Any crime can be a terrorist crime, even jaywalking, under the right circumstances.
I really don't see what the fuss is all about. Some lawyers passed some laws, some law enforcement wonks got their wishlist. Who really cares? If you suddenly find your local judge prosecuting you for planting roses, then go over to his house and berate him and tell his wife to make him sleep on the couch. Freedom is only real in the away from the computer walking around sense. You guys are sitting around at a computer eating doughnuts. Mmmmm doughnuts! Frankly all this new law passing is due to the arrogance of sys admins in the first place. Back in the old days companies used to issue press releases and who got to say what was tightly controlled. Then the web came along and all the little people in the company got around their big bosses by putting their own stuff on the web. Then all the sys admins came along and tried to configure the already configured systems thereby making them vulnerable to hacking. Result: web page gets defaced by other sys-admins (i.e. hackers), big bosses look bad to board of directors. The big bosses are really mad and they have long memories. They can't put anyone calling himself a sys admin in prison like they want to (yet). So they just get the government to do it. What goes around comes around, I say. When searching for incompetence, always look to yourself first. Philip M -- Will Mike's financial cube of bad luck strike again? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Derek D. Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Rich C" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "GNHLUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 2:56 PM Subject: Re: Website defacement (was: Anti-terrorism bill...) > On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 12:40:23PM -0400, Rich C wrote: > > > Secondly because in the vast majority of cases, even when > > > the attacks succeed, the real damage is almost nonexistant. > > > > Oh really? Tell that to the guy across the hall from me who has had to > > rebuild all of his Win2k/IIS servers because Nimda damaged them beyond > > repair. I myself did a virus cleanup job over there, charging as much as a > > new computer would have cost (and my rates are REALLY CHEAP!) That's one new > > computer they won't be able to afford this year. > > Rich, as counterevidence of my statement, you point to one of the > examples of exceptions that I specifically stated existed. Nimda is > one of the few exceptions, and as I said it probably could qualify as > terrorism owing to the scale of the attack and the damage it caused. > The only problem is that most acts of terrorism have a specific > target, and it's difficult to say who the target of Nimda was. I > suppose you could say it was Microsoft... > > My systems are "attacked" at least a dozen times a day (and usually > much more than that), using DoJ's definitions, and the vast majority > of these attacks are pretty harmless. Virtually all of them are > rendered harmless by the basic dilligence that is the responsibility > of all sysadmins who manage a publicly accessible computer. No, that > does not excuse the attackers, but it's just the same as putting > proper working locks on the doors of your home. Few people will be > sympathetic to your cause if all your stuff gets stolen and you had no > locks. > > And with those very few exceptions, they're still not tantamount to > terrorism, and hardly worthy of life in prison. > > I am still unfailingly bewildered by the overwhelming lack of effort > to make Microsoft take responsibility for these problems. Ultimately, > it's their utterly crappy software and their unwillingness to > re-examine their (lack of a) security model that allowed these attacks > to be successful. > > -- > --------------------------------------------------- > Derek Martin | Unix/Linux geek > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D > Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu > > > ********************************************************** > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the > *body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter: > unsubscribe gnhlug > ********************************************************** ********************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the *body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter: unsubscribe gnhlug **********************************************************
