Re: Terrorism Hysteria on the Net

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, John Young wrote:

> Today's USA has a pair of front page stories: 
>  
> They lay out the nightmares and the valiant TLA-daydreams to out-fund the
> hackers and out-flummox the public. 
>  
>  
> "You bring me a select group of hackers and within 90 days I'll bring this
> country to its knees, " says Jim Settle, retired director of the FBI's
> computer crime squad. 

He says that as if it were a bad thing...

> "The threat is there, it's very real," says CIA General Counsel Jeffrey
> Smith. "If we have a Unabomber who decides to launch an attack with a PC
> instead of a bomb, (there could be) real damage." 

Actually, he's probably right. If all the cypherpunks, say, turned "bad,"
there'd be no government and no economy, because so many big systems are so
insecure.

Pooh-poohing the potential risk is not a winning proposition. Pointing out
that the government's policies against properly secure systems have created
this house of cards in which we live is. The NRC crypto report helps
legitimize this spin.

-rich