Re: $10 laptops from HRD Ministry, India

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: lockergnome () hefam com
Date: May 6, 2007 3:01:40 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] Re: $10 laptops from HRD Ministry, India

At 2:03 PM -0400 on 5/6/07, David Farber wrote to a bunch of us, saying:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Gene Spafford <spaf () cerias purdue edu>
> Date: May 6, 2007 11:26:20 AM EDT
> To: ip () v2 listbox com
> Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] $10 laptops from HRD Ministry, India
>
> There is a more fundamental problem with distributing all these  
> cheap laptops in various places around the world.
>
> Where is the investment to educate the new users about proper use  
> of the technology?  About security?  About avoiding dangerous  
> activities?
>
> Does anyone seriously believe that these machines -- whether $100  
> from Negroponte's group or $10 from India, or anywhere else --  
> won't quickly be assimilated into bot networks?


[...]


> And are the machines being distributed into countries that have the  
> resources for good law enforcement for IT-related crime?

Are there any such countries?

Tangentially,

LEAs are routinely overwhelmed by
- lack of experience and technical knowledge
- lack of resources (computer crime labs)
- lack of money for the above and
- a different set of priorities i.e. physical crime.
- lack of purpose-built laws
- lack of political will

Prosecuting a computer crime case is still very much a crap-shoot,  
with not only LEAs in need of training but also prosecutors and judges.

I am a member of the Canadian federal Task Force on Spam <http:// 
stopspamhere.ca>, and the London Action Plan <http:// 
londonactionplan.org> and I can assure you I hear the refrains above  
to the point of them being a din.

Now, back on-topic. Whenever I hear about the Negroponte plan, or my  
government's insistence on ensuring that every habitable and  
inhabitable point in Canada has broad-band Internet access, I am also  
left wondering how mankind got by for millennia without the benefit  
of instantaneous access to naked Russian teenagers. What's that you  
say? They will be used for education? OK, then, I guess we never had  
any of _that_ before the 1990s either ... we sat around,  
unintellectual, uneducated dullards bairly able 2 mk a scentence.  
Good thing the Inuit and the native teenagers who feel such despair  
at being less-than their white peers that they have a suicide rate 3  
times their average, and those in the squalid slums of India will  
have IM and Facebook, Mysapce, and eBay.
--
Neil Schwartzman
http://welikeballs.com

"Internet access providers, companies that engage in the business of  
connecting people to the Internet for profit ... assume the role of  
Internet censors, arbitrarily closing accounts of those of whom they  
disapprove." - Martha (C&S) Siegel


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