imprint@orchid.waterloo.edu (Doug Thompson) (10/20/87)
[From Usenet] Last Spring, I tried to set up an e-mail link with the USSR. Got encouraging response from low-level people at the USRR embassy in Ottawa. But when we got to the nitty gritty they just stopped answering letters, and I got too busy to pursue it. This much has been discovered however. There are comptuers in the USSR. The Soviets make an Apple 128 clone. Like ourselves, most universities in the USSR have Computer Science departments. The load on a mini or mainframe for communciation work is generally quite trivial, for modest volumes, so I don't think computing capacity would be a limiting factor. Right now a number of student newspapers in Canada are exchanging news by mail with a number of student papers in the USSR. (that's regular Canada Post). Novosti News Agency in Moscow is providing most of the translation. Their material arrives neatly printed on dot-matrix printers, so obviously they have computers. As FidoNet is continuing to show us, you don't *need* a mini to operate news and mail. A dedicated IBM PC can handle very substantial volumes. If it can be had on the streets of Taiwan for $500, I think the Soviets could get such hardware easily if they wanted. At one point the USSR embassy in Ottawa offered to use their data-line to Moscow as a gateway (they have PC clones) for FidoNet transfer for the student news exchange. Then they suddenly cooled down. Since Fido/unix gateways already exist (one operates right here) there is no real technical problem in the Soviets using IBM micros for their end. I suspect whatever minis or mainframes they have are of very different architecture to what we are used to. As for telephone lines, I really don't know. But if a major university wanted to do it, and had the political permission to do so, I doubt this would present too much of a problem, even if a call had to be operator handled in all cases. You can make a uucp/fidonet connection manually if you have to. It seems that Glasnost in the UUSR is eliciting two very different reactions. Wild enthusiasm (especially on the part of young intellectuals) and a great deal of cautious optimism on the part of bureaucrats. The latter do not know if the "liberalization" is permanent. Like bureaucrats everywhere, when the political environment is uncertain, they play it safe. None want to take the risk of pushing for such a link, it seems. Safer to do nothing. Then if the current regime falls, and a more tradtional, conservative regime replaces it, they are safe. If they become too closely identified with liberalization and it ends, they will probably end too. I think the Politburo would go for this kind of thing, it seems to be in line with their current strategy. I think practicing academics would go for this, especially Computer Scientists in the USSR. (at least there are some who would). Probably the way to accomplish it is to approach from the top and the bottom like that, and let *them* deal with the ones in the middle. If we can get some Soviet academic colleagues enthused, and if we can present the idea to the Politburo (I wonder how one would do that), the combination might get some action out of the bureaucrats. Finland is an excellent place to do this from. Start with asking for a link to that country. Not very radical in the USSR. But once there is a channel to Finland, there is a channel to the world. Yugoslavia does (last time I looked at the map) have a uucp site. I have seen msgs from Poland in Usenet news, in the newsgroup comp.sys.atari.8bit -- though that was nearly a year ago. A Pole had brought an Atari computer from the US and was begging netters to send him software. I have no idea how he made his link to Usenet. Perhpas he dialed a Usenet machine in Germany? Soviet commercial televion is broadcast to Ottawa via satellite right now, as a result of a joint venture between Carelton and (I dunno who in the USSR). It was arranged by the USSR embassy. Data can, of course, also be transmitted by satellite, and occupies a much narrower band-width. If they can get TV here, getting a good phone line is a snap, if there is the will to do it. I suspect it will take people on both ends pushing for it in order to make it happen. Don't expect the USSR bureaucrats to call you up and suggest it! As for the "security" concerns, I suspect a data line is cheaper and easier to monitor than a voice line for "security risks". Who, in their right mind, would put any sensitive material out over Usenet and/or Fidonet? If US regulations on information export to the USSR are a problem then just forget the US and do it from Canada or Finland where such problems do not appear to be of the same magnitude. I doubt if the US security people will try to stop academic dialogue with Canada or Finland! So what if the material gets forwarded? I'm no expert on security agaencies, but it seems that any security threat is much more imaginary than real. Further, you can be sure that Soviet "agents" can, if they want, read everything on Usenet. If any student at this university can, any "agent" who wants to can also get access. So there is nothing "secret" on Usenet. Getting a two-way link with the USSR requires that critical people in the USSR do the necessary work to establish it. Since e-mail networks are something that most Soviets have never heard of, this is unlikely to occur spontaneously. Somebody has to push. Doug Thompson !watmath!orchid!imprint Fido 221/162 voice (519-746-5022)