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- The Joy of Handles
- Mahatma Kane Jeeves
- 101/138.8
- David Lescohier
- 101/138.0
- THE JOY OF HANDLES
- ------------------
- or:
- EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ME
- (but have no right to ask)
- --------------------------
- * * * * *
- We should never so entirely avoid danger as to appear
- irresolute and cowardly. But, at the same time, we should
- avoid unnecessarily exposing ourselves to danger, than
- which nothing can be more foolish. [Cicero]
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- Do you trust me?
-
- If you participate in computer conferencing, and you use
- your real name, then you'd better.
-
- "Why?", you ask. "What can you do with my name?" To start
- with, given that and your origin line, I can probably look
- you up in your local phone book, and find out where you
- live. Even if you are unlisted, there are ways to locate
- you based on your name. If you own any property, or pay any
- utility bills, your address is a matter of public record.
- Do you have children in the public schools? It would be
- easy to find out. But that's just the beginning.
-
- Former Chairman of the U.S. Privacy Protection Commission
- David F. Linowes, in his book "Privacy in America" (1989),
- writes of New York private investigator Irwin Blye:
-
-
- "Challenged to prove his contention that, given a little
- time and his usual fee, he could learn all about an
- individual without even speaking with him, Blye was
- presented with a subject -- a New Jersey
- newspaperman.... The result was a five-page, single-
- spaced, typed report which documented, though not always
- accurately, a wide sweep of the journalist's past, and
- was detailed to the point of disclosing his father's
- income before his retirement."
-
- Who am I? If I don't post, you might not even know I exist.
- I could be on your local Police Department, or an agent
- working with the IRS, or some federal law-enforcement
- agency. I could be a member of some fanatical hate group,
- or criminal organization. I might even be a former Nixon
- White-House staffer!
-
- I could be that pyromaniacal teenager you flamed last
- weekend, for posting a step-by-step description of how he
- made plastic explosive in his high-school chem lab. He
- seemed kind of mad.
-
- But you're an upstanding citizen; you have nothing to hide.
- So why not use your name on the nets? Trust me. There's
- nothing to worry about.
-
- Is there?
-
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- WHAT'S ALL THIS BROUHAHA?
- -------------------------
-
-
- Stupidity is evil waiting to happen. [Clay Bond]
-
-
- Not long ago in Fidonet's BCSNET echo (the Boston Computer
- Society's national conference), the following was posted by
- the conference moderator to a user calling himself "Captain
- Kirk":
-
- "May we ask dear Captain Kirk that it would be very
- polite if you could use your real name in an echomail
- conference? This particular message area is shared
- with BBS's all across the country and everyone else is
- using their real name. It is only common courtesy to
- do so in an echomail conference."
-
- One of us (mkj) responded with a post questioning that
- policy. Soon the conference had erupted into a heated
- debate! Although mkj had worried that the subject might be
- dismissed as trivial, it apparently touched a nerve. It
- brought forth debate over issues and perceptions central to
- computer communications in general, and it revealed profound
- disparities in fundamental values and assumptions among
- participants.
-
- This article is a response to that debate, and to the
- prevailing negative attitudes regarding the use of handles.
- Handles seem to have a bad reputation. Their use is
- strangely unpopular, and frequently forbidden by network
- authorities. Many people seem to feel that handles are rude
- or dishonest, or that anyone wishing to conceal his or her
- identity must be up to no good. It is the primary purpose
- of this article to dispel such prejudices.
-
- Let us make one thing perfectly clear here at the outset: We
- do NOT challenge the need or the right of sysops to know the
- identities of their users! But we do believe that a sysop
- who collects user names has a serious responsibility to
- protect that information. This means making sure that no
- one has access to the data without a legal warrant, and it
- certainly means not pressuring users to broadcast their real
- names in widespread public forums such as conferences.
-
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- SO YOU WANT TO BE A STAR?
- -------------------------
-
-
- John Lennon died for our sins. [anonymous]
-
-
- Andy Warhol said that "In the future, everyone will be
- famous for fifteen minutes". The computer nets, more than
- any other medium, lend credibility to this prediction. A
- network conference may span the globe more completely than
- even satellite TV, yet be open to anyone who can afford the
- simplest computer and modem. Through our participation in
- conferencing, each of us becomes, if only briefly, a public
- figure of sorts -- often without realizing it, and without
- any contemplation of the implications and possible
- consequences.
-
- Brian Reid (reid@decwrl.DEC.COM) conducts and distributes
- periodic surveys of Usenet conference readership. His
- statistical results for the end of 1991 show that of the
- 1,459 conferences which currently make up Usenet, more than
- fifty percent have over 20,000 readers apiece; the most
- popular conferences are each seen by about 200,000 readers!
- Mr. Reid's estimate of total Usenet readership is nearly TWO
- MILLION people.
-
- Note that Mr. Reid's numbers are for Usenet only; they do
- not include any information on other large public nets such
- as RIME (PC-Relaynet), Fido, or dozens of others, nor do
- they take into account thousands of private networks which
- may have indirect public network connections. The total
- number of users with access to public networks is unknown,
- but informed estimates range to the tens of millions, and
- the number keeps growing at an amazing pace -- in fact, the
- rate of growth of this medium may be greater than any other
- communications medium in history.
-
- The special problems and risks which arise when one deals
- with a large public audience are something about which most
- computer users have little or no experience or
- understanding. Until recently, those of us involved in
- computer conferencing have comprised a small and rather
- elite community. The explosion in network participation is
- catching us all a little unprepared.
-
- Among media professionals and celebrities, on the other
- hand, the risks of conducting one's business in front of a
- public audience are all too familiar. If the size of one's
- audience becomes sufficiently large, one must assume that
- examples of virtually every personality type will be
- included: police and other agents of various governments,
- terrorists, murderers, rapists, religious fanatics, the
- mentally ill, robbers and con artists, et al ad infinitum.
- It must also be assumed that almost anything you do, no
- matter how innocuous, could inspire at least one person,
- somewhere, to harbor ill will toward you.
-
- The near-fatal stabbing of actress Theresa Saldana is a case
- in point. As she was walking to her car one morning near her
- West Hollywood apartment, a voice behind her asked, "Are you
- Theresa Saldana?"; when she turned to answer, a man she had
- never seen before pulled out a kitchen knife and stabbed her
- repeatedly.
-
- After her lengthy and painful recovery, she wrote a book on
- the experience ("Beyond Survival", 1986). In that book she
- wrote:
-
- [pg 12] "... Detective Kalas informed me that the
- assailant, whom he described as a Scottish drifter, had
- fixated upon me after seeing me in films."
-
- [pg 28] "... it was through my work as an actress that
- the attacker had fixated on me. Naturally, this made
- me consider getting out of show business ..."
-
- [pg 34] "For security, I adopted an alias and became
- 'Alicia Michaels.' ... during the months that followed
- I grew so accustomed to it that, to this day, I still
- answer reflexively when someone calls the name Alicia!"
-
- Or consider the fate of Denver radio talk show host Alan
- Berg, who in 1984 died outside his home in a hail of
- gunfire. Police believe he was the victim of a local neo-
- nazi group who didn't like his politics.
-
- We are reminded of the murders of John Lennon and Rebecca
- Shaffer; the Reagan/Hinckley/Foster incident; and a long
- string of other "celebrity attacks" of all sorts, including
- such bizarre events as the occupation of David Letterman's
- home by a strange woman who claimed to be his wife! There is
- probably no one in public life who doesn't receive at least
- the occassional threatening letter.
-
- Of course, ordinary participants in network conferencing may
- never attract quite the attention that other types of
- celebrities attract. But consider the following, rather less
- apocalyptic scenarios:
-
- -- On Friday night you post a message to a public
- conference defending an unpopular or controversial
- viewpoint. On Monday morning your biggest client
- cancels a major contract. Or you are kept up all
- night by repeated telephone calls from someone
- demanding that you "stop killing babies"!
-
- -- You buy your teenage son or daughter a computer and
- modem. Sometime later you find your lawn littered
- with beer bottles and dug up with tire marks, or
- your home vandalized or burglarized.
-
- -- One day you are nominated to the Supreme Court. Who
- are all these strange people on TV claiming to be
- your friends? How did that fellow know your position
- on abortion? Your taste in GIFs?
-
- Celebrities and other professional media personalities
- accept the risks and sacrifices of notoriety, along with the
- benefits, as part of their chosen careers. Should computer
- conference participants be expected to do the same? And who
- should be making these decisions?
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- OTHER MEDIA
- -----------
-
-
- When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome [Cervantes]
-
-
- Older media seem to address the problems of privacy very
- differently than computer media, at least so far. We are
- not aware of ANY medium or publication, apart from computer
- conferencing, where amateur or even most professional
- participants are required to expose their true names against
- their will. Even celebrities frequently use "stage names",
- and protect their addresses and phone numbers as best they
- can.
-
- When a medium caters specifically to the general public,
- participants are typically given even greater opportunities
- to protect their privacy. Television talk shows have been
- known to go so far as to employ silhouetting and electronic
- alteration of voices to protect the identities of guests,
- and audience members who participate are certainly not
- required to state their full names before speaking.
-
- The traditional medium most analogous to computer
- conferencing may be talk radio. Like conferencing, talk
- radio is a group discussion and debate medium oriented
- toward controversy, where emotions can run high. Programs
- often center around a specific topic, and are always run by
- a "host" whose role seems analogous in many respects to that
- of a conference moderator. It is therefore worth noting
- that in talk radio generally, policy seems to be that
- callers are identified on the air only by their first names
- (unless of course they volunteer more).
-
- Finally, of course, authors have published under "pen names"
- since the dawn of publishing, and newspapers and magazines
- frequently publish letters to the editor with "name and
- address withheld by request" as the signature line. Even
- founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John
- Jay, in authoring the seminal Federalist Papers in 1787 for
- publication in the Letters columns of various New York City
- newspapers, concealed their identities behind the now-famous
- psuedonym "Publius".
-
- What would you think if someone called a radio talk show
- demanding to know the identity of a previous caller? Such a
- demand would undoubtedly be seen as menacing and
- inappropriate in that context. Yet that same demand seems
- to arise without much challenge each time a handle shows up
- in a computer conference. The authors of this article feel
- that such demands should always be looked upon as
- suspicious, and that it would be beneficial for moderators
- to take upon themselves the responsibility of making sure
- that besieged handle-users are aware of their right to
- refuse such inappropriate demands.
-
- It is reasonable to assume that privacy policies in
- traditional media are the result of hard-won wisdom gained
- from long experience. Are we so arrogant that we cannot
- learn from others? It is not hard to imagine the sorts of
- problems and experiences which shaped these policies in the
- old media. Will we have to wait for similar problems to
- occur on the computer networks before we learn?
-
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE
- ------------------------
-
-
- In an effort to identify people who fail to file tax
- returns, the Internal Revenue Service is matching
- its files against available lists of names and
- addresses of U.S. citizens who have purchased
- computers for home use. The IRS continues to seek
- out sources for such information. This information
- is matched against the IRS master file of taxpayers
- to see if those who have not filed can be
- identified.
- [COMPUTERWORLD, Sept. 1985]
-
- Date: Thu, 23 May 91 11:58:07 PDT
- From: mmm@cup.portal.com
- Subject: The RISKS of Posting to the Net
- -
- I just had an interesting visit from the FBI. It
- seems that a posting I made to sci.space several
- months ago had filtered through channels, caused the
- FBI to open (or re-open) a file on me, and an agent
- wanted to interview me, which I did voluntarily...
- I then went on to tell him about the controversy
- over Uunet, and their role in supplying archives of
- Usenet traffic on tape to the FBI...
- [RISKS Digest]
-
- Also frequent are instances where computers are
- seized incident to an unrelated arrest. For
- example, on February 28, 1991, following an arrest
- on charges of rape and battery, the Massachusetts
- state and local police seized the suspect's computer
- equipment. The suspect reportedly operated a 650-
- subscriber bulletin board called "BEN," which is
- described as "geared largely to a gay/leather/S&M
- crowd." It is not clear what the board's seizure is
- supposed to have accomplished, but the board is now
- shut down, and the identities and messages of its
- users are in the hands of the police.
-
- [CONSTITUTIONAL, LEGAL, AND ETHICAL
- CONSIDERATIONS FOR DEALING WITH ELECTRONIC
- FILES IN THE AGE OF CYBERSPACE, Harvey A.
- Silverglate and Thomas C. Viles]
-
-
- Most of us have been brought up to be grateful for the fact
- that we live in a nation where freedom is sacred. In other
- countries, we are told as children, people are afraid to
- speak their minds for fear they are being watched. Thank
- God we live in America!
-
- It would surprise most of us to learn that America is
- currently among the premiere surveillance nations in the
- world, but such, sadly, is indeed the case. Our leadership
- in technology has helped the U.S. government to amass as
- much information on its citizens as almost any other nation
- in history, totalitarian or otherwise. And to make matters
- worse, a consumer surveillance behemoth has sprung up
- consisting of huge private data-collection agencies which
- cater to business.
-
- As Evan Hendricks, editor of "Privacy Times" (a Washington
- D.C.-based newsletter) has put it: "You go through life
- dropping bits and pieces of information about yourself
- everywhere. Most people don't realize there are big vacuum
- cleaners out there sucking it all up." [Wall Street
- Journal, March 14, 1991].
-
- To get an idea of how much of your privacy has already been
- lost, consider the bits and pieces of information about
- yourself which are already available to investigators, and
- how thoroughly someone might come to know you by these clues
- alone.
-
- A person's lifestyle and personality are largely described,
- for example, by his or her purchases and expenses; from your
- checking account records -- which banks are required by law
- to keep and make available to government investigators -- a
- substantial portrait of your life will emerge. Credit card
- records may reveal much of the same information, and can
- also be used to track your movements. (In a recent case,
- "missing" Massachusetts State Representative Timothy O'Leary
- was tracked by credit-card transactions as he fled across
- the country, and his movements were reported on the nightly
- news!)
-
- Then there are your school records, which include IQ and
- other test results, comments on your "socialization" by
- teachers and others, and may reveal family finances in great
- detail. Employment and tax records reveal your present
- income, as well as personal comments by employers and co-
- workers. Your properties are another public record of your
- income and lifestyle, and possibly your social status as
- well. Telephone billing records reveal your personal and
- business associations in more detail. Insurance records
- reveal personal and family health histories and treatments.
-
- All of this information is commonly accessed by government
- and private or corporate investigators. And this list is
- far from exhaustive!
-
- Now consider how easily the computer networks lend
- themselves to even further erosions of personal privacy. The
- actual contents of our mail and telephone traffic have up to
- now been subjected to deliberate scrutiny only under
- extraordinary conditions. This built-in safety is due
- primarily to the difficulty and expense of conducting
- surveillance in these media, which usually requires extended
- human intervention. But in the medium of computer
- communications, most surveillance can be conducted using
- automated monitoring techniques. Tools currently available
- make it possible and even cost-effective for government and
- other interests to monitor virtually everything which
- happens here.
-
- Why would anyone want to monitor network users? It is well
- documented that, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI and
- other agencies of government, in operations such as the
- infamous COINTELPRO among others, spent a great deal of time
- and effort collecting vast lists of names. As Computer
- Underground Digest moderators Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer
- recalled in a recent commentary (CuD #3.42):
-
- "A 1977 class action suit against the Michigan State
- Police learned, through FOIA requests, that state and
- federal agents would peruse letters to the editor of
- newspapers and collect clippings of those whose politics
- they did not like. These news clippings became the basis
- of files on those persons that found there way into the
- hands of other agencies and employers."
-
- To get onto one of these government "enemies" lists, you
- often needed to do nothing more than telephone an
- organization under surveillance, or subscribe to the "wrong"
- types of magazines and newspapers. Groups engaged in
- political activism, including environmental and women's
- rights organizations, were commonly infiltrated. The sort
- of investi-gative reporting which uncovered these lists and
- surveillances back in the '60s and '70s is now rare, but
- there is little reason to assume that such activities have
- ceased or even slowed. In fact, progressive computerization
- of local police LEIU activities (Law Enforcement
- Intelligence Units, commonly known as "red squads") suggests
- that such activities may have greatly increased.
-
- Within the realm of computer conferencing especially, there
- is ample reason to believe that systematic monitoring is
- being conducted by government and law-enforcement
- organizations, and perhaps by other hostile interests as
- well. In a recent issue of Telecom Digest
- (comp.dcom.telecom), Craig Neidorf (knight@EFF.ORG) reported
- on the results of a recent Freedom of Information Act
- request for documents from the Secret Service:
-
- " ... The documents also show that the Secret Service
- established a computer database to keep track of
- suspected computer hackers. This database contains
- records of names, aliases, addresses, phone numbers,
- known associates, a list of activities, and various
- [conference postings] associated with each individual."
-
- But the privacy issues which surround computer
- communications go far beyond the collection of user lists.
- Both government and industry have long pursued the elusive
- grail of personality profiling on citizens and consumers. Up
- to now, such ambitions have been restrained by the practical
- difficulty and expense of collecting and analyzing large
- amounts of information on large numbers of citizens. But
- computer communications, more than any other technology,
- seems to hold out the promise that this unholy grail may
- finally be in sight.
-
- To coin a phrase, never has so much been known by so few
- about so many. The information commonly available to
- government and industry investi-gators today is sufficient
- to make reliable predictions about our personalities,
- health, politics, future behavior, our vulnerabilities,
- perhaps even about our innermost thoughts and feelings. The
- privacy we all take for granted is, in fact, largely an
- illusion; it no longer exists in most walks of life. If we
- wish to preserve even the most basic minimum of personal
- privacy, it seems clear that we need to take far better care
- on the networks than we have taken elsewhere.
-
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- FREEDOM
- -------
-
- Human beings are the only species with a history.
- Whether they also have a future is not so obvious.
- The answer will lie in the prospects for popular
- movements, with firm roots among all sectors of the
- population, dedicated to values that are suppressed
- or driven to the margins within the existing social
- and political order...
- [Noam Chomsky]
-
-
- In your day-to-day social interactions, as you deal with
- employers, clients, public officials, friends, acquaintances
- and total strangers, how often do you feel you can really
- speak freely? How comfortable are you discussing
- controversial issues such as religion, taxes, politics,
- racism, sexuality, abortion or AIDS, for example? Would you
- consider it appropriate or wise to express an honest opinion
- on such an issue to your boss, or a client? To your
- neighbors?
-
- Most of us confine such candid discussions to certain
- "trusted" social contexts, such as when we are among our
- closest friends. But when you post to a network conference,
- your boss, your clients, and your neighbors may very well
- read what you post -- if they are not on the nets today,
- they probably will be soon, as will nearly everyone.
-
- If we have to consider each post's possible impact on our
- social and professional reputations, on our job security and
- income, on our family's acceptance and safety in the
- community, it could be reckless indeed to express ourselves
- freely on the nets. Yet conferences are often geared to
- controversy, and inhibitions on the free expression of
- opinions can reduce traffic to a trickle, killing off an
- important conference topic or distorting a valuable sampling
- of public opinion.
-
- More important still is the role computer networks are
- beginning to play in the free and open dissemination of news
- and information. Democracy is crippled if dissent and
- diversity in the media are compromised; yet even here in the
- U.S., where a "free press" is a cherished tradition, the
- bulk of all the media is owned by a small (and ever-
- shrinking) number of corporations, whose relatively narrow
- culture, interests and perspec-tives largely shape the
- public perception.
-
- Computer communication, on the other hand, is by its nature
- very difficult to control or shape. Its resources are
- scattered; when one BBS goes bust (or is busted!), three
- others spring up in its place. The natural resiliency of
- computer communications (and other new, decentral-ized
- information technologies such as fax, consumer camcorders
- and cheap satellite links) is giving rise to a new brand of
- global "guerrilla journalism" which includes everyone, and
- defies efforts at suppression.
-
- The power and value of this new journalistic freedom has
- recently shown itself during the Gulf War, and throughout
- Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as within the
- U.S. Just think of the depth and detail of information
- available on the nets regarding the Secret Service's recent
- "Operation Sundevil" and associated activities, compared to
- the grossly distorted, blatantly propagandistic coverage of
- those same activities given to the general public through
- the traditional media.
-
- Historically, established power and wealth have seldom been
- disposed to tolerate uncontrolled media, and recent events
- in this country and elsewhere show that computer media are
- sometimes seen as threats to established interests as well.
- To understand the role of handles in this context, it is
- useful to note the flurries of anti-handle sentiment which
- have arisen in the wake of crackdowns such as Sundevil, or
- the Tom Tcimpidis raid in the early 1980s. Although few
- charges and fewer convictions have typically resulted from
- such operations, one might be tempted to speculate that the
- real purposes -- to terrorize the nets and chill freedoms of
- speech and assembly thereon -- have been achieved.
-
- In this way, sysops and moderators become unwitting
- accomplices in the supression of freedom on the networks.
- When real name requirements are instituted, anyone who fears
- retaliation of any sort, by any group, will have to fear
- participation in the nets; hence content is effectively
- controlled. This consideration becomes especially important
- as the nets expand into even more violent and repressive
- countries outside the U.S.
-
- We must decide whether freedom of information and open
- public discussion are in fact among the goals of network
- conferencing, and if so, whether handles have a role in
- achieving these goals. As access to the networks grows, we
- have a rare opportunity to frustrate the efforts of
- governments and corporations to control the public mind! In
- this way above all others, computers may have the potential
- to shape the future of all mankind for the better.
-
-
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
- A CALL TO ACTION
- ----------------
-
- The move to electronic communication may be a turning
- point that history will remember. Just as in
- seventeenth and eighteenth century Great Britain and
- America a few tracts and acts set precedents for
- print by which we live today, so what we think and do
- today may frame the information system for a
- substantial period in the future.
- [Ithiel de Sola Pool, "Technologies of Freedom", 1983]
-
-
- There was a time when anybody with some gear and a few
- batteries could become a radio broadcaster -- no license
- required. There was a time when anyone with a sense of
- adventure could buy a plane, and maybe get a contract to
- carry mail. Those early technological pioneers were
- probably unable to imagine the world as it is today, but
- their influence is strongly felt in current laws,
- regulations and policies with roots in the traditions and
- philosophies they founded and shaped.
-
- Today the new pioneers are knitting the world together with
- computers, and the world is changing faster than ever. Law
- and ethics are scrambling to keep up. How far will this
- growth take us? No one can say for sure. But you don't
- need a crystal ball to see that computer communications has
- the potential to encompass and surpass all the functionality
- of prior media -- print, post, telegraph, telephone, radio
- and television -- and more. It seems reasonable to assume
- that computer communications will be at least as ubiquitous
- and important in the lives of our grandchildren as all the
- older media have been in ours.
-
- It will be a world whose outlines we can now make out only
- dimly. But the foundations of that world are being built
- today by those of us exploring and homesteading on the
- electronic frontier. We need to look hard at what it will
- take to survive in the information age.
-
- In this article we have attempted to show, for one very
- narrow issue, what some of the stakes may be in this future-
- building game. But the risks associated with exposing your
- name in a computer conference are not well defined, and
- various people will no doubt assess the importance of these
- risks differently. After all, most of us take risks every
- day which are probably greater than the risks associated
- with conferencing. We drive on the expressway. We eat
- sushi. To some people, the risks of conferencing may seem
- terrifying; to others, insignificant.
-
- But let us not get side-tracked into unresolvable arguments
- on the matter. The real issue here is not how dangerous
- conferencing may or may not be; it is whether you and I will
- be able to make our own decisions, and protect ourselves (or
- not) as we see fit. The obvious answer is that users must
- exercise their collective power to advance their own
- interests, and to pressure sysops and moderators to become
- more sensitive to user concerns.
-
- To help in that effort, we would like to recommend the
- following guidelines for user action:
-
- -- Bear in mind John Perry Barlow's observation that
- "Liberties are preserved by using them". Let your
- sysop know that you would prefer to be using a
- handle, and use one wherever you can.
-
- -- Try to support boards and conferences which allow
- handles, and avoid those which don't.
-
- -- When using a handle, BEHAVE RESPONSIBLY! There will
- always be irresponsible users on the nets, and they
- will always use handles. It is important for the
- rest of us to fight common anti-handle prejudices by
- showing that handles are NOT always the mark of an
- irresponsible user!
-
- -- Educate others about the importance of handles (but
- NEVER argue or flame anyone about it).
-
- To sysops and moderators: We ask you to bear in mind that
- authority is often used best where it is used least. Grant
- users the right to engage in any harmless and responsible
- behaviors they choose. Protect your interests in ways which
- tread as lightly as possible upon the interests of others.
- The liberties you preserve may be your own!
-
- In building the computer forums of today, we are building
- the social fabric of tomorrow. If we wish to preserve the
- free and open atmosphere which has made computer networking
- a powerful force, while at the same time taking care against
- the risks inherent in such a force, handles seem to be a
- remarkably harmless, entertaining and effective tool to help
- us. Let's not throw that tool away.
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