funsec mailing list archives
Re: Well, d'oh!
From: Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:14:29 -0500 (CDT)
On Fri, 11 Aug 2006, der Mouse wrote:
With security in mind, the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you blacklist, saying what is not allowed and allow everything else. In a dictatorship you whitelist and disallow everything else.Actually, the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is who decides whether you whitelist or blacklist, and what's on the list either way (the dictator, or the populace).
Another fine point. I believe it is recursive to mine. Nothing is ever black and white, but it is far easier to make a point that way, isn't it?
This may correlate well with deciding to whitelist or blacklist (ie, allow by default or deny by default) in some field you happen to care about, but there is nothing inherent to dictatorships or democracies requiring or compelling that. It's easy enough to name instances where democracies blacklist by default (at least if you count North America and most of western Europe as democracies) and while the only example I know of offhand of a dictatorship that allows by default is online, I expect that reflects more my lack of knowledge of meatspace dictatorships than anything inherent in them. Indeed, I fully expect that all practical instances of either system allow by default in some areas and deny by default in others - certainly all instances I know of do.
In democracies, or at least what we have today which is as close as possible (=for us to make it work so far), I suppose... we have a lot of different types of behaviours. That said, you are right and I look at your statement more as a refinement and clarification of mine.. as.. Guns don't kill people, kids playing video games kill people! Err.. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. That statement too is incorrect, as if I kill somebody with a table, the table will be considered the weapon of choice. As Aryeh mentioned today over lunch.. the difference between today's computers and guns is that guns are single-purpose machines. ^^ I am REALLY abusing and changing what he said for my own purposes in illustrating my point. Gadi. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- Surveillance works Dennis Henderson (Aug 11)
- Well, d'oh! Gadi Evron (Aug 11)
- Re: Well, d'oh! der Mouse (Aug 11)
- Re: Well, d'oh! Gadi Evron (Aug 11)
- Re: Well, d'oh! Brian Loe (Aug 12)
- Re: Well, d'oh! Dude VanWinkle (Aug 11)
- Re: Well, d'oh! Brian Loe (Aug 12)
- Re: Well, d'oh! <...> (Aug 13)
- Re: Well, d'oh! Dude VanWinkle (Aug 13)
- Re: Well, d'oh! der Mouse (Aug 11)
- Well, d'oh! Gadi Evron (Aug 11)
- Re: Surveillance works Brian Loe (Aug 12)
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- Re: Surveillance works Kevin McAleavey (Aug 12)
- Re: Surveillance works Brian Loe (Aug 12)
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- Re: Surveillance works Kevin McAleavey (Aug 12)