Re: Terrorism Hysteria on the Net

[Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>]

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Rich Graves wrote:

> 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.

One could make the case that this would actually make the United States 
(if c'punks concentrated their attentions there) the most data secure 
country on the planet over time.


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