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From: karish@mindcrf.UUCP (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: hacker = computer criminal.  so what?
Message-ID: <9010042154.AA13576@mindcrf.mindcraft.com>
Date: 4 Oct 90 21:54:51 GMT
References: <16409@know.pws.bull.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <16409@know.pws.bull.com> eli@PWS.BULL.COM (Steve Elias) writes:
>> brnstnd@KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU(Dan Bernstein) writes:
>> Employers have no right to tap phone lines. There is both a technological and
>> a legal difference between "tapping" and simple in-house monitoring.  Further,
>> as Stoll notes in his book, he did not have authorization for much of this
>> activity.  Nova failed to address these distinctions. The similarities between
>> Stoll's behavior and the hacker(s) he was pursuing were ignored, and Nova
>> treated the chase uncritically.
>
>similarities between Cliff's "behavior" and the hacker's "behavior"...
>please cut the bullshit.  the hacker dude and his friends were coke
>addicted dipshits selling info to the KGB.  your comparison is obnoxious.

This brings to mind Gene Spafford's admonition to Mike Godwin that he
stop whining about civil liberties and use his energy putting crooks in
jail.  The assumptions that we can always tell the good guys from the
bad guys, and that anything goes when it's time to fight the baddies,
are dangerous ones.  They embody the same lazy cupidity that forms the
intellectual basis for the 'war on drugs'.

You can always tell the bad guys in the movies, partly by their
hair and clothes and partly by the theme music.  It's too bad we
don't always have cues like those in real life.
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000