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Computer underground Digest Tue Feb 24, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 14
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #10.14 (Tue, Feb 24, 1998)
File 1--FTP Supp #9 (#66): Machado and Online Anti-Asian Hate Actions
File 2--"No Gatekeepers" (comments on net "journalism")
File 3--Hacking Cybersitter (Cu Digest, #10.12, Wed 18 Feb 98)
File 4--Re: Cu Digest, #10.12, More on CyberSitter
File 5--"Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape"
File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:02:48 -0500
From: Paul Kneisel <tallpaul@nyct.net>
Subject: File 1--FTP Supp #9 (#66): Machado and Online Anti-Asian Hate Actions
___________________________________________________________________
The Internet Anti-Fascist: Wednesday, 18 February 1998
FTP Supplement #9 (#66): Machado and Online Anti-Asian Hate Actions
____________________________________________________________________
1) Noah Robischon, "Hate Mail," Netly News, 15 Nov 96
2) Jim Hill, "Hate Case Raises Internet Free Speech Issues," 8 Nov 97
3) CNN (no author), "Hate Continues to Surg the Net," 11 Nov 97
4) Reuters (no author), Hate-email Case Ends in Mistrial, 22 Nov 97
5) Reuters (no author), "Retrial in Internet Hate Mail Case," 2 Dec 97
6) Laetitia Mailhes, "Cyberspace hate crime charge goes to court
again," Agence France-Presse, 2 Feb 98
7) CNN (no author), "Man convicted for sending hateful e-mail," 11 Feb
98
8) Star Tribune (no author), "Cyberthreats; California verdict makes
sense," 18 Feb 98
- - - - -
1) Hate Mail
Noah Robischon, Netly News
15 Nov 96
The first federal indictment for Internet-based hate crimes was filed
yesterday against a former University of California at Irvine student.
Richard Machado, 19, allegedly sent e-mail to 59 mostly asian students
saying, "I personally will make it my life carreer (sic) to find and
kill everyone of you personally. OK?????? That's how determined I am."
The hate-filled message was sent on September 20 using a spoofed e-mail
alias from a campus computer. Federal investigators would not comment
on how they determined that Machado was the culprit. Nevertheless, the
ten-count indictment against him is punishable by up to $1 million and
10 years in prison. If Machado is found guilty, the case would sharpen
some of the fuzzy legal boundaries between virtual and physical hate
speech. But a judgment erring too far in either direction could prove
harmful to freedom of speech on the Net.
One of the victims named in the indictment, who asked to remain
anonymous for fear of further physical threats, told The Netly News
that, "They seem to think it is not going to go to trial. . . I think
he might even admit that he did it."
Indeed, Machado has been "completely cooperative," according to Manuel
Gomez, the school's Vice Chancellor for student services. None of the
victims or investigators we talked to have found any motive for the
incident. Although one of the recipients was Machado's former roommate,
he appears to have randomly targetted students with asian surnames (47
percent of the student population at U.C. Irvine is asian).
But it is not entirely clear that this case meets the requirements
necessary for a guilty verdict. Although the text was certainly "hate
speech," the e-mail in question would have to pass the Brandenburg test
-- meaning it would have to incite illegal activities -- according to
ACLU litigator Ann Beeson. The Brandenburg test says that, "To justify
suppression of speech the speech must be intended to produce imminent
lawless action and must be likely to produce such action." The test is
normally used in the context of a Ku Klux Klan demonstration wherein
hate speech could cause someone to suffer direct physical harm as a
result.
"Our view that the speech is not protected stems from the fact that the
Supreme Court has consistently ruled that threats are not protected by
the first amendment," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Gennaco. "If
the message had been 'I hate asians' with no threat connected to it
then we probably would not have had a case."
"There's a real fine line between hate speech and actual harassment and
intimidation," says Beeson, adding that one interpretation of the
Brandenburg test is that stifling speech should only occur if there is
no other way to prevent the illicit conduct.
Several cases of late have raised the question of hate speech versus
free speech on the Net, and most have implicated students. One such
case involved a University of Michigan student named Jake Baker who
posted a rape and torture fantasy about a fellow student to a campus
newsgroup. That indictment was dismissed by a federal judge on the
grounds that e-mail is protected free speech and that the government
failed to show Baker's intent to carry out the threat, a requirement
for conviction. It is equally difficult, if not impossible, to know
whether Machado intended to carry out his threats. The verdict could
hinge on the fact that Machado's messages were sent via private e-mail
rather than being posted to a public newsgroup.
Still pending is the decision in a case against Jose Saavedra, a
19-year-old freshman at the University of Texas at El Paso, who posted
threats to California state Senator Tim Leslie via several
environmental discussion lists. Saavedra's message read in part: "I
think it would be great to see this slimeball, asshole, conservative
moron hunted down and skinned and mounted for our viewing pleasure."
While Saavedra was only charged with a misdemeanor, the outcome of his
case could set a precedent that would affect all hate speech on the
Net.
The same is even more true of Machado's case in which the arraignment
won't take place until later this year. It is difficult to defend
Machado's actions and the best hope may be for him to plead guilty to
avoid a judgment that could set some kind of precedent. But jail time
seems an awfully harsh penalty for an ingnorant kid. Another student
named in the indictment told me that if he were to run into Machado in
a darkened alley, he'd feel obliged to smash him up. But he also said
that, "Jail won't cure him. He should have to do community service --
like a few thousand hours worth."
- - - - -
2) Hate case raises Internet free speech issues
Jim Hill
8 Nov 97
IRVINE, California: It was a hate crime that rocked the usually placid
campus of the University of California at Irvine.
Authorities say their surveillance video captured Richard Machado
e-mailing 60 Asian-American students:
"As you can see," the alleged message began, "I hate Asians, including
you. I will hunt all of you down and kill you. I personally will make
it my life career to find and kill every one of you personally."
As a result, Machado, a newly naturalized U.S. citizen from El
Salvador, is being prosecuted -- a case that raises questions about how
far free speech can be taken in cyberspace.
"If you threaten somebody's life in a way that a typical listener will
think that you're serious, that's constitutionally unprotected," said
Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law.
But in court papers, Machado's attorney, who declined an interview for
this story, argued that the federal law being used to prosecute his
client is, in effect, criminalizing e-mail.
And it's not as if the Internet wasn't already a rough-and-tumble
marketplace for hate groups.
The Aryan Nation rants online about white supremacy, while opponents
vow death to racists. Nazi art is advertised on some sites, while on
others, Nazism is exposed. There's even the hate page of the week.
According to constitutional experts, all of this passes legal muster --
as long as it doesn't include a direct threat of violence.
"The constitution protects all sorts of opinions, really bad ones as
well as really good ones -- communist advocacy, Nazi advocacy, bigoted,
racist, sexist material -- all of that is constitutionally protected,"
Volokh said.
The case of Machado is one of the first tests of such issues in
cyberspace, where millions of people with millions of opinions let
their fingers do the talking.
- - - - -
3) Hate Continues to Surf the Net
CNN (no author)
11 Nov 97
University of California at Irvine student Richard Machado used the
Internet as his vehicle of vengeance.
Surveillance camera caught him e-mailing 60 Asian-American students "As
you can see," the alleged message began, "I hate Asians, including you.
I will hunt all of you down and kill you. I personally will make it my
life career to find and kill every one of you personally." CNN's Jim
Hill reports
Machado's hate mail resembles the work of other Internet hate groups.
The Aryan Nation, Nazi art and the hate mail of the week all share the
Internet to espouse their opinions.
Machado's case, however, will be one of the first tests of the issues
that surround free speech on the Internet
"If you threaten somebody's life in a way that a typical listener will
think that you're serious, that's constitutionally unprotected," said
Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law.
Machado's attorney holds that the federal law being used to prosecute
Machado criminalizes e-mail.
But, constitutional experts uphold the laws as effective as long as the
acts don't involve direct threats of violence.
"The constitution protects all sorts of opinions, really bad ones as
well as really good ones -- communist advocacy, Nazi advocacy, bigoted,
racist, sexist material -- all of that is constitutionally protected,"
Volokh said.
- - - - -
4) Hate-email Case Ends In Mistrial
Reuters (no author)
22 Nov 97
Judge Alicemarie Stotler of the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana
(California) on Friday declared a mistrial in the Hate-email trial of
Richard Machado after the jury stated that it was deadlocked.
Machado is accused of sending email via the Internet last year to 59
Asian students at the University of California at Irvine, blaming them
for the crimes on campus and threatening to hunt them down and kill
them. Machado was charged with 10 counts of violating a federal
hate-crimes law which criminalizes the use of race, ethnicity or
nationality in interfering with a federally protected activity, such as
attending school. The Machado case is the first brought under this
legislation.
Currently it is not known whether Richard Machado will be re-tried.
- - - - -
5) Retrial in Internet Hate Mail Case
Reuters (no author)
2 Dec 97
Federal prosecutors will retry Richard Machado, the man accused of
sending threatening messages on the Internet.
Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Santa Ana
(California), said prosecutors would retry Machado on 10 civil rights
violations for allegedly sending hate e-mail to Asian students at UC
Irvine.
Machado will be held without bond until his January 27 retrial.
The jury in Machado's first trial was deadlocked.
- - - - -
6) Cyberspace hate crime charge goes to court again
Laetitia Mailhes, Agence France-Presse
2 Feb 98
SAN FRANCISCO: A student charged with harassing Asians on the Internet
goes to trial this week a case experts say may have far-reaching
implications for other cases of alleged cyberspace hate crimes.
Former University of California student Richard Machado faces his
second civil rights trial this week, after a jury deadlocked in
November in favor of acquittal.
Machado, 20, accused of sending hate messages to 59 Asian students by
electronic mail, has pleaded not guilty, arguing he sent the messages
in jest.
The case against Machado suffered a setback last week when a federal
judge threw out eight of 10 charges against him.
The decision trimmed a maximum sentence for Machado from 10 to two
years in prison. Prosecutors are considering whether to appeal.
Nonetheless, judicial experts say the Machado case echoes a larger U.S.
debate of how seriously to treat threats posted on the Internet.
"On the 'Net,' there are those who take the position that somehow
e-mail shouldn't be taken seriously," said Carey Heckman, a law
professor at Stanford University, in California. "Yet, how do we gauge
behavior in that virtual environment? Where should you place an e-mail
on the spectrum of what you should reasonably be concerned about?"
California prosecutor Mavis Lee is unequivocal about the importance of
the Machado trial.
"Regardless of the decision of the jury, (this trial) sends the message
out there that hate crimes are a serious matter that ought to be
prosecuted, including when they occur in cyberspace," Lee said in a
telephone interview from Santa Ana, California.
At issue for the jury is this: whether Machado's electronic messages
represented a real threat, or were provocative, but without criminal
intent.
In his electronic messages to each Asian student, Machado said "I
personally will make it my life career to find and kill everyone of
you."
The statement was merely a tasteless joke, Machado's lawyer Sylvia
Torres-Guillen said last November, describing her client as a troubled
youth.
Nor is Machado the only hate-crime suspect -- Los Angeles prosecutors
are at work on at least three other similar cases.
Meanwhile, Machado's prosecutors are rethinking their strategy to
ensure that November's outcome -- when nine out of 12 jurors voted for
in favor of Machado's acquittal -- is not repeated.
The youth's past has indeed been rocky. The first in his family to
enroll in university, Machado dropped out in Spring 1996, several
months after his brother died in a car crash.
-- By LAETITIA MAILHES, Agence France-Presse
via Nando Net <http://www.nando.net>
- - - - -
7) Man convicted for sending hateful e-mail
CNN (no author)
11 Feb 98
SANTA ANA, California" For the first time ever a federal jury has
convicted a man for sending hate mail through cyberspace.
Richard Machado was convicted Tuesday of sending numerous hate mail
messages to students of Asian descent at the University of California
at Irvine. This was the second trial for Machado. His first trial ended
in a deadlock last November.
Machado, who dropped out of U.C.-Irvine, testified during the six-day
trial that he resented Asian-Americans' academic success. In his
e-mails, he said he would "find," "hunt down" and "kill" the
Asian-American students.
Although Machado testified in court that his threats had been a joke,
U.S. attorney Nora A. Manella responded by saying that "a death threat
is no joke, and a racially motivated death threat is a federal
offense."
Machado, a naturalized citizen from El Salvador, will be sentenced on
Friday. He faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a
$100,000 fine.
His case has raised questions about the limits of free speech in
cyberspace.
- - - - -
8) Cyberthreats; California verdict makes sense
Star Tribune [Minneapolis, MN] (no author)
18 Feb 98
In trumpeting what seems the first conviction for sending hate mail by
Internet, a federal prosecutor was saying last week that a line had
been drawn in cyberspace, that the limits of acceptable flaming had
been defined. Well, not quite.
Richard Machado, 21, was convicted of sending unambiguous death threats
to 59 Asian-surnamed students via the campus computer network at the
University of California at Irvine. He admitted sending the threats but
said he didn't expect them to be taken seriously, citing Net users'
propensity for the acid, insulting and frequently violent-sounding
diatribes known as "flames."
The first jury to hear the case deadlocked 9-3 for acquittal. The
second, which heard more about Machado's previous history of sending
hateful, threatening and racist e-mail, was persuaded to convict.
Because it seemed to say something significant about the general issue
of law and lawlessness in cyberspace, this little case made headlines
across the United States. But what, exactly, does the verdict mean?
In the strictest sense, very little. Had Machado been charged under
federal or local statutes against terroristic threats, this case might
have established some legal precedent that brought this area of law
into the digital age. But such trials can be hard to win, and Machado's
prosecutors chose the easier route of charging him under a rarely used
civil rights law - the Federally Protected Activities Act of 1968,
which was written to prevent local officials in the South from keeping
blacks out of public universities.
Though the jury implicitly concluded that Machado had threatened the
Asian students with violent death, it specifically convicted him of
interfering with their civil right to attend a federally supported
school.
But in a wider sense, the jurors have indeed said something interesting
both to those who see the Internet as a vast sphere of outlaw
recklessness, and also to those who fear that its unique capabilities
will be destroyed by paranoiac restraints.
In rejecting Machado's defense that his act of digital terrorism was
"just another day in cyberspace," the panel rejected the notion that
the Internet is or should be a world apart. What's illegal to do by
phone or mail or face-to-face, the jury said, is still a transgression
when done by electronic message.
This embodies an important principle. Americans have the world's
strongest tradition of free speech, thanks to the First Amendment and
two centuries of tinkering that have yielded only a few small, sensible
exceptions - like serious, credible and specifically targeted threats
of violence, or infringements on the civil rights of others. To make up
new standards for the Internet is to discard that proud history. But
applying the time-tested rules to new problems, as this California jury
has done, both honors and updates the tradition.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 23:26:19 -0500
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@bway.net>
Subject: File 2--"No Gatekeepers" (comments on net "journalism")
NO GATEKEEPERS
Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
Our president's latest scandal was broken by Internet columnist
Matt Drudge, who reported that Newsweek had spiked a story about
Monica Lewinsky.
Some people see that as a black eye for the print media and a
victory for the Internet. Not First Lady Hillary Clinton, who was
asked about the Net's role in dissemination of news at a press
conference on February 11.
"As exciting as these new developments are.... there are a number
of serious issues without any kind of editing function or
gate-keeping function. What does it mean to have the right to
defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?
"There used to be this old saying that the lie can be
halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.
Well, today, the lie can be twice around the world before the
truth gets out of bed to find its boots. I mean, it is just
beyond imagination what can be disseminated."
Clinton was asked whether she favored regulation of the Net. She
said she didn't yet know, but commented:
"Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps
so far out ahead of that balance [contemplated by the Founders]
and throws a system, whatever it might be --political, economic,
technological --out of balance, you've got a problem, because
then it can lead to the oppression of people's rights, it can
lead to the manipulation of information, it can lead to all kinds
of bad outcomes which we have seen historically. So we're going
to have to deal with that."
These are among the most scary words ever said about Net
regulation. Contrast them to the rhetoric we're used to, about
the Net as a hydra-headed pornmonger reaching into your child's
bedroom. Censorship advocates like former Senator Exon at least
have the decency to pretend that all they care about is
"decency." Mrs. Clinton goes a huge step further: she's worried
about information. Not just falsehood. Information. Obviously,
for her the right result was Newsweek's decision to spike the
story, not Drudge's to run it.
We're already far enough along in the Lewinsky scandal to know
something happened. The President and Mrs. Clinton have endured a
lot of falsehood on the Net. I don't remember either of them
calling for Net regulation because of Usenet postings or Web
pages claiming that the military shot down flight 800, or that
Ron Brown or Vincent Foster were assassinated. It took the truth,
not a lie, to make Hillary Clinton say the Net is dangerous.
This recalls the early days of the republic, when laws banning
"seditious libel" were in force. Back then, there were greater
penalties for telling the truth than for lying. People might
disbelieve a lie. The truth was more damaging.
Preserve us from gatekeepers. Their function is highly
overrated. Yes, they filter out some falsehoods, but they also
print some, while blocking some truths. Their sense of what
interests the public is notoriously faulty and unrepresentative.
Most of the time, if I really want to drill down into an issue
and get to to the truth, I get my information from the Net.
I didn't see Hillary Clinton's comments above reported in the
print media; I got them from a posting by Declan McCullagh to his
fight-censorship list. For three years, I've written whatever I
wanted, whenever I felt like, in The Ethical Spectacle and to my
mailing lists. A gatekeeper of any kind would have spiked many of
of the stories I wrote. An editor might have made some little
contribution to my grammar or, on occasion, my spelling. In the
balance, I've done much better without gatekeepers than I have
with them.
Contrast the experience I've had writing for others. In the past
three years, I've had articles killed by print media, or edited
beyond recognition. Language I never wrote expressing ideas that
aren't mine has been introduced. I even saw scores of
typographical errors crop up in the hardcover of Sex, Laws and
Cyberspace during the editing process. More people read The
Ethical Spectacle in a month than have read that book in the two
years it has been out.
People like Hillary Clinton want gatekeepers for the Net not to
screen for falsehood but to keep the truth within acceptable
parameters. Government censorship isn't necessary when the media
censors itself. Mrs. Clinton appears to hold the "Don't make me
come over there" theory of government.
Judge Stewart Dalzell, in his opinion in ACLU v. Reno
invalidating the Communications Decency Act, had a much higher
opinion of a medium without gatekeepers.
Judge Dalzell appreciated the Net's "low barriers to entry",
"astoundingly diverse content" and "relative parity among
speakers." His fascinating conclusion was that the Net is
superior to print media as a "speech-enhancing medium" precisely
because of the lack of gatekeepers:
"It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has
achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory
marketplace of mass speech that this country -- and indeed the
world -- has yet seen.... Indeed, the Government's asserted
'failure' of the Internet rests on the implicit premise that too
much speech occurs in that medium, and that speech there is too
available to the participants."
He noted that, if the government were permitted to impose
gatekeepers on the Net, the "Internet would ultimately come to
mirror broadcasting and print, with messages tailored to a
mainstream society" where "economic power has become relatively
coterminous with influence."
Judge Dalzell praised "the autonomy" that the Net "confers to
ordinary people as well as media magnates." This autonomy is
precisely what frightens Hillary Clinton.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 07:37:34 -0500
From: "Robert J. Woodhead (AnimEigo)" <trebor@ANIMEIGO.COM>
Subject: File 3--Hacking Cybersitter (Cu Digest, #10.12, Wed 18 Feb 98)
>Date--Tue, 17 Feb 98 15:04 EST
>From-- Michael Gersten <michael@STB.INFO.COM>
>Subject--File 5--Re--Cu Digest, #10.11, More on CyberSitter
>
>Programs like cybersitter, however, do not work that way. You cannot
>tell ahead of time what they will block; often there is no way to
>tell that your site is blocked. Although they claim to do it to
>protect children from "unsuitable" material, that definition is
>arbitrary, and often includes web pages that oppose such software,
>or in some cases, any page hosted on the same site as one "unsuitable"
>page.
I've never played with cybersitter or similar programs, but it should be
relatively trivial to write a program that emulates a browser and sends,
say, every URL on Yahoo (it is trivial to write a spider to collect these)
through the censorware, to determine what they are blocking.
Similarly, it would be trivial to build a site that returns pages with
subsets of every word in a large dictionary, so one could binary-chop and
determine what words are red-flagged.
The beauty of such a hack, of course, would be that one would not be
cracking their encryption or hacking their program, but merely asking it to
do what it was designed to do, and noting the responses.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 23:07:31 -0500
From: Allen Smith <easmith@beatrice.rutgers.edu>
Subject: File 4--Re: Cu Digest, #10.12, More on CyberSitter
Regarding the various censorware programs... everyone seems to be
making the assumption that parents _do_ have the right to censor
what their children see. But is this truly the case, in ethics if
not in law?
We do not allow parents to keep their children from getting an
education. We do not allow this even though that education can lead
to those children learning things that will cause them to disagree
with their parents. We do not allow this even though that education
can lead to those children learning things that will shock them -
such as about war. With CyberPatrol (the censorware backed by the
Guardian Angels's cyberspace branch) blocking Deja News, and
responses by various educators and others that this blocks a
necessary educational resource, isn't using CyberPatrol blocking
children from getting a proper education?
We do not allow parents to do other things that harm their children,
unless the parents can find evidence for that these things prevent
further harm. (Spanking for no reason is child abuse; spanking after
a child ran through a house carrying a knife is concern for that
child's safety, even if some might express it differently.)
There _is_ evidence that cutting children off from many of the
things blocked by censorware can indeed harm children. The obvious
examples are safe sex sites and sites for gay teens (who have a very
high suicide rate).
To be more general, one of the foundations of freedom of speech and
freedom of the press is that the truth - which is what we want
children to know, ultimately - comes out of being able to access all
sides of various issues. If it harms adults to not be able to know
all sides of an issue, how much more does it harm children, who are
in the middle of making some of the most important decisions of
their lives? (If you claim that children will be susceptible to
making the wrong decision due to lack of information if they're
exposed to alternate viewpoints, do you have evidence (in such
things as blocking non-Christian sites, or NOW, for instance) that
the decision to be blocked is indeed the wrong one? Moreover, why
would 'wrong' viewpoints be more able to persuade children to
believe in them than 'right' viewpoints? Why can't the 'right'
viewpoints put themselves persuasively enough, if they are indeed
backed by the truth?)
The defenders of censoring what information children can view - the
backers of such doctrines as "obscene for minors," which are being
used as excuses for censoring the entire Internet - claim that this
is justified by harm to children resulting from viewing various
controversial information. But is there any evidence for such harm?
Yes, viewing sexually explicit information may lead to a child
becoming more interested in such topics (although from remembering
my teenage years, I have my doubts as to whether that interest can
be increased...). But that isn't doing _provable_ harm to that child
unless it results in an STD or an unplanned pregnancy, both of which
can be prevented through adequate safe sex information (and the
availability of condoms). Even the Meese Commission couldn't find
any real evidence that pornography caused harm to anyone. While some
moral viewpoints would argue that such is harmful, we do not go by
such unproven harm in other cases - to take an extreme example,
supposed demon possession is not grounds for justification of child
abuse.
I am not saying that sexual _activity_ by a child is not harmful in
some situations; I do not support NAMBLA. (I would, however, comment
that even such harm as that varies - I've known 12-year-olds and 16-
year-olds who had equal maturity levels, and having sex with the
latter would not be statutory rape most places. Moreover, we've
recently seen a case (the Bobbit one, IIRC) in which a man was
jailed for statutory rape of a teenage girl who was judged competent
to stand trial _as an adult_ for murder.) But despite tabloid tales
of pregnancies from the Internet, there is a difference between
speech and action. It is a difference that much of our freedom of
speech is based upon.
The same is true of other controversial topics, such as ones
regarding violence. While there is some evidence (and much evidence
against it) that viewing violence results in increased aggression,
whether this is a problem depends on in what situations and against
whom that aggression emerges. (Again, certain ethical viewpoints -
namely those such as the Society of Friends (Quakers) and other
pacifists - would argue that any aggression is wrong. Despite such
viewpoints, self-defense is legal, although some states and
countries (unfortunately) severely limit the means of such.)
Moreover, as I reminded us above, children learn about war in
school; an education which skipped it would not qualify as a real
education.
Yes, as a previous poster said, a 10-year-old searching for
information under "American Girl" may see things that will remain
with that child for the rest of his or her life. But there is no
evidence that this harms the child; there are a _lot_ of things that
remain with people throughout their lives. Parents have the
opportunity to do a lot of things that have this characteristic;
should they be able to shut children off from others doing the same,
if no harm is done to the child?
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 08:46:33 -0800
From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <Rob.Slade@sprint.ca>
Subject: File 5--"Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape"
BKTCHPRV.RVW 971012
"Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape", Philip E. Agre/Marc
Rotenberg, 1997, 0-262-01162-X,U$25.00
%E Philip E. Agre pagre@ucsd.edu
%E Marc Rotenberg rotenberg@epic.org
%C 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1399
%D 1997
%G 0-262-01162-X
%I MIT Press
%O U$25.00 800-356-0343 fax: 617-625-6660 curtin@mit.edu
%O www-mitpress.mit.edu
%P 325
%T "Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape"
Agre, perhaps most widely known for the Red Rock Eater news service,
and Rotenberg, Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
go to some lengths to define what this book is not. It is not a
fundamental analysis of privacy. It is not an investigative work. It
does not address specific areas of concern. It is not a systematic
comparison. It does not cover the broadest interpretation of
technology. It does not provide a general theory of privacy, nor
detailed policy proposals. It is an overview of policy and thought
regarding the impact of information and communications technologies on
privacy over the last two decades.
Working in the field of data security I am quite used to dealing with
subjects that have barely brushed the public consciousness. Privacy
is one such area, as evidenced by the lack of agreement even on such a
basic issue as a definition of privacy. I must admit, however, that
the essays in this volume surprised me with the extent of the work in
privacy policy and regulations that have gone on in ... well, private,
without making much impact in either the media or public discussion as
a whole. Although academic in tone, the content of the papers is
compelling enough to hold the interest of almost any audience. The
text is informed, and while the quality of writing may vary it is
always clear and matter of fact. Topics covered include the
representational nature of data-oriented computing (and the trend
towards "virtual worlds"), privacy design considerations in multimedia
computing, privacy policy harmonization on an international scale,
privacy enhancing technologies, social pressures on privacy, privacy
law and developing policy, cryptography, and design considerations for
large scale projects.
(In any anthology the tone and value of individual pieces varies. In
this current work the level of consistency and quality is high. The
one startling and disappointing exception is the essay by David
Flaherty, Information and Privacy Commssioner for British Columbia.
It might possibly be intended as an examination of a "real life"
example of such an office. In its current state, however, it reads
more like a long and unconvincing advertisement for a book by one
David Flaherty, and the working tribulations of one David Flaherty.
The whining tone and constant criticism of everyone else involved in
his work makes it particularly unattractive. This paper is also least
focussed on the topic, dealing with technology only in a minor way.)
For all the general discussion about technology and privacy, it is
obvious that few people are informed as to the realities of the topic.
This book is recommended as a readable, informative, and important
contribution to the literature.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKTCHPRV.RVW 971012
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
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