RE: SPEWS?

["Benjamin P. Grubin" <bgrubin () pobox com>]

Steven,

You are saying that the right to defend property trumps the right to
free expression.  In principle, that is a very agreeable thing to say.
But you are using that argument to defend blacklisters with questionable
operational skills.  

My guess would be that when someone inappropriately blacklists one of
your netblocks from a quentionably-run-but-widely-used blacklist, your
thinking will change somewhat.  Similarly I expect that your credit
record has always been free of defect, and you are lucky.  Several years
ago I had an IRS default for $22,000 placed on my credit record
erroneously, which took half a year to clear.  During that time I was a
consultant, and had to go through several background investigations.
Inconvenience doesn't cover it.  

Saying that a report is voluntary and/or advisory gets more and more
irrelevant as rate of adoption increases.  Yes, the thousands of credit
card companies could choose to evaluate you in any manner they wish, but
yet they *all* judge you solely on your credit report.  So in *reality*,
is it really still useful to say it is voluntary and advisory therefore
undeserving of scrutiny/complaint?

Cheers,
Ben

------
Benjamin P. Grubin, CISSP, GIAC
Information Security Consulting
bgrubin () pobox com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On 
> Behalf Of Steven J. Sobol
> Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 10:21 PM
> To: Benjamin P. Grubin
> Cc: 'Dan Hollis'; 'Regis M. Donovan'; nanog () nanog org
> Subject: RE: SPEWS?
>
>
>
> On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Benjamin P. Grubin wrote:
>
> > But credit reports *are* legislated, whether you want them 
> to be or not.
>
> Regulated, yes. That really has no bearing on the fact that 
> companies can
> choose to use or not use credit reports in determining whether to do 
> business with, extend credit to, or employ someone. The 
> credit bureaus 
> maintain files which are used in an advisory manner and the 
> use of such
> information is completely voluntary.
>  
> > that uses these lists by default.  Yes--it is subscription, 
> but at some
> > point it becomes de-facto public record, and everyone 
> simply trusts them
> > because they don't know any better and everything occurs behind the
> > scenes.  Eventually that too will become an oligopoly (if it isn't
> > already). 
>
> That doesn't negate the point I was trying to make.
>
> -- 
> Steve Sobol, CTO  JustThe.net LLC, Mentor On The Lake, OH  
> 888.480.4NET
> - I do my best work with one of my cockatiels sitting on each 
> shoulder -
> 6/4/02:A USA TODAY poll found that 80% of Catholics advocated 
> a zero-tolerance 
> stance towards abusive priests. The fact that 20% didn't, scares me...