America has had a blaize approach to war ethics as far back as the pro independance militia in the 1770s.
General Sherman in the american civil war was famous for the attitude that taking the war to the civilians was necessary to sap the souths willingness to fight.
Sometimes the more righteous fighters are on the side of "the bad guys" (from modern western perspective). Von Muller, captain of the German commerce raider "Emden" is a fine example, while Mick Mannock of the RFC is a right bastard who fought for "the good guys".
Do I think taking war to civilians is bad? Depends on the civilians. Take Bill Gates for example:)
Open source is a terrible way to develop software, except when compared to all the others.
While it's true that "big" contributors to open source software want to contribute a big feature, open source is largely about the ability to scratch an itch. Lack of big flashy features don't generally itch, problems with existing features I want to use do. I've contributed minor bug fix patches to a number of open source projects but I doubt I will ever contribute a patch to mozilla. Why? Bandwidth. Downloading and building the entire source for mozilla is a complete PITA.
Here's an idea. Configure build environments so that individual source files (and maybe include files) can be downloaded from CVS, compiled locally and relinked into their appropriate shared libraries. A lot more small itches would get scratched that way.
ISPs should care about the phone number you're dialing from. I worked for an ISPs tech support. We logged the phone number of every incoming connection through some arrangement with our telco. If we couldn't log the number we wouldn't connect the call. From memory, it was actually the telco who kept the logs and we could obtain them with the customers consent for fraud and billing issues. This turned out to be a *very* good thing for our customers as we charged by the hour. A billing complaint would go something like this:
JoeSixpack: You've billed me n hundred dollars for all this time I never used.
Tech: Well sir, possibly someone has stolen your internet password and is logging in from somewhere else. With your permission we can find out the phone numbers the calls came from. If they're not from you, we don't bill you and place fraud charges against the guy who made the call.
JoeSixpack: Damn straight!
This came as a complete suprise to some script kiddies who had somehow scammed some peoples passwords online.
Our customers were always happy when we told them too.
This whole post is forwarded (with permission) from the ISOCNZ members email list:
Don Stokes <dont.spam@don.co.nz> Wrote: --- QUOTE from Sunday Star-Times --- The first legislation expands the interception powers of the police and the Government Communications Security Bureau to cover all forms of electronic communications (including email, faxes and text messaging) and, for the Security Intelligence Service as well, to cover hacking into computer systems to view and copy people's files.
This would be achieved by amending the Crimes Act to make it illegal to intercept emails or hack into computers - and then exempting all the intelligence and law enforcement agencies from the new law.
The legislation will also increase the status of the GCSB, moving its existing powers into the Crimes Act. --- END QUOTE --- This bit needs to be read with one important fact in mind. That is that there is *nothing* stopping intelligence agencies, police, teenage script kiddies, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all from attempting to break into a computer, unless in doing so they commit some other crime such as fraud.
Breaking into a computer and stealing the information on it is not illegal in this country. Even destroying the data on a computer is difficult to bring charges for.
(I've heard criminal damage being suggested as a crime to prosecute some young vandals that have seriously broken into and damaged systems, but I don't think criminal charges have actually been brought. I've personally been involved in bringing fraud charges against a couple of little ratbags; this required proving direct financial loss.)
Thus adding legislation in this area can't do anything but improve the situation.
If this is tightened up, then evidence gathering by police & security forces becomes more difficult, since the current situation is that they can do it with impunity. The obvious way around this is to create exceptions in the legislation, with suitable judicial supervision.
That this legislation is being proposed is not news. The Law Commission produced a report on the subject (Baragwanath et al, Computer Misuse, May 1999), suggesting that law changes are required to address computer misuse, and such provisions were made in the Crimes Amendment Bill (No. 6) which is currently going through the legislative process. Sections 305zd to 305zf of this Bill address computer misuse involving damage or modification to computer software and/or data, and obtaining information for pecuniary gain. It does not cover the act of accessing a computer or snooping its network connections.
Interception and access are addressed in the Law Commission report, but I understand got put in the "Too Hard" basket (partly over the question of exceptions) for the Bill as first read. I gather this is now being addressed.
In short: *everyone*, including Police, GCSB, SIS et al, can currently break into and/or snoop on computers with impunity. Changing this, including adding judicial supervision of evidence gathering, can only be a Good Thing.
I'm having arguments with my friends because I refuse to go to the movies at the moment. On the other hand, because I won't go to movies, they go to dinner or a bar with me instead. The MPA are business people. They see the world through their wallets. Lets make them thin.
Slashdot Mirror
General Sherman in the american civil war was famous for the attitude that taking the war to the civilians was necessary to sap the souths willingness to fight.
Sometimes the more righteous fighters are on the side of "the bad guys" (from modern western perspective). Von Muller, captain of the German commerce raider "Emden" is a fine example, while Mick Mannock of the RFC is a right bastard who fought for "the good guys".
Do I think taking war to civilians is bad? Depends on the civilians. Take Bill Gates for example :)
Open source is a terrible way to develop software, except when compared to all the others. While it's true that "big" contributors to open source software want to contribute a big feature, open source is largely about the ability to scratch an itch. Lack of big flashy features don't generally itch, problems with existing features I want to use do. I've contributed minor bug fix patches to a number of open source projects but I doubt I will ever contribute a patch to mozilla. Why? Bandwidth. Downloading and building the entire source for mozilla is a complete PITA. Here's an idea. Configure build environments so that individual source files (and maybe include files) can be downloaded from CVS, compiled locally and relinked into their appropriate shared libraries. A lot more small itches would get scratched that way.
ISPs should care about the phone number you're dialing from. I worked for an ISPs tech support. We logged the phone number of every incoming connection through some arrangement with our telco. If we couldn't log the number we wouldn't connect the call. From memory, it was actually the telco who kept the logs and we could obtain them with the customers consent for fraud and billing issues. This turned out to be a *very* good thing for our customers as we charged by the hour. A billing complaint would go something like this: JoeSixpack: You've billed me n hundred dollars for all this time I never used. Tech: Well sir, possibly someone has stolen your internet password and is logging in from somewhere else. With your permission we can find out the phone numbers the calls came from. If they're not from you, we don't bill you and place fraud charges against the guy who made the call. JoeSixpack: Damn straight! This came as a complete suprise to some script kiddies who had somehow scammed some peoples passwords online. Our customers were always happy when we told them too.
This whole post is forwarded (with permission) from the ISOCNZ members email list:
Don Stokes <dont.spam@don.co.nz> Wrote:
--- QUOTE from Sunday Star-Times ---
The first legislation expands the interception powers of the police and the
Government Communications Security
Bureau to cover all forms of electronic communications (including email,
faxes and text messaging) and, for the
Security Intelligence Service as well, to cover hacking into computer
systems to view and copy people's files.
This would be achieved by amending the Crimes Act to make it illegal to
intercept emails or hack into computers -
and then exempting all the intelligence and law enforcement agencies from
the new law.
The legislation will also increase the status of the GCSB, moving its
existing powers into the Crimes Act.
--- END QUOTE ---
This bit needs to be read with one important fact in mind. That is that
there is *nothing* stopping intelligence agencies, police, teenage
script kiddies, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all from attempting to break
into a computer, unless in doing so they commit some other crime such as
fraud.
Breaking into a computer and stealing the information on it is not
illegal in this country. Even destroying the data on a computer is
difficult to bring charges for.
(I've heard criminal damage being suggested as a crime to prosecute some
young vandals that have seriously broken into and damaged systems, but I
don't think criminal charges have actually been brought. I've
personally been involved in bringing fraud charges against a couple of
little ratbags; this required proving direct financial loss.)
Thus adding legislation in this area can't do anything but improve the
situation.
If this is tightened up, then evidence gathering by police & security
forces becomes more difficult, since the current situation is that they
can do it with impunity. The obvious way around this is to create
exceptions in the legislation, with suitable judicial supervision.
That this legislation is being proposed is not news. The Law Commission
produced a report on the subject (Baragwanath et al, Computer Misuse,
May 1999), suggesting that law changes are required to address computer
misuse, and such provisions were made in the Crimes Amendment Bill (No.
6) which is currently going through the legislative process. Sections
305zd to 305zf of this Bill address computer misuse involving damage or
modification to computer software and/or data, and obtaining information
for pecuniary gain. It does not cover the act of accessing a computer
or snooping its network connections.
Interception and access are addressed in the Law Commission report, but
I understand got put in the "Too Hard" basket (partly over the question
of exceptions) for the Bill as first read. I gather this is now being
addressed.
In short: *everyone*, including Police, GCSB, SIS et al, can currently
break into and/or snoop on computers with impunity. Changing this,
including adding judicial supervision of evidence gathering, can only be
a Good Thing.
I'm having arguments with my friends because I refuse to go to the movies at the moment. On the other hand, because I won't go to movies, they go to dinner or a bar with me instead. The MPA are business people. They see the world through their wallets. Lets make them thin.