marchana@gar.union.edu ("MARCHANT-SHAPIRO, ANDREW" ) (10/05/90)
[I am posting the following at the request of the author. -eliot] Date: 4 Oct 90 15:36:00 EDT To: "lear" <lear> I'd post this, but our machine doesn't have more than reading access. I'd just like to point out that Cliff, who I have communicated with and who comes across to me, at least, as an ethical guy, was only doing a human version of what most machines already do. For example, our VAX evidently monitors who tries to get into what directories. If I try to get into my department head's directory (for example), the system administrator will get a report, and I'll get notified. I know this because last spring I was notified that someone using my account had been nosing around the Dean of Faculty's files. I switched passwords and there was no repeat. But somebody HAD been in there. Alas, the public/private issue is complicated. In a small village, nobody has true privacy because everybody knows everybody else. In a city, you surrender some privacy precisely because you CAN'T know everybody else. Consequently you obtain public documents to prove who you are, what you can do, etc, and surrender a measure of control to specialized agents. Ferdinand Toennies figured all of this out about 100 years ago (see his _Community_and_Society_). In the same way, a small computer center allows for SOME privacy, and mainly self-control, but by no means true privacy (I can FINGER you and see on what you are working). But in something like our huge network settings, we're moving away from the village model and toward the city. Crying over the past won't bring it back. Recognizing limitations, I think we have to see what can be done about the future. I don't like secure networks, so we need to provide the security at a human level. That's what Cliff Stoll did. If more people did it, maybe hacker could be revived as a term of admiration... -- Andrew Marchant-Shapiro Depts of Sociology and Political Science USnail: Union College, Schenectady NY 12308 AT&T: (518) 370-6225 INTERNET: marchana@gar.union.edu BITNET: marchana@union.bitnet "I have accepted chaos. I do not know if it has accepted me." -- Eliot Lear [lear@turbo.bio.net]