Re: Civil Disobedience

[Ian Stoba <ian () BabcockBrown com>]

I would even go one step further. I think that what John Thornton (the 
original poster) is advocating is not a form of civil disobedience at 
all, but an act of cowardly appeasement.

As Felix points out below, a silent protest is unlikely to change 
anything. A more pure form of civil disobedience would be something like 
this:

        o Send a single SYN-RST packet to www.whitehouse.gov

        o Present yourself for arrest at the Hoover Building

	o Demand that the government prove in court that you are the 
criminal equivalent of a hijacker/mass murderer/suicide bomber/[insert 
preferred terrorist euphemism here] and deserve to be put away for the 
rest of your life. Be sure to contrast your punishment with the average 
sentences for murderers, rapists, and bank robbers.

Note that I am not volunteering to do this, which perhaps makes me a 
coward as well.

For those of us who disagree with the legislation but don't relish a 
role as Rosa Parks or some kind of cyber-Gandhi, the usual exhortations 
to political action apply. Contact your elected officials, business 
leaders, and anyone else you can buttonhole to let them know that 
exposing computer security professionals to criminal liability actually 
reduces our security rather than improving it.

--Ian

On Monday, October 15, 2001, at 10:38 AM, Felix von Leitner wrote:

> And what will that achieve?  The opposite of what you actually want: the
> computer crime statistics will show a marked reduction of "cyber
> criminality" and the government will not only believe they did the right
> thing, they will also use this as precedent for other "terrorist"
> problems.  Driving too fast, for example, because a very fast car causes
> more damage on impact than a slow one, so it is obviously a terrorist
> weapon.  So we better enact the death penalty on it.