🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun18.033333.27450@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, jarober@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (DE Robertson james an 740-9172) writes:
>Ok. ow about if I drive around and test out the security systems of houses ?
>I check doors, see if I can open windows from the outside. I have a freind
>who has a set of lockpicks help me out. If I succeed in breaking in, I leave 
>a note letting you know that your security is poor. 
>	What you advocate with computers is exactly analogous to the above. I
>seriously doubt that you would condone such behaviour in my scenario. And if
>you do, you are plain foolish. 

	I'm afraid that they are not "exactly analogous"... A house
provides different things to the owner than a computer... Houses give
shelter and protection, both from the elements and from other
people, privacy and such... The problem when someone enters your house
sans permission is that if you had been at home you probably would
have suffered some physical harm, etc... (Assuming that the intruder
was doing it with malicious intent)...  A computer is a different
thing... It still provides privacy, etc... But someone breaking into
your system is not going to do you any physical harm...  The most you
lose is some data, and possibly cputime... It's what happens with that
data...

	If I wander around inside the building here, into a few
offices, etc.. Then I don't think I'm doing anything wrong (If I go
through someone's desk, then I am screwing up, since it is against
company policy...) If I give my badge (no keys here... Mag-strip
readers) to someone else on the outside... Who knows...

	If someone saw that we used badges here, and knew how to copy
them or forge them, did, and then went into the building and walked up
to security, and told them that they didn't really work there, and
explained what they had done, with an offer to show them how to fix it
so that it wouldn't happen again, I doubt the people at security would
pass up the help that person would be offering them... 

	Whether or not ANY analogy can even be applied to deciding
right or wrong in the case of password files, I think not... There
aren't enough things that match up... The effects, ideas are all
different than RL...
	
>Develop a sense of right and wrong.
>
>jarober@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu

	I have... I like mine, please don't give me yours... In my
opinion, yours is as useless to me as mine is to you... Please confine
your morals to yourself...

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