From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: EFFector Online 3.06: Bruce Sterling
Date: 5 Oct 92 15:46:56 GMT
Reply-To: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

In article <1992Oct5.034712.13166@eff.org>, mnemonic@eff (Mike Godwin) writes:
>Hicks's fantasy is that the Hannover Hackers were actually heroes who set
>out to challenge American policy with regard to the placement and use of
>strategic nuclear weapons. There are, however, no facts in the record of
>the case to support this fantasy.

Now, what makes me annoyed to this discussion is your use of rhetoric
such as "fantasy", "herous", "drugs" etc.  In the previous discussion
a very annoying thing to me was your use of the fact that you
personally know Cliff Stoll and "know" he's a good guy, ethical and so
on.  I don't see these as good arguments on discussions like this - to
the contrary, they make the conversation to focus on the side issues,
irrelevancies and personal characteristics of the authors instead of
the matters themselves that should be the topic.  It seems you are
trying to turn the discussion into an emotional, non-rational
direction with these rhetorics and side issues.

I would hope we could just discuss simply the issues without dragging
the personal authorities, loyalties and life stories of every author
in.

That aside, I didn't read Brad's writing the same way as you.  I took
it to say just "here's an alternative viewpoint - perhaps one should
also look it from this angle".  And _that_ is what I applaud in Brad's
writing.  I didn't exactly see him claiming that they were any kind of
heroes or thought themselves to be such, just that you can look the
issue from that angle also - it ain't so simple and one-sided as
just demonizing them with "evil empire", "drugs" and such rhetorics.

>In contrast, there were plenty of facts suggesting that the Hannover
>Hackers were motivated by the desire to get money and drugs. They even
>cheated their handlers at one point by getting paid for software they
>"stole" that the Eastern Bloc could have gotten more cheaply through
>legitimate means.

Hmm, Minix I guess.

Anyway, perhaps their goal was to cheat on the Eastern Bloc also, just
for the heck of it.

>Those who equate the Hannover Hackers with "working for the U.S.
>government" have no real moral calculus, IMHO.

The passage in the article talked about something like "working for
the empire that created (some bad things..)", which I interpreted in
such a way that just working for the Eastern Bloc was bad enough
(since KGB or such wasn't mentioned).  You seem to have much more
information about "the Hannover Hackers" than I do - my information is
very limited and at the time I asked whether there was a difference
with working for the U.S. or Soviet empires.

>Lots of people work for the
>U.S. government, but I wouldn't say a mail carrier's work was the moral
>equivalent of hacking into another country's computers.

Why do you keep repeating your silly straw man?

>It should be noted that Hicks has shown a willingness to misrepresent the
>facts (as when he said that no one remembered what American strategic
>nuclear policy was) and to backpedal ferociously (as when he discovered
>that Cliff Stoll was reading this newsgroup, and tried to disavow all his
>comments about Cliff and tried to suck up to Cliff in e-mail).

In my humble opinion, that comment is very childish.  Again, I would
hope we could discuss issues without resorting to silly personal
attacks.

>>>This is the first you've mentioned about venal government informers.
>>
>>This was in answer to your comment about relative pay.
>
>I don't recall making a comment about relative pay in response to anything
>you wrote. 

It was in answer to this paragraph (from <1992Oct1.152059.28666@eff.org>):

>I think it is reasonable to draw a moral distinction between "working for
>the U.S. government" and the Hannover Hackers' attempts to break into
>American systems in order to get money and drugs. After all, in the United
>States, one normally can get better access to money and drugs by working
>for someone *other* than the U.S. government.

//Jyrki