On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 17:49:23 -0400, L.D. Best wrote:
> It is such an easy thing to say: All they have to do is pass some laws
> ....
> And it is so far from the mark it is not funny.
> First, making something illegal has *never* stopped that something from
> happening. Laws are not preventatives -- they are guidelines which
> provide for punishment should you fail to follow the rules.
By providing for punishments, laws tend to serve as preventatives,
especially for crimes in which the offender stands a very high
likelihood of getting caught.
> Second, to punish anyone you have to first catch them. And to catch
> someone who has broken the law, you must be an official agency given
> authorization to act by that law.
> Now stop and think:
> ** Any government which would install Windows on it's naval warships
> doesn't know snit about computers.
They probably know better than to have Windows installed and running on
computers containing classified data while they are accessing non-secure
phone lines and other non-secure communications channels.
> ** The people who work in MIS and fight full-time to control those
> guilty of UCE/UBE [spam is *only* in newsgroups] have a hard time
> catching the perpetrators.
Spam isn't only in newsgroups. I sometimes receive spam at my email
address at shentel.net, even though I never use that address for posting to
newsgroups. They know who the perpetrators are, but they can't do anything
to see that they are punished. Spamming is against the terms of service of
most ISPs, but it isn't illegal. The ISPs are not required to take action
against spammers.
> ** Any agency of the gov't is, therefore, damned unlike to be able to
> catch anyone doing anything!
They could easily catch people if they wanted to. It all depends on whom
we elect and whom the elected officials appoint to be in charge.
> ** AND -- Federal Case Law precedents have been set which hold that
> any "evidence" stored only electronically [i.e. so very easy to
> change without leaving a finger/footprint] is inadmissable because it
> "proves" nothing.
This did not prevent Bill and Monica from getting Tripped up. I thought
that was Hilarious.
> So, if the laws are passed there is no one competent to even catch the
> criminal, and no punishment can be meted out because all the "evidence"
> is inadmissible in a court of law.
Not so. If one were to use his own telephone to call in bomb threats or
to make obscene phone calls, he would quickly be arrested, being nabbed
by electronic evidence such as caller ID and voiceprints.
> For some reason I don't think that passing laws will do anything about
> UCE/UBE in e-mail or spam in newsgroups. The only thing such laws are
> likely to do is pile "requirements" onto ISPs and/or individual computer
> users, requirements that cannot be met and still have the internet
> running with any functionality or speed ... and which won't stop the bad
> guys anyway.
> It is a proven fact that good citizens don't break the laws, even if
> they don't know the law exists most of the time. And it's a proven fact
> that bad guys don't give a snit about the law, and set out intentionally
> to break it.
These facts are not arrived at by research, but only by developing logical
corollaries and extensions to your definitions of "good citizens" and
"bad guys". They are indeed facts, but it takes no research to prove it.
> Finally -- If a law were written precisely enough to actually have some
> chance of controlling abusers of the system, and if the regulations were
> written precisely enough to actually make it possible to abide by the
> law, those very regulations would provide a roadmap on how to circumvent
> them.
This cannot happen if the law is well-written. Many laws are very poorly
written. To solve this problem all we have to do is to elect better
lawmakers.
> Can you say "More abusers would result!"?
Depends on how well the law is written and how serious the authorities
want to be about enforcing it.
> l.d.
> P.S. Not a single law on any book has prevented a burglary, stopped a
> riot from happening, inactivated a gun when the trigger is pulled.
> Laws, even when they attempt to, cannot legislate morality. All law has
> ever been able to do, or will ever be able to do, is provide for
> punishment of parties found guilty under the law. And as long as there
> is a way to break the law with little chance of being caught, there will
> be people ready, willing, and eager to do so. If you don't believe me,
> look at all the people passing you when you next drive your car ... then
> look at your own speedometer and tell me it never indicates a speed over
> the legal limit.
As long as there is very little chance of anyone's ever getting caught,
there will of course be many lawbreakers, even among ourselves. The laws
against speeding over the legal limit are very effective at preventing
our public highways from being much more dangerous than they already are.
Laws against spamming, if they were well-written, would be very easy to
enforce.
All the best,
Sam Heywood
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