amazonaws.com?

Thu May 29 20:48:38 UTC 2008

Barry Shein wrote:
> What I really, really, (really), don't understand is what is this
> perverse urge to argue incessantly that spam and related do little or
> no harm, are of little consequence, and nothing can be done about it
> anyhow? You'd think we were discussing ways to prevent hurricanes (and
> some won't even accept that there's no answer to those!)
> 
> I realize there's a little bit of one-upsmanship to just beating a
> hopeless point to death (ok, fine, huge ammonium nitrate explosions
> which level entire cities are worse than million+ zombie bot armies,
> and superman can beat up the hulk, etc.)

So don't use bad analogies... Describe the scope of the possible harm 
you envision.

> Zombie bot armies et al do cause probably billions of dollars in
> damages (e.g., equipment and personnel to deal with them not to
> mention lost productivity by end users), undermine trust, etc.
> 
> But don't you ever stop to consider where your collective bread is
> buttered before you give the public and quotable impression as
> professionals that whether or not spam, phishing et al are bad is
> debateable, like we were arguing creationism vs. evolution, that
> there's no point in even trying to curb it, that credit cards can't
> possibly work, etc?

The fact that is criminal enterprise is undesirable is not a subject of 
much debate.

I object to the notion the destruction of life and property are suitably 
analogous to spam, fraud, theft of resource and denial of service. They 
aren't. One is at risk of minimizing the suffering of the victims of the 
former by equating them with the later.

> It's one thing to give an idea a proper vetting, it's something else
> to work backwards from the assumption that nothing can possibly be
> done and just use reasoning like "I can think of something even worse,
> so therefore it's not so bad", or "fraud has occurred in credit card
> transactions, therefore credit cards cannot be viable."

I don't think there's any evidence of me assuming that. The potential 
for abuse is not a prima facie reason not to do something. Large 
successful parts of our economy as well as the basic human condition are 
devoted to the business of managing opportunity vs risk and the 
mitigation of the later where possible.

> On May 29, 2008 at 11:10 joelja at bogus.com (Joel Jaeggli) wrote:
>  > Barry Shein wrote:
>  > > On May 29, 2008 at 06:46 joelja at bogus.com (Joel Jaeggli) wrote:
>  > >  > Dorn Hetzel wrote:
>  > >  > > Yeah, there was a day when anyone could buy a pickup truck full of 
>  > >  > > ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a random feed store and not attract any 
>  > >  > > attention at all, now, maybe not.  Just like port 25, it has plenty of 
>  > >  > > legitimate uses, and some more problematic ones.
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > Equating port 25 use with domestic terrorism is specious.
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > Ammonium nitrate requires requires some care in handling regardless of 
>  > >  > your intentions,see for exmple the oppau or texas city disasters.
>  > > 
>  > > And how different is that from the million+ strong zombie botnets? Who
>  > > owns (not pwns) those zombie'd systems and what were their intentions?
>  > 
>  > Well let's see. The texas city disaster is/was considered the worst 
>  > industrial accident in american history. 581 people killed by an 
>  > explosive yield of about 2 kilotons. The secondary effects includes 
>  > fires in many of the chemical facilities in Galveston and a swath of 
>  > destruction that reached up to 40 miles inland...
>  > 
>  > http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html
>  > 
>  > So no, I don't think internet attached hosts can casually equated with 
>  > the destructive potential of a pile of fertilizer at least not in the 
>  > context described.
>  > 
> 