From: Robin Powell <rlpowell@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 08:54:01 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Freedom and security
In-Reply-To: <v01510102a9e6b9e2e417@[198.147.118.163]>
Message-ID: <199605011607.MAA11512@mobius07.math.uwaterloo.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Hello, everyone! I'm new list, and I like it already (after 1 day).  I
apologize in advance for the large amount of quoting I am about to
perform.

<FLAME ON!>

>  >You will pardon my asking this, but, security from what? Who are the
>  >evil Network Terrorists throwing Bit Bombs or whatever? The only
>  >security you need on the internet is keeping your site from being
>  >broken in to, which is mostly a matter of setting it up
>  >properly. What, exactly, is the "Security" that you are offering us?
>  >
>  >Perry
>
>  Maybe you feel like a veterano and can afford to look condesendingly at all
                         ^^^^^^^^
			What accent is that that you have?
>  the thousands of fresh-faced netizens just arriving online and say "well if
>  they can't take the heat they should stay out of the fire" - but if we are
>  to call ourselves an emerging "community" then we must take responsibility
>  for our city, and that means caring about other people's problems.

Oh!! So YOU'RE one of those people that actually wants computer
know-nothings on the net, huh?  I can think of few things that bother
me more.  When a "fresh-faced netizen" asks me where I think they
could get an internet account, I reply "What are you going to use it
for?".  They usually say "I don't know.".  I then try to explain ftp
and telnet to them and if they don't get it I tell them not to get an
account because they wouldn't get any use out of it.  If they really
want, I give them a place that has e-mail and is fairly cheap.  

The fact of the matter is that I don't want to share my bandwidth with
that type of person.  You can call me elitist if you want, and you'd
be right.  I liked the net more when no-one had heard of it except the
type of person who would understand what ftp was in a few seconds of
explanation. Or telnet, for that matter.

So, to respond to what you actually said, I never claim that the net
is an emerging community, because I'm afraid that people whom I don't
want on the net will hear me.  Besides, community is much too
non-anarchist for my taste anyways: the net is just a bunch of
information being tweaked by varios people and machines in ways that I
happen to (sometimes) find interesting.

>  The internet is not just a collection of bits and bytes - it's real people
>  doing real things to each other.

I'm sorry, but no.  If I come up to you in real life and hit you,
that's a real person doing a real thing to another real person.
Internet events are movement of information, and that is it.
Something that causes harm on the 'net only does so because that same
information would do so in real life, i.e. blackmail with the threats
issued by e-mail.  Mailing them IRL or slipping the note under the
door have the same effect, with the same response options: you ignore
it, you cave, or you call the police.  Same with death threats: you
can't kill someone over the net, you can only give them information
about you intentions.  When someone is actually IRL trying to kill you
that, as someone else mentioned, is the domain of the IRL police.

>  Freedom is under threat from two directions - from selfish individuals who
>  care little for the Community, and from the over zealousness of governments
>  who seek greater and greater control over individual thought and action.

Only the second one.  I have the freedom to read or not read any stuff
on the net.  If I'm being sent something I don't want to read, I can
usually figure this out within a line or two and delete it.  No one
individual can effect my net freedom (except my sysadmin, who can
revoke my account) using means that do not extend into RL.  Come to
think of it, even governments must extend their activities into RL to
enforce their internet restrictions, so they are not restricting the
'net per se, they are threatening real people with real things that
they will do to them if they do certain things on the internet.  This
is the equivalent of threatening to do something under law for any
other form of information dissemination (publishing slander, for
example). The real world is the real world, the net is the net, and
only in people's minds (and in the effects of computers themselves,
ie. turning on a sprinkler system) shall the twain meet.

>  *********************************************************
>  Colin Gabriel Hatcher - CyberAngels Director
>  angels@wavenet.com
>  
>  "Two people may disagree, but
>  that does not mean that one of them is evil"
>  
>  *********************************************************

<FLAME OFF>

Good argument style, BTW.  I just disagree with some of your founding
assumptions. 

-Robin