Vulnerability Development mailing list archives

Re: Civil Disobedience


From: "TD - Sales International Holland B.V." <td () salesint com>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 15:34:13 +0200

Appearantly security is no longer just technical, especially with all the 
stuff about new laws about encryption & hacking, this involves us, we are the 
ones that understand the impact we can not let this be handled just by people 
that know s*** about security and computers in general.

If you know a place where it is appropiate to discuss these kinds of things 
please let me know. I don't believe there are any lists for this yet, while 
there should be, since on a lot of lists I'm on these are very hot topics 
lately. Seeing this list it's no different here. This applies to us, our 
being and doing, we have a right to be concerned. We can't keep our eyes 
closed and just think it will all work-out ok, if we would democracy would be 
a joke......

Here in the netherlands we have a saying, freely translated it comes down to 
being silent is agreeing. Guess you can apply the same thing in democracy, 
not voting against will be taken as voting for.

Regards


On Tuesday 16 October 2001 04:09, Eduardo Diaz stuffed this into my mailbox:
Please focus on security in terms of technical issues.

Eduardo Diaz
ICSA.CL



-----Original Message-----
From: br0ken halo [mailto:x_burning () hotmail com]
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 1:55 PM
To: vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Civil Disobedience



I agree that this bill is *very* unneeded...to say, to even make the
comparison between a hacker and a terrorist is absurd! Terrosim kills
people, hacking is a victimless crime. People go on and on about how our
'national' infrastructure is at *grave* risk from evil hackers and that
these evil hackers could destroy power grids, shut off our water, and cause
the beginning of the freaking holocaust - yet have we actually seen any
real world proof of this? This kind of thinking is only propaganda, as is
the hacker - terrorist comparison.

Beefing up the sentences on hackers/crackers/virus writers and the like is
complete stupidity. It's a simple 'we don't really care about how the
problem gets fixed, as long as it does get fixed' attitude. Thats exactly
what this bill represents. The way to defeat the script kid is through good
security practices through solid communication and deployment of the tools
necessary to achieve a secure computing enviroment. This includes but is
not limited to security lists, good security information websites such as
http://www.securityfocus.com and the like. The only way security experts
and administrators can secure their computing enviroment is by using the
same tools that the hackers use to break into them. When you take away
these tools from the security experts/administrators (as well as the script
kids who use them), you're denying them the 'civil liberty' of taking
matters into their own hands (as well they should!) to secure their
computing enviroment. The spread of Information and good security practices
is what will stop hackers from commiting crimes. Not beefing up sentences.

Can you really justify sending an 18 year old kid to federal prison because
he hacked your box?

___________________________________________________________
I live in a world of Paradox - My weakness` are your
strengths, your wisdom is my stupidity, and your victorys
are my losses, a victory that won't last.
___________________________________________________________



----Original Message Follows----
From: "pomalley(contr-ird)" <pomalley () snap org>
To: vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Civil Disobedience
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:53:07 -0400

This is just my 2cents worth but...

Has anyone bothered to read the bill as it was passed?  The bit about
hacking being punishable by life imprisonment was removed before it passed.


http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:2:./temp/~c107RpB60w::



-----Original Message-----
From: Felix von Leitner [mailto:leitner () convergence de]
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 13:42
To: vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Civil Disobedience

Thus spake John Thornton (jthornton () hackersdigest com):
 >  I ask each and every one of you to join me in this protest.

Why not conduct port scans from the IP of the White House, Capitol, CIA,
DEA and other law enforcement agencies and see whom the FBI arrests?

This is some serious shit, people!  Not reporting is not the way to go.
This law has to be proven ineffective and harmful.  That means:

   a. computer crime must not go down, or they will think the law was
      effective
   b. computer crim must not go up, or they will make laws with even more
      severe punishment.

Talk to your representatives about this!  Explain to them that this law
makes it impossible to learn computer security from the ground up, which
means that there will be no more qualified new computer security people
in ten years, which means all the good security companies will not be in
the USA, which means less jobs, less taxes and more poverty.

Felix



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