Re: Freedom and security

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher writes:
> >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?
> 
> I am not offering "you" anything unless you have a problem and are looking
> for some assistance.  Just because you feel safe / immune from becoming a
> victim of internet crime does not mean that there are no victims at all.
> 
> Site security is not at all the only problem.  Are you not aware of spams
> and scams going on all the time?  Are you not aware that sexual predators
> operate in IRC?

I was under the impression that sex involved physical presense. Are
you telling me that there are people out there somehow getting the
inanimate computers of people on the other side of the net to reach
out and rape the people sitting in front of them?

> Or that child pornography is a world wide trading game?

I must admit to having an odd viewpoint. I don't particularly care
about child pornography. Our nation seems to have an obsession with
the notion that somewhere out there someone is looking at a picture of
a naked boy or something. Myself, well, I am far from convinced that
the existance of child pornography is nearly as much of a threat to me
as the people who want to dismantle all our freedoms in order to stop
it. Most of the child pornography in the U.S. is distributed by the
FBI during stings, you know.

> Have you never heard of email forgeries or impersonation?

Yes. I also happen to have heard that people can impersonate you in
real life, too.

> What about tthe victims of harassment and hatred who don't know how
> to deal with it?  What about all the people who have never heard of
> killfiles?

I suppose they will have to learn, won't they?

You realize that you are being extremely unconvincing?

> Maybe you feel like a veterano and can afford to look condesendingly at all
> 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.

And thats where CyberAngels, founded by Curtis Sliwa, the man who had
himself attacked to get publicity, comes in?

Feh.

> When your address is forged and you get flamed and bombed, or if you start
> receiving anonymous death threats, your freedom is under threat.  It's not
> enough to say "Well I just turn off my monitor"

I've had my address forged. I've been flamed. I've been
mailbombed. I've been sent anonymous death threats. I must admit that
I largely ignored all these things, and that at no time did I feel my
freedom was being threatened nearly as much by these events as it was
by Senator Exon.

> The Internet is a city - it needs 911 services and it needs Neighborhood
> Watches.

The internet isn't a city. I live in a city -- a real city. I believe
that if I feel that I'm the subject of a serious death threat, there
is an actual 911 on my real life telephone to dial and talk to the
real life police in my real life city. Thanks, but no thanks.

> And neither professional law enforcement nor neighborhood watch
> are by definition a threat to anyone's freedom.

No, but supporting censorship is.

> By asking me the question: "What crime?" you are indicating to me that you
> prefer denial.

Or, perhaps, that I'm not impressed by opportunistic newcomers with
strongly anti-libertarian viewpoints.

Perry