At 09:40 AM 9/5/2001 -0700, A. Melon wrote:
>Here is an example of the principle put into practice, from the
>anonymous web proxy service at http://proxy.magusnet.com/proxy.html:
>
>: If you are accessing this proxy from a *.mil or *.gov address
>: it will not work. As a taxpaying United States Citizen[TM],
>: Business Owner, and Desert Storm Veteran, I do not want my
>: tax dollars being used by agencies I pay for to gawk(1)
>: at WWW pages and hide your origination point at my expense.
>: Now, get back to work!
Sure, that's an understandable sentiment, but isn't this also isolating the
good (or teachable) people inside government who might be open-minded about
freedom or crypto or whatever, such that they can't learn from us, and such
that (in the case of anonymizing tools) they can't leak information?
I think there's an argument that it's useful to provide pipes into
secretive organizations which allow insiders to release information with
reduced fear of internal retaliation - sure, they may be used for
provocation and disinformation, but they also may be used for and by decent
people.
(Like, for example, Fred Whitehurst, a supervisory special agent in the
FBI's crime lab, who revealed systematic dishonesty, incompetence, perjury,
and contamination in the agency's high-profile analytic & forensic
operations - see <http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/22/okc.fbi.report/> or
<http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/fbilab1/fbil1toc.htm>.)
I don't think this question is as easy as it sounds at first.
--
Greg Broiles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids
