Frank Teuton wrote:
"Get up, Stand up! Stand up for your rights! Get up, Stand up! Don't give up the fight!"or close the shop and slink away. Really there is little point holding an internet discussion and keeping it secret, what the heck are you thinking? Frank Teuton--hopes he didn't make anyone 'uncomfortable'.....;-)
People join mailing lists (like they join clubs) to learn or derive personal satisfaction from contributing or seeing their name in print or for a myriad of other reasons. Given that modern computing and the internet has not been around for very long, comparatively speaking, many of these people have no idea that there is no privacy whatsoever in email communications. Indeed there cannot be when the manner in which emails travel is taken into account.
It is not as simple as dialling your sister in Germany, connecting in a few minutes, having her pick up the phone, and the two of you talking to each other. The only similarity is the use of phone links be they cable, landlines, satellite or radio.
When I send an email to BDNOW! it 'travels' in one piece on one phoneline to my ISP 15 kms away. There it is 'picked up' by the server's outgoing email software, divided into 'packets' of data (depending on its length, of course) which are sent separately on their way to intermediate servers. In some fashion the packets all come together again at the BDNOW!'s ISP. I'm not sure if all contributions are moderated (ie, 'vetted' by a human agency as opposed to software filters). Either way, at some point my email is sent out again to list members.
That means it will again be divided into packets but now multiplied by the number of list subscribers. (This, apart from the threat of viruses, is why moderators and listowners are so 'twitchy' about attachments or emails which use html. Html, graphics and wordprocessing take up an enormous amount of 'bandwidth' (ie, internet and processing resources) compared to ordinary email messages which are in plain text. At the multiple destination ISPs my email will come back together and sent singly to the subscriber.
The whole process may take a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours or days depending on a vriety of factors. However, even a few seconds is enough for a computer-literate person with the right tracking equipment to 'pluck' an email out of the ether. Provided they know what they are looking for and where to look. Unless it's done wholesale - it is rumoured there are countries on the 'net whose intelligence agencies vet all incoming messages.
The first unwritten internet rule I learned was never write anything in an email that you would not be happy seeing over your name in your local Sunday newspaper. The second was never send a 'controversial' or 'flaming' email until 24 hours after writing it. The third - people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
It is easy to be critical of others and their concerns when one stands on the sidelines. Since joining BDNOW! on 1 Aug 02 I have sent over 100 posts to the list and a number of these have been controversial (perhaps that just makes me a talking head :) ). They are all in the archives and their internet availability doesn't bother me. By comparison there are subscribers who have sent thousands of posts since 1997. There is at least one member with less than ten messages in the total archives; I would hardly call any of them controversial in any sense of the word except possibly the last one.
The fact is that the freedom of speech enjoyed in some countries is either completely missing in others or being degraded. Ditto Abraham Lincoln type democracy. For those who think I am talking bulldust I suggest you check out
http://insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=143236
<http://insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=143236>
Kelly O'Meara's article on HR 3162 which is the USA/Patriot Act signed into law on October 26th 02, which removes basic constitutional and democratic rights from the ordinary citizen.
As I said I have no problems with my thoughts on numerous subjects being scattered across the internet - but then I don't live in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a US citizen friend of mine (white, ex-US Navy with many battle stars) and his wife aged in their late seventies were harassed and harangued in their own home last year by federal agents because he wrote to the newspapers on several occasions criticising the president's actions re 'terrorism'. Whose home communication systems including internet access were disrupted. Most of whose mailing list members - including me - suffered unexplained communications blackouts.
In Oz we do still have some democratic rights. Perhaps not as many as 30 years ago when I became naturalised, but enough. I hope. Mind you, I'm not a refugee from persecution.
I stand by what I said about taking the archives out of the public arena. Not everybody has broad shoulders, Frank. Many people live in fear of consequences of all sorts of things. It is not for us to criticise but to protect and nurture. What may seem paranoia to some translates for others into having one's front door beaten down in the middle of the night, being snatched from loved ones and incarcerated in prison without recourse to basic rights. Or worse. And for the most trivial of 'offences'.
Google uses dogpile as its search engine, it is tops in the world, but it cannot get into password protected areas (without the enquirer's password). That is the whole point of passwords. Also I would suggest that when a password is issued to a subscriber (whether by this list or hotmail.com or any other website or group), he or she should change it at once to something else (and please, PLEASE, do not write it on a bit of paper and stick it on your monitor!).
I would have thought there was a way of taking the whole of the existing archives and making them password-protected. Whatever, I am quite happy to investigate the practicality of burning them on to CDs and sending them out. There would be a processing cost to subscribers, of course, but reasonable (Earthcare Environmental Solutions is a single-person setup run from home).
Whatever you think,
Roger
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