Politech mailing list archives
FC: More on spam fighting as censorship, blocking legit email
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 02:35:09 -0400
[I sense this debate could go on for a while, but my trip (leaving in a few hours) may cut it short. BTW the FedEx Santa just brought me a new Canon EOS5 and a bunch of lenses. I was considering a digital camera but for 8x10 or greater enlargments I haven't seen any that can beat any decent 35mm loaded with Velvia, not to mention the idiot lenses that they have glued onto them. I will post a report. Also at the end is an interesting post from the IETF wiretap list. Step aside, Louis Freeh! --DBM]
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 23:23:46 -0700 To: declan () well com, politech () vorlon mit edu From: Lizard <lizard () mrlizard com> Subject: Re: FC: Spam fighting as censorship, blocking legit email messages Two quick replies: John Gilmore claims that spammers don't block ordinary mail. This is false. Spam is often filled with bad data, in order to ward off the inevitable firestorms of returned mail and core dumps. This can snarl remailers, or just dump gigabytes of hatemail on whatever innocent the spammer chose to list as a 'reply-to' address. Or just overflow a mail queue and cause a system crash. (This happens at my job more often than I'd care to recall...) The simple fact that spammers go to such lengths to hide who they are indicates they know full well that what they are doing is immoral and unethical;people who consciously commit such acts deserve nothing but contempt. David Smith claims that if this were censorware, there'd be a massive hue and cry. The difference is that censorware keeps me from getting somewhere I want to go. Anti-spammers block out mail that consumes my resources for the benefit of the sender. There's no way to get around it -- spam is parasitic. I have yet to see an anti-spam law that will not ensnare the innocent in its traps. In any event, the internet has always been built on common law forged by consensus. The non-flaming of anti-spammers ought to be good indication that the common law of the net approves of their actions.
******** From: "chefren" <chefren () pi net> To: raven () ietf org, "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii () openpgp net> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:55:30 +0200 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: [Raven] Anonymous taps On 28 Oct 99, at 17:23, William H. Geiger III wrote:
No I want strong, unbreakable, end-to-end encryption for all my communications. Let them tcp dump to their hearts content. <EG>
Every criminal organisation would like to have that too. If our society allows us to use such means our society would have created places where criminal organisations could effectively hide for law enforcement. On the long term definitely stupid. Fire arms are regulated and encryption should be accordingly. No assault weapons and no free fully equiped flying F16's guided by idiots in our societies. Let your communication provider use the strongest encryption he can get for your data. I have absolutely no problems with that but the communication provider should lift it if law enforcement needs it to be lifted. +++chefren p.s. A guy like Saddam Hussein spends often $100.000.000 a month(!) to get things with which he intends to overthrow our societies. Free encryption is more or less self-murder for a free society... =Large signature follows= I think we need a simple architecture for a point to point tap interface that has strong provisions against misuse. On one side the communication provider who only starts tapping a specific customer or IP number with proper warrants. On the other side the approved tapping room. Everything should be organized by the central "tapping office". This office should provide keys for strong encryption to both communication provider and tapping room. Law and technology should both provide as much checks and balances as we can come up with. Law can provide good procedures, technology can provide technical means to check them or force them. =Large signature ended, please comment me off-line to make it better= _______________________________________________ raven mailing list raven () ietf org http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/raven -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo () vorlon mit edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- FC: More on spam fighting as censorship, blocking legit email Declan McCullagh (Oct 29)