On Wed, 17 May 2000, John Young wrote: > What about net vigilantism reported today in a US national > newspaper, about the volunteers who are helping the fuzz > track down miscreants? > > One gang goes after kiddie peds, another virii, another > after "unethical" hackers. In the name of keeping the Net > safe for those who promote it. Smells like W3 Consortium, > or ICANN, quasi-intelligents looking out for the dimwits, > preening for the deep pockets of law and order and natsec. > Pearl Harbor them. Yeah. You can see the same thing in the HAM radio community. Lots of HAMs doing fox-hunting and what not to track down the evil FCC law breakers. Seems some people are a little too eager to help out. People who don't have a life trying to get a life by *belonging*. Maybe some of the HAMs have their rigs up and running and can't figure out what to do with them. After 200 long-distance CQs, hunting law breakers looks exiting maybe. Who knows. > > Even the cops and prosecutors are doubtful of these > eager beavers, who, like Shimomura, believe their > technical prowess invest them with the right to be > Typhoid Marys. I think its a power trip actually. > > Clifford Stoll may have been the first famous vigilante > cyberdick, Mitnick his anti, but now there is a flood of > righteous fencers of the open range. > No doubt. jim Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
