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)" <pomalleyat_private> To: vuln-devat_private 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:leitnerat_private] Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 13:42 To: vuln-devat_private Subject: Re: Civil Disobedience Thus spake John Thornton (jthorntonat_private): > 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 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 15 2001 - 14:48:00 PDT