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- Date: Thu, Mar 11, 1993 (00:46)
- From: Glenn S. Tenney <tenney@well.sf.ca.us>
- Subject: File 3--Computer Freedom and Privacy III Conf. (Report 2)
-
- The keynote today (Nicholas Johnson) was fantastic! I may not have
- agreed with him 100%, but his talk was just wonderful. Don't ask
- me
- to repeat it or even paraphrase it, I decided that I was probably
- going to buy a tape of it and didn't take notes.
-
- The electronic democracy session had, for me, an interesting note:
- Sarah Gray from We The People (ran Jerry Brown's computer stuff)
- said
- that they were given free accounts on various systems. I asked,
- honestly innocently, how they felt about the fact that such
- contributions were illegal. She basically had no clue that
- corporate
- contributions are a no-no.
-
- There were more sessions, but... And there were the EFF pioneer
- awards... Ward Christen's talk was fun -- things haven't changed
- all
- that much, it now takes about as long to figure out how to hook up
- a
- hard drive to your PC on some SCSI board as it took him to wire
- wrap
- and figure out how to build his own 8" floppy controller back then
- (etc. etc.).
-
- And then there was the after dinner talk... Willis Ware, Rand
- Corp.,
- gave a nice talk about privacy -- and ssn use and misuse. He had
- lots
- to say about how California's new requirement of ssn for a driver's
- license or vehicle registration is a major problem. Over the last
- 55
- years, we've been having our privacy worn down little by little
- --each time the reason was valid and good. Yet the overall effect
- is
- not. Another part of his talk was that policy is being made by
- private businesses concerned with profits.
-
- I'm wiped out now since I have to get back there by 08:30 (Who the
- hell starts a conference THAT early!!!!!). WIll try for more
- detail
- later...
-
- ------------------------------
-
- date: Thu, Mar 11, 1993 (02:12)
- From: Robert David Steele <steeler@well.sf.ca.us>
- Subject: File 3--Computer Freedom and Privacy III Conf. (Report 3)
-
- It has been great. No video though (although I have SEEN a video
- camera running around, the officially available product seems to be
- audio tapes). Mark Graham and Tim Pozar tutorial on INTERNET was
- very
- fine, well-paced, with excellent hand-outs ("the" book--thank you
- Bill
- McDonald for an early copy), good slides, and excellent list of
- access
- points. Missed afternoon session in order to give a rant at
- INTERVAL.
- Nicholas Johnson Thomas Jefferson (Barlow gently points out Tom got
- it
- from Madison) focus on public libraries, education, and cheap
- postal
- rates for books as foundation for democracy, we are in negotiation
- about his doing a speech on what Gore should be doing to honor
- these
- founding father visions in the age of cyberspace. Panel on
- electronic
- democracy, consisting of Jim Warren as chair, Bill Behnk, Richard
- Civille, Mark Graham, Sarah Gray, and James Packard Love, was
- SUPERB.
- I want to transplant it, without a single change, to my OSS 93. I
- was
- really taken with each speaker. Mark Graham's vision and
- intelligence, Sarah Gray's self-effacing discussion of reality
- (perhaps the law is irrelevant Glenn--we all use the office
- telephones
- and tools for personal business), Richard Civille's focus on what
- Gore
- and tools can do to help the poor bootstrap, and James Packard
- Love's
- visible, earnest intensity about cost and access to government
- information were MARVELOUS.
-
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