[ale] Two talking stories

[Thompson Freeman]

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Jonathan Rickman wrote:

> On Mon, 20 May 2002, Thompson Freeman wrote:
> 
> > Just for chuckles and grins, give the words a chance. They may be
> > instructive for the rest of us
> 
> I don't think they'll be very instructive, but I had a few words with an
> attorney friend (who also happens to be a geek) about this over lunch the
> other day and he had some alarming thoughts. We were discussing the new
<<snip>>

Well, you might be embarrassed about instructive: the legal angle wasn't
the least bit visible to me at least. I had more in mind ideas like
unfriendly military/militant groups being clued in to good places to
analyse (since restrictions on reverse engineering don't apply to
them) and possibly successfully attack certain security related
agencies. Or attack a number of banks/financial institutions to raise
funds for thier work against my country and society. Organized crime might
like the banking industry as a target for any of a number of reasons. 

Since most commercial and governmental offices have computer decisions
made by managers without solid security/technical experience and
training (IMHO and limited observation), there is a strong tendency to
follow the rest of the herd in making decisions. (I want to be compatible
etc etc etc). Taking the time to make a truly informed decision is
admittedly extremely time expensive, and a majority of the decision makers
probably lack the time to do so even if they wanted to become truely
informed. (Please note the glittering generalities here. There will be
shining counter examples all over the place, but I _think_ they will still
average out as above.)

YMMV

-- 
===========================================
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
                    Lee Iacocca
===========================================
Thompson Freeman          tfreeman at intel.digichem.net


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