From: ka at khidr.net (Ka)
Subject: YAWHT ?

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At Mittwoch, 28. August 2002 21:49 Steve wrote:
> Clearly written policies are easy to follow. F.ex:
> [...]
> It's easy to tell what belongs and what does not. If the indended purpose
> is to have an outlet for security holes and liabilities, then a discussion
> about someone being an a[bleep] is OT.

Hi Steve,

you implicitly assume, that the intend of the participants is similiar.
But in such a broad spectrum of standpoints as did allready show up
in this list, that is much too much to assume. With participants from
at least two extreme standpoints, fights are likely to occur (in fact
similiar opinions are the exception on this list). Add to that
a totally different peer-group language and spice it with language
difficulties of non-english native speakers... plus some factual
difference and often totally opposite goals... and you are knee-deep
in problems.

One side is trying to be right, the other side trying to proove
the first one wrong. One person tries to show off as a guru,
other members may want to teach him how stupid he is in reality.
And so on and so forth. Not only concerning technical matters,
but also regarding style of life, the way how some group expresses,
the deep rooted feelings, different experiences and all that
come into play.

Emotions are a main part of the game.

No single person and no small group of moderators can handle that 
in a fair way. And if you put in some automatic filters, that shows
only, that you are yourself stuck in your own conditionings.
For example the American fear to speak and read four-letter words
is just ridiculous. A French politician would never have been
thought of being unbearable for his job, just because he had
one or more mistresses - the French would say instead 
"Gee, our president is still a man of power, isn't he?"

If anybody is uncapable to read words like FUCK, it's his problem,
not mine. In fact, I'd like to add those words, just to show him,
how stupid he is in his membot-like automatic reactions.

For my feeling, the global situation is war-like and the security
aspects of that are just the peek of the iceberg. Trying to reduce
the list-language to mere technical discussions is in fact insulting
the hacker-scene. Why do you think, they went underground in the
first place? Do you think, their intentions are just too much testosteron
and not enough intelligence to look behind the so called "normal" setup?
Do you really think everybody wants to follow "clearly written
policies"? Just because you find that easy? I don't.

If this list became moderated it would degrade to 
"Yet another white hat (whatever)". And if I had an xploit
to share (which I don't have BTW), I wouldn't post it into YAWHT.

Just the time-lag induced by manual moderation would take out 
much of the power of this list, while an automatic content filter
is - at best - just plain stupid IMO. Just blooh blooh bloob.


I'm not telling you or anybody else, what is right or wrong,
but just expressing my standpoint.

Ka

P.S. I'm sure you couldn't have read this letter, 
if the usual security-list moderation was being done.
- --
http://www.khidr.net/users/ka/pgpkey.asc
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