Re: Apology - not necessary

[John Nicholson <jnichols () prg com>]

At 03:04 PM 9/27/1998 -0400, you wrote:

> > The rest of your message, which seems to be "we can't trust Israelis
and have to assume FW1 is filled with back doors", is about as low on
the scale as I can imagine a professional in our world sinking. You
should be ashamed of yourself.<<

Before this turns into a flame war, I think you may have taken what was
written a little too far. No one said, "We can't trust Israelis" and no one
said FW-1 is full of back doors.

What was said was, if I may paraphrase, that if a country might use it's
intelligence agency against the US or US companies, then that country might
put pressure on a software firm developing protective software to give the
intelligence service the "keys" to getting in the back door. Therefore,
this creates a risk in using that software. Maybe not a large risk, but
this is a reasonable concern for certain companies and facilities. 

You seem to have no problems about the same implication for French
software. Would you have the same objection if someone had written, "A
reasonably paranoid sysadmin should consider avoiding Russian (or Soviet)
firewall technology"? I notice that you did not comment on the assertion
that the Israelis had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If
that is true, then why should a reasonably paranoid person NOT think twice
about using software that could have been influenced by that gov't?

My company does not deal in gov't or defense secrets, we build scenery for
Broadway. Therefore, I don't worry about the risk of some foreign power
sneeking in my back door. But if I were in the military or dealing with
defense technology, I'd constantly be looking over my shoulder.

John

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