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From: campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Should we let students run COPS to get each other's passwords?
Message-ID: <1991Jun15.024453.17639@redsox.bsw.com>
Date: 15 Jun 91 02:44:53 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.042115.16845@athena.cs.uga.edu> <1991Jun14.053131.753@metapro.DIALix.oz.au> <1991Jun14.193545.24869@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Reply-To: campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell)
Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <1991Jun14.193545.24869@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
->Running a guesser is not breaking confidentiality. If I guessed that
->you had red hair, never having seen you, and found out that you did
->indeed have red hair, then I would not be breaking confidentiality,
->even if you do wear a hat all the time.
-
-Balderdash.  Information obtained by trial-and-error is still information!

Excuse me, but are we all speaking *English* here, or some new language with
which I am not familiar?  "Obtaining information" is not a breach of
confidentiality.  To violate a confidence, there must first *be* a confidence
to be violated.  A confidence exists when person A gives person B some
information, person B having agreed -- either implicitly or explicitly --
to keep the information to himself.

Posting your "confidential information" in encrypted form in a public place
hardly constitutes a confidence.  *You* may regard the information as
confidential, but there is no second party -- no person B -- who has agreed
not to violate the confidence.  Any confidentiality is entirely a figment of
your imagination.

If you don't like it, then either don't post your encrypted secrets (i.e.,
use a shadow password file), or get a better encryption algorithm.  But
don't go persecuting the curious and clever students who find the puzzle
challenging!!!
-- 
Larry Campbell             The Boston Software Works, Inc., 120 Fulton Street
campbell@redsox.bsw.com    Boston, Massachusetts 02109 (USA)