Schneier: ISPs should bear security burden

Wed Apr 27 07:50:21 UTC 2005

william at elan.net (william(at)elan.net) wrote:

> >According to my sister (who works in that area as a regional water
> >expert), tap-water is held to higher standards than bottled water.
> >In Canada at least... ymmv.
> 
> Yeah, gotta to clean it up from pollutants [spam, ddos], add antibacterial 
> [antivirus] agents, check that the supply [latency] is not too low [high],
> make sure there are no leaks [anauthorized access].

In fact, the tap-water analogy is a very bad and at the same time a very
good one.

(1) In some countries, tap water is really pure and clean, often a lot
    better than what you can buy in bottles. This is especially true
    for Germany, Austria, and, according to Dragos, for Canada, too.

    The reason for the water quality here in ol' Europe is defined
    quality standards and ongoing tests.

(2) In other countries, water companies are allowed to adhere to a
    lot less rigid standards. I was pretty surprised how awful water
    in the US midwest was. Full of chlorine and tasting dead. I still
    cannot believe, people drink it there every day (but they do, it's
    what Coke's made with there).

So we do see differences here, some of which stem from the available
water supplies in the area, and some of which are the effect of different
defined standards and - inherently - jurisdiction.

Countries are different, there is - legally spoken - no world-wide Internet.
Everyone falls under the legislation of their home country (for various
values of home...). And while we may not like it, this jurisdiction can be
very different from mine. Or yours.

Elmar.

--

"Begehe nur nicht den Fehler, Meinung durch Sachverstand zu substituieren."
                          (PLemken, <bu6o7e$e6v0p$2 at ID-31.news.uni-berlin.de>)

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