From: fergp@sytex.com (Paul Ferguson)
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 93 14:52:02 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Cellular tracing (Done all the time.)
Message-ID: <oyVB9B1w165w@sytex.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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A bit off-topic, but:
 
Authorities in Fayetteville, North Carolina arrested two juveniles
yesterday, in the death of James Jordan, father of basketball
superstar Michael Jordan. Charles Kuralt, on CBS's "Sunday Morning,"
reported that authorities believe that Jordan was a victim of random
violence.
 
Authorities were able to locate the suspects because they allegedly
used the cellular phone in Jordan's car before they dumped it.
 
 
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Paul Ferguson               |  "Government, even in its best state,
Network Integrator          |   is but a necessary evil; in its worst
Centreville, Virginia USA   |   state, an intolerable one."
fergp@sytex.com             |      - Thomas Paine, Common Sense
 
Type bits/keyID   Date       User ID
pub  1024/1CC04D 1993/03/15  Paul Ferguson <fergp@sytex.com>
  Key fingerprint =  EE D2 93 7D 04 6D C6 05  AC 36 AD 9D 8E 4F 41 58

ser's knowledge. In doing
this, it violates the integrity of the system and furthermore, it does
it surreptitiously. Personally, I like to be intamately aware of every
byte on each of my systems (I am) and know _exactly_ what every
executable which resides on my system does (again, I do). For users
who cannot know this, then a virus is a breech of their privacy, in a
matter of speaking.
 
Finally, distributed computing need not be accomplished by something
as brain-damaged as a virus. Anything a virus could beneficially do, a
legitimate, non-replicating program can do better. In fact, there have
been viruses designed and coded which were supposed to perform
beneficial activities (see historical notes about the Denzuko, Ohio,
etc. viruses). Also, every virus harbors the potential for damage. No
programmer (read: virus author) can possibly know each and every
environment where the code will be introduced. An example which I
frequently use to illustrate this point is the Stoned virus; it is
mostly an innocuous virus, however with several spoofing disk
partitioning schemes (such as Disk Mangler), it can devastating. And
with the advent of the Microsoft Doublspace shit, alot of other
potholes in the road are introduced into the possible scenarios.
 
A final note: There is a virus called "Cruncher" which compresses
executables in much the same way as PKLite or LZEXE. Is this a "good"
virus? This ia an exercise left to the reader...
 
Cheers from Washington, DC
 
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Paul Ferguson               |  "Government, even in its best state,
Network Integrator          |   is but a necessary evil; in its worst
Centreville, Virginia USA   |   state, an intolerable one."
fergp@sytex.com             |      - Thomas Paine, Common Sense
 
Type bits/keyID   Date       User ID
pub  1024/1CC04D 1993/03/15  Paul Ferguson <fergp@sytex.com>
  Key fingerprint =  EE D2 93 7D 04 6D C6 05  AC 36 AD 9D 8E 4F 41 58