[Prev| Next| Index] 2/21/96, cprosse@edlab.cs.umass.edu, Amherst, MA USA

Freedom

It all started a few weeks ago when I got back to school . I have always
been a little cautious of my personal rights, but being a middle class
white male I have never had to worry too much. I go to a university where
freedom of speech is generally not an issue on campus. We are a state
school and the students are here to speak out when they wish. This changed
two weeks ago when Lewis McCarthy was censored by the CS Dept. Chair David
Stemple . This censorsip was rationalized away by the statement that the
Computer Science dept. equiptment should only be used for computer science
related work and political information is not allowwed (Lewis had created a
web page that violated Germany's law by proclaiming the Holocaust did not
happen).

I believe the Holocaust happened in addition to all the other atrocities
that humankind has commited upon itself. But I have had to come to terms
that free speech must be unilateral and everybody needs to have equal
access. For once we start censoring a single person, or a group of people,
we leave ourselves open to censoring by the majority. I don't want to be
censored.

Something that seems to be left out of the debate in these pressing times
is that as more information becaomes availabe on the internet, we are all
(the users of the net) exposing ourselves to the scrutiny of the world. It
is possible for any sufficiently large organization (or a single person if
if they have enough cash) to to data mining on the internet. Personally I
don't like the idea of having my every move tracked and logged on the
internet, and then traceable back to me. It is impossible to lurk on the
web given that servers can log all transfers, unless you are in a public
lab. On usenet you are exposed, my father, and independant businessman and
AOL user, has gotten repeated mailings about a service where a company will
troll USENET for email addresses and sell you one giant list. God forbid if
you wish to do anything the Government deems illegal. It is very easy for
the government to troll alt.drugs and pull everyones name out of it, do a
finger on every email and then get your home address to boot.

Sure there are anonymous email gateways like anon.penet.fi, but this only
covers email. What I am trying to do is create a service where you may have
an account where no public information is available. That's right, no
finger, w, who, users, etc (I still need to research all the ways to
extract info from Un*x). There will also be no personal info stored on the
machine, unless you put it there, so even the wily hacker or two wont be
able to get much from the system.

So in the end I am a disgruntled computer scientist, with almost no money,
but the will to try and be little thorn in someones side for as long as I
live. Read Noam Chomsky when you have a chance, he gives you a very
different perspective on what you read in the mass media. Take a look at
John Perry Barlow too.

Later, Chris

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