Site defaced - what next?

[Derek Martin]

On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 12:17:44AM -0400, Fred wrote:
> > By reporting these crimes you help generate data that raises these types
> > of crimes importance in enforcement mindset, which will eventually
> > result in resources being allocated away from taking "liberties with
> > liberty", (if that is your concern), and putting them into tracking
> > down attackers.  (It is understood that these two areas are not
> > totally exclusive.)
> 
> There has been so many problems with the FBI, ATF, and other law
> overenforcement agencies in the past we must be wary of giving them
> even more power if we can only do the *simple steps* to protect
> ourselves first.

Fred, I agree with your post entirely, as I often find to be the case.
I'd been intending to reply to Jeff's post with a similar post, and
now I don't need to... thanks.  :)

Our goal as a society should NOT be to allocate more resources to law
enforcement, but LESS.  That is, we should be striving to create a
society where less law enforcement is required, because people police
themselves.  How do we do that?  That's the question we should be
asking...

> Funny thing is, they did not use their power to stop and prevent the
> real tragedy, even thought they were fully aware of truly suspicious
> activities afoot. 

Indeed.  I have seen video footage of news reports indicating that ATF
agents working out of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City were paged
the morning of the bombing and told not to report to work that
morning, suggesting that the ATF knew about this bombing in advance
also, and did nothing to stop it.  News reports from local reporters
on the scene also differ substantially on the events that transpired
from official reports that came from the government and law
enforcement agencies subsequently.

In the case of both the attack on the WTC and the Federal Building,
we know that federal law enforcement agents had prior knowledge, but
did nothing to stop the attacks.  People are reluctant to ask the
obvious question: WHY?  The reason for their reluctance is because of
an unwillingness to believe that the government is up to some funny
business.  The implication is somewhat sinister...  The only logical
conclusion seems to be that law enforcement agencies WANTED these
attacks to occur, in order to convince the public that giving them
more power is justified.

As you rightly point out though, even if we give them the power they
want, they can not protect us.  Anyone with the knowledge can go to
the grocery store and purchase materials to make a bomb, and deliver
it pretty much anywhere they want to, barring the offices of certain
financial and government agencies.  Even if we lived in a totalitarian
police state, people would find ways to make attacks.  The price is
too high, and we must refuse to pay it NOW, before it is too late.

> You are thinking by Western (really, US) standards of law
> enforcement and community relations. One cannot assume the rest of
> the world operates the same as we do or would even have the same
> concerns.  Besides, the efforts it would take to get some local
> police in some town near Moscow to go after a suspect would be
> great, and again I am not convinced they would care.

The reality seems to be that under a variety of pressures from the US
and its business interests, law and its enforcement is slowly becoming
on par with that in the US in most modernized countries.  We have seen
this with treaties dealing with, of all things, copyright protections.
In the grand scheme of things, is this the most important thing we
should be writing treaties about?  Don't we have bigger world problems?

> But the drug bust story makes good copy. As does the "I fought the
> spammer." One down, 100,000 more to go, and 100 more to replace this
> And now we want the same mess in cyberspace? I would think not! The
> technological solution is our *only _real_ option*. The legal/law
> enforcement option is only an *after the fact* measure that may actually
> make the problem worse, as now those who love a challenge of not being
> caught will be lured into cracking.

Not to mention the fact that new laws and increasingly invasive law
enforcement efforts give people more political cause to engage in
civil disobedience...

> History has taught us -- and painfully so -- that "cracking down" does
> little to deter crime, and actually may enhance crime rates, as
> "violence begets violence." Even the threat of medieval torture did not
> stop crime in the past. What makes anyone think that today's much softer
> forms of "deterrence" will be anymore effective?

Sad, but true.  So, let's keep law enforcement out of cyberspace as
much as possible then, shall we?

> Blame Redmond for the travails the general public is going though
> now.  And I will flat out state that no level of "crack down" will
> deter those who write viruses and spew forth spam and crack systems.

Well, let's not blame the people of Redmond; let's be clear about who
are targets are.  Microsoft is a big one, but they're not the only
ones...  We, especially, must remember that one of the main reasons
why people started writing viruses and other malware was to illustrate
the problems with the software which has been developed.  The reason
for the current proliferation is at least partly because we haven't
improved much in 30 years...

Microsoft is a most visible and most hated example of this, and hence
they are a big target.  But they are not alone.  Until we as consumers
hold responsible software companies who sell poor quality software,
and force them to write better software, the situation will not
change.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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