On 28 Feb 2011, at 16:57, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: > On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:04:23 EST, Joe Abley said: >> I don't think this has ever been cited as a global, general threat that >> must be eliminated (just as people are generally happy to use the same >> credit card as they move around the planet and don't generally stress >> about the implications). > > It's not a global threat. However, it *is* a *specific* threat to some > people. > > We support the ability of students to restrict "directory information" to > various levels, from "don't list home address" to "we won't admit they are a > student without a court order or other authorization". I happen to know that > 299 students (out of roughly 7,000) in our graduating class currently have > their privacy set high enough to exclude them from being listed in the program > for the 2011 graduation ceremony. Sure would be a shame if the network itself > insisted on making them trackable... > > (Some of these students are just privacy minded, but we have a fair number > that > are children of diplomats/etc, or are literally in hiding from ex'es or > non-custodial parents and have restraining orders out - these people *really* > don't want to be tracked/found...) > >
But you still need to know who they are so that when the court order pops through your door and it turns out they have been brewing up anthrax in the biology lab you'll want to be able to identify the IP address that was responsible for the nick binladen on the \terrorists channel on EFnet, yeah? I really do not care less if people are tracked/found/whatever externally, so long as internally I can identify with some fair degree of certainty who had that address at any one time. And so in order to fix this we have people writing perl scripts to hoover up tidbits of information from snoop ports or routers. At least with DHCP you actually get a log on a box who who had what. -- Leigh Porter
