Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!phil
From: phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Library anti-theft walk-thru device...????
Message-ID: <1991May14.202632.3500@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 May 91 20:26:32 GMT
References: <1991May14.155250.25003@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1991May14.181148.15821@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 36

rbrink@hubcap.clemson.edu (Rick Brink) writes:

>little secret.  But was it too much to expect that Electrical Engineers who
>figure it out, keep their professional mouths shut about it. (Sorry guys/gals

Yeah... that is too much to expect.  Technical knowledge usually has more
that one application.  Also the ways to defeat many existant systems are
actually trivial anyway.  Most of us don't steal nor do we expect vary many
of the rest of us to steal.  If I knew for a fact that someone WOULD steal
if I were to tell him how, I would not tell him.  Absent that fact, the
information is just technology, not a method to steal.

>If we police ourselves, we don't have to worry about someone else doing it
>for us.

But police ourselves from what?  Technology?

Take the current cellular telephone system for example.  It is illegal to
listen in to cellular phone communications.  Yet you can do so with a
modified scanner.  Would it be appropriate for me to post how to modify
as scanner to do so?  I think it would be OK because there are OTHER
legitimate reasons to listen to those particular frequencies, for things
other than listening to cellular telephone (such as hams wanting to detect
potentially interfering emissions of harmonics from defective transmitters
they are operating).

I see nothing wrong with describing how something works.

We also have the technology to make things work in such a way that even
someone who knows how it works can't break it anyway.  The problem is that
we don't use this technology.
-- 
 /***************************************************************************\
/ Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu   |  Guns don't aim guns at  \
\ Lietuva laisva -- Brivu Latviju -- Eesti vabaks  |  people; CRIMINALS do!!  /
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