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From: klg@dukeac.UUCP (Kim Greer)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: The Wrong End of the Telescope
Message-ID: <4541@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 90 11:49:40 GMT
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Reply-To: klg@dukeac.UUCP (Kim Greer)
Organization: Academic Computing, Duke University, Durham, NC
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 134, Message 5 of 11


In article <4262@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> writes:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 123, Message 2 of 5

>In TELECOM Digest  Volume 10 : Issue 118 you write:
 
>> People just can't seem to grasp the fact that a group of 20 year old
>> kids just might know a little more than they do, and rather than make

>For any commercial or government entity to do less is in itself
>criminal. To then go after "hackers" for simply walking in the
>relatively open door and prosecute them is an offense.

  Dumb - maybe.  Negligent - yeah, ok.  Criminal ?  I don't think so.

Obligatory net analogy: If I sit a briefcase down on the sidewalk
while I fumble with keys to unlock a car door, and some jerk heists
the brief- case, then you are telling me _I'm_ the criminal?  Get
real.  I'm fed up with lame excuses and garbaged reasoning from these
idiots (crackers or whatever name they want to call themselves - I'm
not referring to you, John) to somehow justify their illegal deeds.
They have no right or privilege bestowed upon them to legitiately do
their childish, though dangerous (in several categories - property,
lives, copyrights, and yes, maybe even national security) "pranks".

  Its an offense to prosecute someone because the victim had a
"relatively open door"??  Tell me that same thing should one ever bust
into one of your systems.  I won't hold my breath.


K. Greer
klg@orion.mc.duke.edu


[Moderator's Note: Like yourself, I am tired of hearing the notion
that *I* must be restricted and/or inconvenienced because *they* never
learned to respect the private property of others. Its all too common
these days, isn't it: the victim is made into the guilty party, and
the guilty party becomes a folk hero persecuted by a government out to
get him. The best thing in the world that could have been done for
some of the crackers would have been for their parents to slap the
fire out of them a little more often.  PT]