[DMCA-Activists] Re: [C-Fit_Community] Stallman: Can You Trust Your Computer?

[iriXx]

this is a great article, it really cuts through the rhetoric that has 
been used in the name of 'anti-terrorism' yet really means corporate and 
governmental control.

one question that i have about the Patriot act and other so-called 
'anti-terrorist' legislation - does the law discriminate at all between 
a skript kiddie replacing index.html for fun, and a so-called 'cyber 
terrorist' ? the impression that i'm getting is that skript kiddies are 
being labelled as cyber-terrorists and are facing the same charges and 
sentences, in order to legitimise CBDTPA legislation under not-so-subtle 
twists in rhetoric. yet there is in fact some kind of reality to 'cyber 
terrorist' threat - a surprisingly balanced article from msn.com 
outlines this (although it is a re-publishing of a ZDnet article... this 
explains perhaps the balance!)... http://msn.com.com/2100-1105-955293.html

i have been discussion the reality of cyber-terrorist threat versus the 
government hype and rhetoric with various cryptographers and 
professionals involved in protecting national resources against a *real* 
cyber-attack, and we seem to have come to the same conclusions... 
attention is being directed in completely the wrong area in order to 
legitimise attacks on people wishing to share music and software, and 
comparitively little is being done to secure SCADAs and DCSs from more 
realistic threats.

what i would like to know is if there is any discrimination in 
'anti-terrorist' legislation between a music swapper or a skript kiddie, 
and the negligent amount of 'damage' (if you actually consider it 
damaging!) they might cause, compared with a cyber attack designed to 
say, bring down the national grid? i suspect that the same laws and 
therefore the same sentences cover both - a situation which is blatantly 
unjust.

thanks

miriam





Seth Johnson wrote:
> > http://www.nyfairuse.org/analysis/trech.comp.xhtml
>
>
>
> Can you trust your computer? 
>
> -By Richard Stallman -

--
iriXx
www.iriXx.org

copyleft: creativity, technology and freedom?
address@hidden
www.copyleftmedia.org.uk

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