Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!nosc!trout!ganzer
From: ganzer@trout.NOSC.MIL (Mark T. Ganzer)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Better not - UUCP to USSR?
Message-ID: <603@trout.NOSC.MIL>
Date: 2 Mar 88 18:55:36 GMT
References: <8802291850.AA15821@snark.UUCP>
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 41

In article <8802291850.AA15821@snark.UUCP>, !snark!eric@RUTGERS.EDU writes:

> It could be *literally* more than a Soviet citizen's life is worth to be a
> known participant in some of what goes on in, say, talk.politics.misc. Ask
> anyone who has lived there as a native.
> 
> Is that clear enough for you?
> 
I know this has been all discussed before, but this line of reasoning still
doesn't seem like a good reason not to have a West-East link.

The person living in the Soviet Union has had to deal communications
monitoring their
entire life, so they aren't going to do anything to get themselves into
trouble in such a public forum, especially when they are used to the
possibility that their PRIVATE communications are being monitored.

Everyone on Usenet is still subject to the laws of their own country. So a
U.S. citizen that has access to National Security Information (classified
information) is not free to discuss classified information, even if it
appears on the net from outside the U.S. . Similarly, U.S. participants are
subject to U.S. export regulations covering the material they are
discussing. Thus, a Soviet citizen is not going to violate soviet law by
"slandering the Soviet state" on Usenet just because it's there.
Or he could claim that it's a counterfeit posting :-) (actually not all
that funny)

As for KGB (or CIA, FBI, etc) information gathering, because it is easy to
get public access to Usenet (Through a number of sites or a feed from uunet),
if they wanted to do it, it's already being done. If you're worried that your 
name might show up on
someone's list ( or worried that something that you write may be used
against you when you're nominated for the Supreme Court :-), you probably
shouldn't be here.

I'll leave all the POLITICAL discussiion of this issue to
talk.politics.misc.
-- 
MarK T. Ganzer                    Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
UUCP: {bonnie,sdcsvax,gould9,hp-sdd} - !nosc!ganzer
      {apl-uw,ncr-sd,bang,crash    } /
Internet: ganzer@nosc.mil