FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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[Auf einmal wollen alle den Code und damit das Law des Internet (im Lessig'schen Sinne) aendern. Nach der Hollywoodbranche, den Politikern nun die Techniker. - Wenn das nur nicht schiefgeht. --AHH]
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36566-2,00.html
Who Should Fight Cybercrime?
by Katie Dean
3:00 a.m. Jun. 1, 2000 PDT
As the world's top politicians, lawmakers, and business types argue and bleat over what must be done to stop the horrible, world-stopping threat known as cybercrime, a group of engineers who built and preside over the Internet's backbone are debating whether they should get involved.
At the core of the discussion: Politicians generally don't have the technical understanding to make the informed decisions that could become law. On the flip side: Engineers are neither politicians nor police.
Hence the debate among members of an Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list: Should engineers come up with their own solutions to fight cybercrime and push them forward?
"Technical reality always trumps political blather everywhere that matters," wrote Vernon Schryver, setting the tone for the discussion. Jacob Palme, a computer science professor at the University of Stockholm, launched the email debate about a week ago.
"Should IETF do anything to fight the increasing incidences of Net criminality?" he wrote to the list. "Can we do anything? Can the protocols, which IETF manages, be modified so as to make it easier to fight virus distribution, mail bombing, ping attacks, and the other ways in which people are harassing the Internet?"
His motivation was simple.
"It's obvious that criminal use on the Internet is becoming more and more of a problem," Palme said.
[...]
For example, Scott Bradner, a senior technical consultant at Harvard University, spoke at G8 and came away less than impressed with the level of discussion.
"There was not a small amount of misunderstanding about how the Internet works," Bradner said. "A lot of the speakers didn't have a clue."
Added Steven Bellovin, a network security researcher at AT&T who also has participated in the email debate: "There's a serious misunderstanding in many of the governments of the world in what you can and can't do on the Internet."
[...]