jeh@dcs.simpact.com (01/30/91)
In article <1991Jan25.100847@mccall.com>, tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes: > In article <00943303.CDEDA880@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>, sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU > (Doug Mohney) writes: >>His latest exploit (exploit? "The Adventures of Ray Kaplan") was to bring >>a convicted hacker to DECUS Fall '91. While the hacker was A) out on >>parole, >>B) Signed up under his own name and C) made no secret of the fact that >>he was >>there, the DECUS Board of Directors had a spaz, confiscated the >>conference >>badge from him, and then had security guards escort him off the >>grounds. > > For the interested, Ray's own description of this episode is in his > column in the current (Jan 21, 1991) issue of Digital News, page 9. > > While I'm here, I'd like to venture the opinion that DECUS was totally > out of line here. If they wish to propose such a policy, it should be > voted on by the membership. Until such a thing passes, they should leave > correctional issues to the government. I, like Ray ("read the > article...") wonder if DEC applied pressure to DECUS to get this guy > thrown out. > -- > Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com> The McCall Pattern Company > (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road > (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA Oh, for crying out loud, Terry. Do you really want the entire membership to be asked to vote on every policy decision? I don't; I wish to be bothered with upper-level DECUS politics as little as possible. That is what the DECUS Board of Directors is for. If you don't like what they're doing, throw the bums out at the next election. In point of fact there was no "policy" settled on at the time of this incident. Recall that the back of your symposium badge says "property of DECUS"; that one of the conditions of attendance is that the Canons of Conduct be signed; and that the individual involved did *not* sign them. Those circumstances are sufficient to pull his badge *under current policy*. If you object to the policy, you are free to make some waves at upper levels. Get involved in DECUS leadership, etc. If you like you can propose a new policy item that states something like "The right to attend a DECUS Symposium shall not be affected by a person's criminal record, even where said criminal offenses are in the areas of computer sabotage, even if against DEC's own systems and networks". I doubt you'll get far with this (put this way, just how many security-conscious people would want to allow such a person on the floor?), but who knows. The right approach, if you want it done quickly (ie before you are in a position to run for the board yourself), would be to find a sympathetic board member to champion it for you. But I am *not* interested in having the membership-at-large vote on every little policy decision, thank you very much. Oh, you wanted to vote only on SOME decisions? Which ones, pray tell? Only "major" decisions? Only those involving the exclusion of people from symposia? Only those to which you object? Followups are directed to comp.org.decus. --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Former! Chair, VMSnet and Internals Working Groups, DECUS VAX Systems SIG Internet: jeh@dcs.simpact.com, or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com Uucp: ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!jeh