Dr. Paul S. di Virgilio,  University of Toronto  [log in to unmask]
said:
 
> ... I have seen
> some pretty powerful maneuvers way beyond nastymail on the internet
> which lead me to believe that those causing the disruptions have
> access to some very high tech equipment. Of course, we scarcely know
> what some of the agendas really stand for. ...
 
In a later post, he said:
 
> ... It is clear by the number of events
> that we see that someone needs to collect and correlate the
> data looking for common threads and common protection. There
> certainly are enough traces here to find footprints on the
> internet. My concern is that there seems to be a correlation
> between internet and external events. Is this the desired
> effect? ...
 
Let me preface this by saying that in high school I was top 40 in the
Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and once, while a grad student at
"Teller Tech", I had an employeeship tinkering on computers at a (U.S.)
nuclear weapons design lab (LLNL), of the sort which was a cornerstone of
Internet, and now is apparantly working on computer network security...
 
It has been suggested that Ed "father of the H bomb" Teller (of LLNL) faked
a missile interception test on the Star Wars program, faking out both the
Russians and the U.S. Congress...
 
I am not surprised by the fact that, during a "Cold War", the most powerful
telescope ever built and put into space turned out to be "nearsighted", just
because of a single wrong number, and a decision not to test it to save a
million dollars on a billion dollar bird.  Just remember, that a Low
Earth Orbit (LEO) telescope that points up, will later in that orbit point
down, and the data is probably not encrypted on the downlink, and thus
will be seen by some forces as a security risk.
 
I am also not surprised that the "internet worm" was coincidentally
started by the son of a NSA Computer Security professional.  $100M
in downtime was just what it would take to get people to put passwords
on their accounts, and close the holes in their security system.  Just
remember the German hackers that were attacking Internet on behalf of the
Russians.
 
The 3 above mentioned single landmark events during the last decade all
involved large U.S. Government "owned" hardware systems (remember--Internet
is USDOD's own "turf"), all resulted in outcomes which benefitted U.S.
"national security", and all involved decisions (if this view is correct)
by a small group of individuals.
 
Please consider that not all attacks on our systems are necessarily by
anarchists, luddites, or industrial spies.  Some may be by those who
feel that they "OWN" the system.
 
You must also understand that the U.S. Military Industrial Complex often runs
3 decades ahead of what you can buy on the street.  (As a recent example,
the perfume that you can buy today as "Realm" is the sort of pheromone that
the CIA would have killed for in the '50's, but allegedly, as stated on
MacNeil-Lehrer a week or two ago, spent 3 decades sitting in some corporate
freezer.)
 
(BTW keyword searching of international USENET traffic should be much
simpler than the purported telephone voice keyword recognition that the
U.S. NSA is reputed to have on US telephone sattelite uplinks, therefore
it must be considered to be being done.  You can bet that NSA is having
"cat fits" about some the data that is "loose" on the internet.  And, what
do you suppose the new U.S. "industrial security" program is about?)
 
How does all this relate to Listowner security issues?  Well, mailing lists
are now under attack (e.g. by those trying to post commercial messages).
 
What I see happening is that the $8-20/hr commercial services feel
threatened by widespread access to *free* internet, and will therefore
politically act to cut U.S. internet funding, while offering to build a
(National) Information Superhighway.  Of course, what is unstated
is that this highway will have tollbooths, in order to pay these same
providers to build it.  The National Security Community will sign off on
this, in order to have real-time connection-data, wiretapping, and
data encryption backdoors built in to the specifications by Congressional
mandate.
 
However, be able to be allowed to rebuild a system, one must first break
the current system.  Thus, Internet will be broken, sometime just about
the time that it becomes as popular as Citzen's Band radio was at its
peak, and the links become saturated (e.g. by newcomers using graphical
database programs for fun), to the extent where the current sponsors
become dissatisfied with the return on their investment.
 
In short, the argument is that it is in the political interests of both
"Big Technology" and the U.S. security community to "break" internet as
it now exists.  (These forces may, however, underestimate the impact that
such regulation may have on the forces of innovation and technological
advance.)
 
Why oppose the decisions of the "patriarchs"?  Because the patriarchs
tend not to make decisions that are against their own interests, and as
such, have a tendency to create liberation movements in the wake of their
decisionmaking.  These are inherently political decisions, about who wins
and who looses in society, about who has access to information and capital,
about who gets risks and who gets rewards, and about who gets social
justice and who does not.
 
Internet, like the "Old West", will be tamed.  Eventually, it will look
like our other utility systems.  In the mean time, listowners, like "Old
West" sheriffs, should expect to be under attack by both "outlaws" and
"robber barons".  If listowners do not respond adequately to these attacks,
regulating the net from within, then more powerful forces will legislate
the solution from without.  It is even conceivable that powerful outside
forces may precipitate such attacks.
 
Replies that are not list-related should be sent directly to me.
 
Stephen A. McFadden  [log in to unmask]