Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!jack
From: jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Better not - UUCP to USSR?
Message-ID: <230@piring.cwi.nl>
Date: 1 Mar 88 12:13:43 GMT
References: <5.003752@adam.DG.COM> <33431@metropolis.uucp>
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 27

In article <33431@metropolis.uucp> anatole@metropolis.uucp (Anatole Olczak) writes:
>
>There hae been much talk of setting up a link between
>West and EE-SU.
>
>I'd warn you that it would probably be a big mistake. I
>would be afraid that they read something in 
>"talk.politics.soviet" and get peoples' names on lists.
>
>They have their fingers in more things than you can imagine.

I don't think that this is a valid argument against a usenet connection
to the USSR.
Note that I don't want to belittle Anatole's fears (like some others
seem to be doing), even though I don't share them; my only point is that
not allowing the USSR onto usenet won't make those people any more safe.

If the Russians are really interested in who posts what about them on some
newsgroup they can probably find out already. By saying 'life might get
dangerous when the USSR gets netnews' you sort-of implicitly state that it
is currently safe to say anything you want. This is manifestly untrue.

'Security-by-secretiveness' is not security. Ask any operating systems
person about it.
-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp)
	The shell is my oyster.