Re: Civil Disobedience

[Tom Arseneault <arsen () certaintysolutions com>]

There's a similar parrell with "Hate Crimes". A white man punches a black
man, is it a hate crime or just two men having a fight? The law makes
sense only under certain circumstances (did the white man hit the black
man just becuase he's black?). As far as I know this is still being hashed
out in the courts but I think it handled on a case by case basis now. I
envision something similar happening for this law, some people would go
away for a inappropriotaly long time while ACLU lawyers argue their case
and over time cooler head will prevail and things will start to be handled
in a saner manner (3 strikes cases non-withstanding). Is this "shaking
out" period a good or a bad thing? I would argue that it should be
un-nessary and you would thing they (we/us/them) would learn from history
and craft their laws better in the first place.

What can we, as citizens do about current pending legislation? First I
would argue not to do anything blatantly illegel (under current law or
best practice) and usher in an age of Cyber-McCarthy'ism. Definately write
your congress-person, senator, ACLU, and any one who would listen and have
a stake in the outcome. State your arguments clearly, reasonably and at a
simple enough level that anyone can follow them, even people who arn't
Cyber-citizens. 

Civil disobedience should be a last resort when other, better, avenues
have been exausted -and- we are sure of our correctness. We were able to
defeat (mostly) the Telecomunications act last decade because we presented
logical, sound and resonable arguments about why it was a bad thing to
enough people that counted. Sending notes around the internet informing
people that there is a problem is a good thing but arguing the case here
does nothing since we all mostly agree, preaching to the choir, send your
notes out to the law makers.

Also remember that like it or not, things have changed in the U.S. since
Sept.11. Many things we may not like, but can live with. Is this proposed
law something that we can live with for the public good? Or is it, as most
people are saying, a knee jerk reaction to fear and hysteria that needs to
be fought, again for the pubiic good?

My $.02 worth.

Tom Arseneault


On Mon, 15 Oct 2001, Ian Stoba wrote:

> 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.