Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!grover.llnl.gov!howell From: howell@grover.llnl.gov (Louis Howell) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: hacker = computer criminal --- (argh) Message-ID: <69260@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Date: 4 Oct 90 18:06:09 GMT References: <185@netsys.NETSYS.COM> Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV Reply-To: howell@grover.llnl.gov (Louis Howell) Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lines: 24 In article , lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) writes: |> 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 I would not say that Stoll actually did anything wrong; for one thing, I don't have enough information to make any kind of valid assessment. What I do find troubling, however, is that the Nova program did not even consider the ethical questions to be worthy of comment. There ARE ethical questions involved when people start tapping in to supposedly private communications. Maybe Stoll was justified, maybe he wasn't. (Personally, I think most if not all of his actions WERE reasonable.) That doesn't mean that Nova should have just ignored the issue, though. -- Louis Howell "A few sums!" retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. "A major navigational change, like the one needed to break us away from the comet and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred thousand separate calculations. Even the computer needs several minutes for the job."