address, the number assigned to your computer that lets other
computers talk to it) that corresponds to each hit on our site. Pretty
much every webserver in the world does this rudimentary kind of
logging. Whenever you do anything on the internet with your computer,
your computer sends it IP address to any other computers that it
communicates with. You can not stop this from happening.

When I used the term "IP Tracking" in my email I was refering to the
logging which is described in the abuse abatement policy, no more, no
less.

IP logging is used for several purposes. One purpose is to gather
statistics about how a site is used, another purpose is to have some
kind of audit/accountability trail to track down those who would
crack, deny or interupt service on a server. It is rarely possible to
actually find the individual person associated with an IP address but
it is often possible to deny access to an IP address which effectively
blocks attempts to crack from that location.

Some sites (very few sites), including some (but not all) IMC sites
have choosen to disable IP logging. This decision was made in the wake
of attempts by police to obtain web server logs from the Seattle IMC
last year. After much discussion with the tech group, the
administrators of groogroo (including myself), and the steering
committee a policy was consensed upon that people believed would
address the dual concerns of the system administrators (including
myself) to secure their system (which is certainly in the interests of
the IMC) and the interests of users to not have a record of their IP
addresses on the system.

The current structure for turning on IP tracking is covered in the
website abuse abatement policy which is linked from the front page of
the UCIMC site. 

During this past week the UCIMC (and several other IMC's with which we
are coordinating our investigation) has been hit by rapidly posted
SPAM messages from a single individual. These messages monopolize the
shared resource of the newswire and are not allowed as per our
consensed website use policy. When this began the person who was
spending many valuable volunteer hours to verify and hide these
messages spoke with members of the tech group and with me (the system
administrator) about the situation. This took the form of informal
discussion among trusted friends, not as an official activation of
policy.

Under our abuse abatement policy this discussion alone would not have
been grounds for activating IP logging, consensus of tech would have
been required.

During the course of the conversation, however, it became clear that
besides simply spamming the site this person was also launching a
denial of service attack against the site by repeatedly temporarily
disabling the comments posting feature of the IMC software. Once I
learned that that was happening I unilaterally made the decision, as
was my right by consensed policy, to turn on IP tracking on emergency
grounds. 

The reason for this was that this person by disabling comments had
shown themselves to be more than a nuisance but an actual threat to
the functionality of the site. We do not yet know how the comments
posting feature is being disabled or what is "re-enabling"
them. Details (like IP address) in logging is the only way to sort
through the mountain of data about website hits to find the cause of
this and to fix whatever bug in our software is allowing it.

It was very possible that this user was launching other attacks
against the sites besides the one we had noticed. By figuring our the
IP addresses of this user I am able to monitor any traffic coming from
those IP addresses. I am currently doing that. 

This is not spying. This is making use of information that is sent to
my computer in the normal course of interacting with my website. All
data that I gather will be deleted within 14 days as per policy.

I am also contacting the ISP of this abuser to notify them of these
activities. Once I have enough data about what this abuser is or isn't
doing I will decide whether a complete blockage of those IP addresses
is warranted and I will block that address. I want to take every
measure possible to avoid having to actually block traffic from any IP
address range.
 
The system administrator must have the ability to make emergency
decisions to pretect the integrity of the web server. Just as a
staffer at the IMC must have the ability to use a fire extinguisher or
call 911. The fact that I as a system administrator spoke with several
trusted IMC members to get a sanity check does not mean that the
decision was made by that small group of IMC members. The decision was
made by me. 

This decision has been backed up by the consensus of the tech focus
group. And full details will be presented to the steering group. 

When you are connected to the internet there are a lot of people you
must implicitly trust and if you do not trust those people you must
take explicit steps to protect yourself. 

The IMC does not log IP addresses but IP addresses still get sent with
every request. It is quite easy for me to log IP addresses without
anyone knowing, but you trust that I don't and you trust that if I did
one of the other IMC community members who co-sysadmins the IMC server
would notice. It is quite easy for our ISP (or their ISP) to log IP
addresses without us knowing, but you trust that they respect their
clients trust enough to not do that. You can use a web anonymizer
which is a service that takes a web request for you and then
re-submits it, but that means you have to trust the oeprator of the
anonymizer and all the ISPs between you and it. On the internet you
really just can't hide your IP address, even if you do trust a lot of
people.

It is quite possibly and highly likely that the federal government's
carnivore system is installed on some ISP between you and the IMC's
server. So really you can't trust that the government doesn't know
what is happening on your IP address. You can only trust that it is
nearly impossible for them to process all the data they are probably
gathering with carnivore.

Now, however, you _can_ hide your identity. An IP address doesn't
encode who you are. At most it encodes roughly _where_ you are. If you
post from the IMC people who find out the IP will know that the post
came from the IMC but they will still not know who made the post. If
you post from a lab on campus people will not know which of the many
lab users posted (unless you had to log into that lab machine and the
same people can also get access to the labs login logs. If you post
from AOL then the AOL people might know exactly where you are since
they know the phone number you dialed in from, but other people,
people operating websites that you access don't have any idea at all
because all AOL IP addresses seem to come from the same central
location. It all depends on the organizational and technical structure
of the organization providing your IP address. 

A good analogy is telephones. If you want to make an anonymous call,
use a pay phone. The IMC is probably bugged (just as our ISP might
well have carnivore), your home phone is easily mapped to you yourself
by caller id...but they can't track and bug every payphone in
existance.

I have been a systems administrator of large production grade systems
since 1993. The first system I ran was a 2000 user, 4 node unix
cluster and an associated LAN with hundreds of network drops and
several file servers for a high school. The first lessons I learned
were about the massive responsibilities that come with the powers of
the system administrator. I learned that even though the sysadmin
could read any users email or find out any users passwords that that
MUST NOT be done without a search warrant no matter who is asking you
to do so. I learned that when looking at potentially sensitive
information of which you only need to find some small technical part
to fix something, to take off my glasses so it was easier to ignore
the text flashing by on the screen. I learned to build a case, to
document proof, against site abusers before locking them from the
system.

I take great pride in my abilities as a system administrator both
technically and ethically. I have never compromised the trust that my
users have put in me. When policies are available I follow them. When
standard internet tradition is relevent I follow it. The IMC has
chosen to allow me (and several other IMC volunteers) to be its system
administrator(s). I am aware of the respsibility this places on me and
the amount of trust that has been placed in me and I am _always_ open
to questions.