On Sat, 29 Sep 2001 20:33:20 -0400, L.D. Best wrote:

> Sam,

> Take a deep breath and stop letting the baddies win.

> Nothing has been said here that hasn't also been said on the broadcast
> media.  Nothing has been said here that isn't general knowledge among
> any who might actually know how software works.

I wasn't aware that all this stuff is being bandied about in
the broadcast media.  I did know that some of this stuff was
being talked about in the media.  I'm sure that most everybody
on this list already knows that anybody could be reading our
posts.  For that reason I stated that there are some things that
ought not to be talked about.  I did not, however, advocate that
we should adopt any law that would abridge our rights of free
speech.  I did say that we should feel morally persuaded to
refrain from making widespread public broadcasts about some of
the security problems we have in this country.  We don't want to
give the bad guys any ideas.

In my community there are many veterans of WWII who are still
quite active and about, still driving their cars, and still of
perfectly sound mind and reason.  The younger men just love to
engage the WWII vets in conversations about what war was like in
those days.  The WWII veterans will invariably express much shock
and dismay over all the information that is leaked out in the
media that could be of much useful intelligence to the enemy.
They say the media wasn't like that during WWII.  Although the
press correspondents usually knew what was going on, they kept
quiet about what they knew because they didn't want to give the
enemy any clue.  The media was much more responsible in those
days.

> Remember that the guys who flew & crashed the planes were "trusted and
> responsble neighbors" -- in some case for close to a decade.  Remember
> that Oshama bin Laden is the son of a relatively nice guy who didn't
> intentionally hurt anyone.

I remember that Osama Bin Laden was one of about 68 offspring of
his father, who was indeed a person who had a reputation for
being a rather nice guy.  He would of course had to have been a
nice guy in order to have wooed all the women who bore him so
many children!  I do not remember hearing any news of those involved
in the hijacking plot about having been trusted neighbors for close
to a decade.  I had heard that they had been in this country for
only about four or five months.

> Remember that if we allow fear and paranoia to change who and what we
> are, to rob us of free speech and freedom of expression on the internet,
> the bad guys have already WON ... and we've effectively thrown the game.

I am not for any law that would abridge freedom of speech.  I just
feel that we should feel morally compelled to refrain from discussing
some subjects that could result in imparting useful information to
the bad guys.

> On Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:14:49 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:

>> On Sun, 30 Sep 2001 04:54:59 -0500, Sam Ewalt wrote:

>>> On Sat, 29 Sep 2001 14:30:40 -0400, Clarence Verge wrote:

>> <snipped all>

>>>> On Fri, 28 Sep 2001 17:43:50 -0500, Sam Ewalt wrote:

>> <snipped all>

>> I don't think it is smart to point out easy and lucrative
>> terrorist targets on this list.  Although for quite
>> understandable reasons many of us might find the topic quite
>> interesting, this type of thing should be discussed only
>> among concerned and trusted neighbors and friends and with
>> security officials.  ANYBODY, even Osama Bin Laden and his
>> cohorts and henchmen could be reading the messages posted on
>> this list.

>> Furthermore, I don't think the subject should be discussed in
>> the news media; however, I would be against prohibiting such
>> discussions by law.  Simple moral persuasion ought to be enough
>> to sufficiently repress the pervasive broadcasts of such
>> discussions.

>> Regards,

>> Sam Heywood

-- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/

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