Date: 18 Jan 92 11:55:48 GMT
From:
[email protected](Nick Andrew)
Subject: File 7--Re: Cud 402--Law Enforcement, the Government & You
Jon Pugh <
[email protected]> writes:
> If you were assigned to track down computer criminals and you
>didn't know a bit from a scuzzy disk controller, where would you start
>looking? On bulletin boards and at computer club meetings, of course.
The above statement presupposes that "where there are bulletin boards
and computer club meetings, there is computer crime". That may be true
in certain places, however for the general case it is certainly
incorrect.
If I might make an analogy, it is akin to the logic of saying "People
sometimes smoke Grass. Most people who smoke Grass drive cars.
Grass-smoking drivers often carry Grass in their cars. So therefore we
should search a lot of cars at random, in the hope of finding Grass
smokers."
The analogy leads to an undesirable situation - that of law officials
interfering with people going about their business and searching their
personal property without any suspicion of wrongdoing. They _hope_ to
find grass, and they know if they stop 1 car in X, they will find
some.
The situation with computer hobbyists is as undesirable. Nobody wants
law officials peeping into computer clubs trying to find a hint of
wrongdoing. The logic is backwards. Firstly find the wrongdoing - the
crack, or phreaking, then work towards the perpetrator. Not the other
way around.
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