It's simple.....possession of items/materials you don't need.

I use a port scanner to test my firewall...

Does that make me a criminal in the eyes of the paranoid Republican Gestapo?

;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

It's simple.....possession of items/materials you don't need.

I use a port scanner to test my firewall...

Does that make me a criminal in the eyes of the paranoid Republican Gestapo?

;)

No, it makes you to stupid to realize this is a proposal, not a law.

Nice new sig you got there....

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Leader of Chechen rebels killed in blast. Terrorist orchestrated school, theater attacks.

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me@rescam.org

Ken Lay pulls off a great escape

EUGENE ROBINSON
THE WASHINGTON POST

July 11, 2006

Adolf Hitler, Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur. And now Ken Lay?

It's easy to understand why so many conspiracy theorists were convinced that Hitler had staged his supposed death and somehow escaped the smoking rubble of Berlin; he was one of history's greatest monsters, a man responsible for millions of deaths, and it wasn't that much of a stretch to believe he had one last evil trick up his sleeve.

The fans who for years clung to the hope that Elvis was still alive, on the other hand, simply loved their King so much that they couldn't bear to believe he was gone.

And as for Tupac, it will be easier for deniers to accept the Byronic rapper's death when the music industry stops putting out new Tupac records. The man has been so prolific from his Big Recording Studio in the Sky that even I have to wonder. Before comedian Dave Chappelle fled his $50 million contract with Comedy Central, he finished a hilarious sketch – broadcast by the cable channel Sunday night – in which dance club patrons are unnerved by a newly released “posthumous” Tupac song that mentions events that took place long after his death, including the election of George W. Bush. By the end of the sketch, the song is describing the action on the dance floor that instant.

Hitler, Elvis and Tupac were all icons. So the existence of a Web site called kenlayisalive.org that places the Enron founder in that pantheon must mean Lay is now an icon, too.

Almost immediately after Lay's death was reported last Wednesday, Internet bloggers began speculating that he had somehow faked his demise, which “conveniently” came just before his sentencing – doubtless to a well-deserved term in prison – for his role in what was arguably the most spectacular business fraud in American history.

“I wonder how many doctors you need to bribe to fake your own death,” wrote Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” in his blog. “Is one enough? Or is there some special double-checking that the police do if the guy is heading for prison? I'm sure there's a body, but I wonder if it's his. I have a bad feeling that some pizza delivery guy's last words to his co-workers were 'Hey, I have a delivery to that Enron guy's house! Wish me luck!'”

Ken Lay's sudden demise – and no, I haven't seen the body, but I'm pretty sure they did a lot of double-checking – obviously leaves many people with a feeling of having been cheated yet again. The man was found guilty of swindling good, honest, hard-working people out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and just when he was about to be sent to jail where he would spend the rest of his life in hopeless despair, the swindler escaped his punishment by dying. How convenient.

Those feelings are understandable, if not quite logical. Imagine that the sentencing judge had had the power to order Lay put to death. Wouldn't we have considered that a harsher punishment than a long prison term? And wouldn't Lay, with his folksy charm, have found a way to survive in relative comfort behind bars? How long would it have been before the prison guards were bringing him extra food in exchange for stock tips?

Still, his death seems hard to accept. His trial and conviction had certified him as a bona fide evil genius, a master illusionist who could fill sheets of paper with meaningless numbers and convince gullible employees and investors that they were seeing an actual company and actual profits. Enron was built on shakier foundations than your average Ponzi scheme, yet Lay was smart enough to fool all the analysts and accountants, at least long enough to rake off an enormous fortune for himself.

Is that the kind of man who could be so inattentive to his own health that he drops dead of a heart attack, even though clogged arteries are routinely discovered through checkups and corrected through medication or surgery?

Or is it the kind of man who would stash a few million in some super-secret offshore tax haven where investigators would never find it? And who, on the eve of being sent to prison, might be clever enough to find a way to reunite himself with those ill-gotten gains? Perhaps on some tropical beach?

Only in the movies, I'm afraid. Like I said, I'm sure they double-checked.

And anyway, I doubt that beach is big enough for him and Tupac.

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me@rescam.org

Leader of Chechen rebels killed in blast. Terrorist orchestrated school, theater attacks.

Well he deserved it after what he did to those kids in that school.

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It's simple.....possession of items/materials you don't need.

You catch a guy with a garage full of fertilizer and diesel, but no farm or tractor....chances are he's making a bomb. You catch a kid with key loggers and port scanners with no network to administer....chances are he's a hacker or at least a potential threat worthy of investigation.

Since you're using Windows XP, just take a look in your windows/system folder for Telnet. It's a well-known and totally legitimate tool, but it's also very capable of illegal remote access when used by people that know how to use it for that purpose. Using Telnet for remote access is an older method of hacking, but it's still effective.

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Bombings in Mumbai:

Police seek Mumbai bombs evidence

India looks for Mumbai clues

This is terrible. I wonder who's behind it.

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

It's simple.....possession of items/materials you don't need.

You catch a guy with a garage full of fertilizer and diesel, but no farm or tractor....chances are he's making a bomb. You catch a kid with key loggers and port scanners with no network to administer....chances are he's a hacker or at least a potential threat worthy of investigation.

Since you're using Windows XP, just take a look in your windows/system folder for Telnet. It's a well-known and totally legitimate tool, but it's also very capable of illegal remote access when used by people that know how to use it for that purpose. Using Telnet for remote access is an older method of hacking, but it's still effective.

Just like the port scanner, telnet isn't a malicious piece of software by itself, nor was it written for the sole purpose of exploiting other computers.

What's the confusion here? If the feds make this a law, you can come up with all kinds of excuses like any common criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)......but that won't put you in the right or save you from legal prosecution.

Ask all the hippies in Cali who got their doctor to perscribe pot for them.....

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Just like the port scanner, telnet isn't a malicious piece of software by itself, nor was it written for the sole purpose of exploiting other computers.

What's the confusion here? If the feds make this a law, you can come up with all kinds of excuses like any common criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)......but that won't put you in the right or save you from legal prosecution.

Ask all the hippies in Cali who got their doctor to perscribe pot for them.....

If this were to become law, I can predict what will happen. Every computer compromised with a back-door worm will download several hacking tools. When three-quarters of the nation is guilty of the law, it can't effectively be enforced.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Just like the port scanner, telnet isn't a malicious piece of software by itself, nor was it written for the sole purpose of exploiting other computers.

What's the confusion here? If the feds make this a law, you can come up with all kinds of excuses like any common criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)......but that won't put you in the right or save you from legal prosecution.

Ask all the hippies in Cali who got their doctor to perscribe pot for them.....

Well, first, let me be clear about something BrainSmashR. There's nothing on my box that came from any third party source that can be used for any kind of hacking, and the only networking stuff I have is part of the OS. So it's not necessary to throw in the suggestion about "like any other criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)" part.

It shouldn't be made a crime by the government to distribute information about software and networking vulnerabilities because people have the right to freely have access to that information, since these vulnerabilities are a reality of computing knowledge in general, and thus shouldn't be hidden from public access. Information like that is not the private property of any goverment or business. This is different from distributing information about things that are physically located on their property. In that case it really would be a crime to distribute information that is on their property. The point here is: Computing knowledge, which includes knowledge about how to crack scripts and penetrate networks, is general knowledge. And nobody owns it. And since nobody owns it, the government shouldn't have the right to outlaw the distribution and possession of software tools that might exploit those vulnerabilities.

They chose to adopt a system for information storage and exchange knowing that such a system had certain flaws. This kind of free general knowledge and information about software and networking vulnerabilities existed since the dawn of the popular computer age, and governments and institutions were aware of it. Now, they want to contain that general knowledge.

Here's another problem with these laws. Many hackers participate in harmless wargames using software that can be considered illegal by these laws. So by criminalizing the production, distribution and possession of these kinds of software hacking tools, the government is saying that hackers don't have the right to use certain software for wargames. Hmm.

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Just like the port scanner, telnet isn't a malicious piece of software by itself, nor was it written for the sole purpose of exploiting other computers.

What's the confusion here? If the feds make this a law, you can come up with all kinds of excuses like any common criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)......but that won't put you in the right or save you from legal prosecution.

Ask all the hippies in Cali who got their doctor to perscribe pot for them.....

Well, first, let me be clear about something BrainSmashR. There's nothing on my box that came from any third party source that can be used for any kind of hacking, and the only networking stuff I have is part of the OS. So it's not necessary to throw in the suggestion about "like any other criminal, in order to justify your actions (to yourself)" part.

It shouldn't be made a crime by the government to distribute information about software and networking vulnerabilities because people have the right to freely have access to that information, since these vulnerabilities are a reality of computing knowledge in general, and thus shouldn't be hidden from public access. Information like that is not the private property of any goverment or business. This is different from distributing information about things that are physically located on their property. In that case it really would be a crime to distribute information that is on their property. The point here is: Computing knowledge, which includes knowledge about how to crack scripts and penetrate networks, is general knowledge. And nobody owns it. And since nobody owns it, the government shouldn't have the right to outlaw the distribution and possession of software tools that might exploit those vulnerabilities.

They chose to adopt a system for information storage and exchange knowing that such a system had certain flaws. This kind of free general knowledge and information about software and networking vulnerabilities existed since the dawn of the popular computer age, and governments and institutions were aware of it. Now, they want to contain that general knowledge.

Here's another problem with these laws. Many hackers participate in harmless wargames using software that can be considered illegal by these laws. So by criminalizing the production, distribution and possession of these kinds of software hacking tools, the government is saying that hackers don't have the right to use certain software for wargames. Hmm.

Guess what, they don't have the "right" to smoke pot in order to enhance their game play, or rob the corner store to fund their game play either...so I fail to see what difference this would make if the feds decide to outlaw the software.

Now I'm not specifically talking about being in possession of the information, because the information by itself is useless. Afterall, you can find instructions all over the net on how to build nuclear bombs.....but those instructiosn are quite useless without the materials to construct the bomb.

Now on to Octogon....

A large number of Americans are drug users, and we all know that the government will never ever get all the drugs off the street.

Does that mean we shouldn't even try? Of course it doesn't.

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Ken Lay pulls off a great escape
[i]
Ken Lay's sudden demise – and no, I haven't seen the body, but I'm pretty sure they did a lot of double-checking – obviously leaves many people with a feeling of having been cheated yet again.

The American people need, indeed demand, another scapegoat.


Blame Misfit!

---

Now on to Octogon....

A large number of Americans are drug users, and we all know that the government will never ever get all the drugs off the street.

Does that mean we shouldn't even try? Of course it doesn't.

Okay, I wasn't clear... the scerario I outlined would invalidate any of the automagical technical means that these people envision using to catch hackers. They think "Oooo... this computer is scanning ports. FBI probe indicates the presence of l0ftcrack on the hard drive. Send in the SWAT team." It will not be that simple.

As I said previously, just because a crime has the word "intent" in it does not mean it is the Thought Police... the "intent" must be demonstrated by quantifiable means.

If posession of certain software is going to become a crime, the software will get remotely installed on millions of computers or it will grow a small self-modifying-code feature so it is not "the" illegal software. If posession of certain software is merely a bit of circumstantial evidence in traditional prosecution, then there is no need for a new law.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Okay, I wasn't clear... the scerario I outlined would invalidate any of the automagical technical means that these people envision using to catch hackers. They think "Oooo... this computer is scanning ports. FBI probe indicates the presence of l0ftcrack on the hard drive. Send in the SWAT team." It will not be that simple.

I have no doubt some beaucrat will screw it up, but it could be just that easy. You scanned IP's, not on your own network, and were caught in possession of hacking software....case closed.

As I said previously, just because a crime has the word "intent" in it does not mean it is the Thought Police... the "intent" must be demonstrated by quantifiable means.

...and I think that was demonstrated in your example....scanning IP's outside of your network and in possession of hacking tools. No different than being caught with alcohol under the age of 18, or carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

There is no "legal" excuse once you met the criteria outlined in the law.

If posession of certain software is going to become a crime, the software will get remotely installed on millions of computers or it will grow a small self-modifying-code feature so it is not "the" illegal software.
If posession of certain software is merely a bit of circumstantial evidence in traditional prosecution, then there is no need for a new law.

Pure speculation. I agree that "something" would happen, but I certainly can't say this type of law would be useless based on nothing more than a vivid imagination and the "what if" clause....

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Okay, I wasn't clear... the scerario I outlined would invalidate any of the automagical technical means that these people envision using to catch hackers. They think "Oooo... this computer is scanning ports. FBI probe indicates the presence of l0ftcrack on the hard drive. Send in the SWAT team." It will not be that simple.

I have no doubt some beaucrat will screw it up, but it could be just that easy. You scanned IP's, not on your own network, and were caught in possession of hacking software....case closed.

You are forgetting one of the distinguishing characteristics of software. It is not scarce. If I have a baggie of pot and maliciously stash it in your house, I have less pot. If I have some rootkit constructor and I maliciously plant a copy of it on your hard drive, I still have it. This changes the dynamics of "guilt by posession" dramatically.

As I said previously, just because a crime has the word "intent" in it does not mean it is the Thought Police... the "intent" must be demonstrated by quantifiable means.

...and I think that was demonstrated in your example....scanning IP's outside of your network and in possession of hacking tools. No different than being caught with alcohol under the age of 18, or carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

There is no "legal" excuse once you met the criteria outlined in the law.

If posession of certain software is going to become a crime, the software will get remotely installed on millions of computers or it will grow a small self-modifying-code feature so it is not "the" illegal software.
If posession of certain software is merely a bit of circumstantial evidence in traditional prosecution, then there is no need for a new law.

Pure speculation. I agree that "something" would happen, but I certainly can't say this type of law would be useless based on nothing more than a vivid imagination and the "what if" clause....

If it takes less than 60 seconds to think up with a practical means to completely defeat the purpose of the law within a day, I'm not sure there is any point to enacting the law.

EDIT: formatting

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Okay, I wasn't clear... the scerario I outlined would invalidate any of the automagical technical means that these people envision using to catch hackers. They think "Oooo... this computer is scanning ports. FBI probe indicates the presence of l0ftcrack on the hard drive. Send in the SWAT team." It will not be that simple.

I have no doubt some beaucrat will screw it up, but it could be just that easy. You scanned IP's, not on your own network, and were caught in possession of hacking software....case closed.

You are forgetting one of the distinguishing characteristics of software. It is not scarce. If I have a baggie of pot and maliciously stash it in your house, I have less pot. If I have some rootkit constructor and I maliciously plant a copy of it on your hard drive, I still have it. This changes the dynamics of "guilt by posession" dramatically.

As I said previously, just because a crime has the word "intent" in it does not mean it is the Thought Police... the "intent" must be demonstrated by quantifiable means.

...and I think that was demonstrated in your example....scanning IP's outside of your network and in possession of hacking tools. No different than being caught with alcohol under the age of 18, or carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

There is no "legal" excuse once you met the criteria outlined in the law.

If posession of certain software is going to become a crime, the software will get remotely installed on millions of computers or it will grow a small self-modifying-code feature so it is not "the" illegal software.
If posession of certain software is merely a bit of circumstantial evidence in traditional prosecution, then there is no need for a new law.

Pure speculation. I agree that "something" would happen, but I certainly can't say this type of law would be useless based on nothing more than a vivid imagination and the "what if" clause....

If it takes less than 60 seconds to think up with a practical means to completely defeat the purpose of the law within a day, I'm not sure there is any point to enacting the law.

EDIT: formatting

1. Possession is possession regardless of "the amount" or how it was acquired. You're "possession" charge doesn't change regardless of you having an ounce of pot, or just one joint....the difference is that possession of larger quantities will result in additional charges like intent to distribute for instance.

2. You didn't "defeat" anything. You merely created an imaginary situation, that in your opinion, defeated an imaginary law....and the "what if" clause isn't justification for not trying to prevent crime, IMO.

For example, a criminal can gain access to your home/car by breaking a window....according to your logic, that means there's no point in locking your doors......but I'm willing to bet you do it anyway.

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Brainsmasher,

I think the point is, to borrow your example of a criminal breaking your window, is that it doesn't mean we outlaw hammers because they CAN be used illegally. As someone else pointed out, there are legitimate uses for these types of computer tools. I don't think it should be illegal to possess them, only illegal to commit crimes with them against others' rights.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

yes Sir Misfit (good one)

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