Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!heron.cs.rochester.edu!yamauchi From: yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Missing mission Message-ID: <1990Sep2.030722.25255@cs.rochester.edu> Date: 2 Sep 90 03:07:22 GMT References: <11446@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1990Aug26.063940.29357@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <36814@ut-emx.UUCP> <11502@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Sender: news@cs.rochester.edu (Usenet news) Reply-To: yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department Lines: 48 In article <11502@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) writes: > In article <36814@ut-emx.UUCP> mnemonic@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Mike Godwin) writes: > > > >If it had not been for the efforts of Spafford and like-minded > >individuals who promoted the all-hackers-are-dangerous-criminals-who- > >deserve-extreme-sanctions mentality, it is possible that no one would > >have seen the need for an EFF. > The existance of those people certainly doesn't excuse slipshod or > incorrect prosecution. But it does mean that there are legitimate > reasons why law enforcement officials are trying to catch and > prosecute some of them. I haven't seen any evidence of the sinister > conspiracy theories some people have been promoting. Ignorance, > perhaps. Frustration, perhaps. But not evil intent. People are > losing time and money because of unauthorized users, and the law > enforcement personnel are trying to respond -- that's their job. > Unfortunately, they don't have the tools or training to do it as well > as they should, nor do they have the cooperation. That doesn't mean > they are going to ignore the victims. I don't think anyone is arguing that the victims should be ignored, but I have yet to see any reasonable justification for actions such as the confiscation of equipment from Steve Jackson Games just because they publish a Cyberpunk role-playing game. I would agree that this action is probably due more to fear and ignorance than conspiracy, but this hardly makes it any better -- some of the most brutal actions in human history have been the result of fear and ignorance. > Along with the vigorous protestations about rights, I think it would > be much more constructive to think up ways to stop cracking/hacking > and help catch the transgressors than it would be to continue to > publicly slam people who don't necessarily agree with you. Certainly there is a role for anti-cracking, anti-virus organizations, but such organizations exist (CERT and NCSC, for example). However, up until now there have been no organizations devoted to protecting electronic rights from government infringement -- EFF seems to be ready to do so. I think it's unreasonable to require that EFF do the job of CERT, just as it would be unreasonable to require that the ACLU do the job of the FBI. _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________