ddw@cornell.UUCP (08/26/83)
Sounds like the Woz is operating at the same 12-year-old emotional level
of most of the break-in-for-fun artists. Can you imagine the scene if
people were breaking into houses just for fun, and some famous contractor
comes on ABC and says, "Well, if people don't want their houses broken into,
they should build them better."
Trouble is, we just don't have any emotional ethics built into us (yet)
about computer sabotage being naughty.
David Wright
{vax135|floyd|allegra|decvax|ihnp4|uw-beaver}!cornell!ddw
ddw.cornell@udel-relay
ddw@cornell (Arpanet and CSnet)bobl@tekgds.UUCP (08/26/83)
----------- Interviewing Steve Wozniak about computer abuse is like interviewing Lee Iacocca about drunk driving. - Bob Lewis tekgds!bobl
ka@spanky.UUCP (08/29/83)
Sounds like the Woz is operating at the same 12-year-old
emotional level of most of the break-in-for-fun artists.
Can you imagine the scene if people were breaking into
houses just for fun, and some famous contractor comes on
ABC and says, "Well, if people don't want their houses
broken into, they should build them better."
Trouble is, we just don't have any emotional ethics built
into us (yet) about computer sabotage being naughty.
David Wright
The analogy with breaking into a house of fun is a good one, but
look at how our society deals with this (as opposed to "breaking
and entering with intent to commit a felony," which generally
refers to a burgler who was caught before he had a change to
remove anything). As I understand the legal aspect of the
situation, the person entering the house is guilty of
trespassing. The fact that there is a law against trespassing
means that if someone enters your house and refuses to leave you
can call the police who will forcably remove him. Actual
prosections for trespassing or uncommon. If the person damaged
the house while breaking in to it, he could be prosecuted for
that, but as long as no damage was done, I don't see any legal
action being taken.
I would not suggest that people build better houses to keep
people out because that might be a major (and expensive)
undertaking, but I would suggest that people should lock their
doors. In the area of computer security, I would suggest that
companies who don't want random people logging their computers
should put passwords on all logins on the machine. (Using one
letter passwords or the password that appears on the distribution
tape with your operating system doesn't count.) If a company
doesn't bother to do this, then I don't think it has any business
clogging up the court system prosecuting people who log into its
systems. Once a computer is placed on a computer network,
preventing security violations may become unreasonably difficult.
However, I still don't consider using a few seconds of someone
else's computer system to be the sort of action that warrents a
criminal prosecution. I expect that if we discovered that an
unauthorized person was logging into spanky we would be no more
likely to try to recover money for the "lost" cpu time than we
would be if somebody posted a particularly worthless article to
the net. We would change the password and that would be that.
Kenneth Almquistcjh@ihuxr.UUCP (08/29/83)
I believe you'll find that treaspassing covers the property around the house. The house is covered by breaking and entering. Trespassing can be for forcing entry into a house with someone home who has opened the door, but there are other more strict laws to cover this. Computer breakins are another story. Industrial espionage is covered by laws, but breaking in for 'fun' from a home computer or terminal is a new problem. The problem is that the phone lines are used and attaching a phone line is means that entry from outside is desirable. This is similar to leaving your door open when you leave. Prosecuting someone for entering at that time would be almost imposible. Our tools are more sophisticated than we are C. J. Holzwarth ihuxr!cjh
sch@linus.UUCP (Stephen C. Hemminger) (08/30/83)
To take the house analogy one step furthur (maybe too far).
You can not be prosecuted for knocking on doors of houses in a
neighborhood, unless there is a NO SOLICITORS sign. I argue therefore
that simply finding out that a certain network address connects to a
certain machine is not grounds for prosecution.
After that, the analogy starts to break down. The trouble is that all
the efforts to define new "computer laws", invariably require careful
examination of too many factors. I don't trust politicians or industry
to define computer crime statutes in a precise manner. They are too
reactionary.
--
Stephen Hemminger, Mitre Corp. Bedford MA
{allegra,genrad,ihnp4, utzoo}!linus!sch (UUCP)
linus!sch@mitre-bedford (ARPA)dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (08/30/83)
Speaking from a Canadian viewpoint, Kenneth Almquist is right
about the different between "breaking and entering with intent
to commit an indictable offense [analogous to your `felony']"
and trespassing. However, our Criminal Code provides (as your
statutes might too, I don't know) that if you're caught breaking
into a house the onus is on you to prove that you were *not*
intending to commit an indictable offense. Try extending that
one to computers. (Obviously, it's not appropriate. My impression
is that more people break into systems for the fun of it that in
order to, say, steal or destroy information [which may not be a
criminal offense anyway, but let's not get into that..)
Dave Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
--
{allegra,cornell,floyd,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver,watmath}!utcsrgv!lsuc!dave