Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!bionet!turbo.bio.net!lear From: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: hacker = computer criminal --- (argh) Message-ID: Date: 4 Oct 90 17:48:14 GMT References: <185@netsys.NETSYS.COM> Organization: GenBank Computing Resource for Mol. Biology Lines: 24 niu.bitnet!TK0JUT2@netsys.NETSYS.COM writes: >You'll have to explain the analogy to some of us denser folk. There's a >rather significant difference between authorized security folks in a >corporation spying on employees and individual employees acting as vigilantes >spying. The NOVA program did not address this hardly subtle difference. You're being much too hard on Cliff Stoll, and you seem to be forgetting the other side of his story. There is a vast difference between accessing such private information and using it (both legally and ethically), is there not? Did Stoll use information which authorized users considered private? He was responsible for the security of the LBL computer in question. The users of that machine must vest in him their trust, because sooner or later, as a system administrator, he will come across sensitive information, be it in mail bounces, or with files in the lost+found, etc. The key moral test is whether or not he takes advantage of that information. More importantly, Cliff Stoll was attempting to protect the privacy of those individuals whose accounts were being compromised by the intruder (and not just at LBL). So it sounds to me that Cliff did his job. -- Eliot Lear [lear@turbo.bio.net]