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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: UUCP - USSR
Message-ID: <3237@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 00:01:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.3237
Posted: Wed Oct 21 00:01:54 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Oct-87 01:36:37 EDT
References: <8710200932.AA00888@violet.berkeley.edu> <7213@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 29
To: info-futures@bu-cs.bu.edu


zrm@eddie.MIT.EDU (Zigurd R. Mednieks) wrote:
>                                    The net benefit will be to Soviet
> intelligence gathering and analysis.
>                  ...The goal of wider dissemination of information
> should be met before such an intelligence boon is granted to the
> Soviets.

I am really, truly wondering what information there is on Usenet
that the Russian "NSA equivalent" doesn't recieve many times over
while watching it being transmitted from net site to net site.
Surely they monitor the undersea telephone cables on which it moves
to Europe, as well as many other telephone switching sites in many
European countries, Japan, Korea, etc.  Not to mention listening to
the microwave towers that carry telephone calls in the U.S.

Besides, if we can't get our own government to listen to us netters (witness
the FCC versus packet switching networks), maybe we can get some attention
from the Russian government...	:-)

	John

PS:  I suspect that the War Dept. Internet folks let so much third
party traffic go through their network because it gives them an
excellent chance to watch it all, perfectly legally.  (What was that
about four IMPs at Ft. Meade?)  Maybe the KGB would give us a similar
deal; say, funding PC Pursuit after the FCC kills it.  It never hurts
to ask...
-- 
{dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu			  gnu@toad.com