To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 12:02:00 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: A Security Question
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 08:03:17 -0400 "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
writes:
>         Steve Smith theorizes that Ron Kean was making the "Secret
> Masters
> of Fandom" argument:  Things could not get this bad by accident.  I
> prefer a
> theory that I read in one of Alexis Gilliland's Rosinante books:
> Never
> attribute to malice what can be aequately explained by stupidity.
>

Perhaps the NSA looked at MicroSoft's products and concluded they were so
insecure that there was no need to ask MS to create back doors
specifically for the NSA.  But I've heard that some European countries's
governments, and some foreign companies with sensitive data, have chosen
to avoid MS products because of worries about U.S. government snooping.

Perhaps there are historical analogies in past concerns about the
security of sending letters through the mail.  Before there were
organized postal services, someone who wished to send a letter would
entrust it to a traveller who happened to be going to where the recipient
lives, or in that general direction, and hope that the letter eventually
finds it way.  Traders who plied regular routes might carry mail as a
side business to their trade in goods.

While in Britain the General Post Office was founded in 1660
(http://www.ccr.sageweb.co.uk/FL_Royal%20Mail%20Timeline.pdf), in
colonial America mail was mostly handled by private means.  Private mail
service was thought to be unreliable, and people worried that their mail
could be opened and read while in transit.  So the Post Office was
established as a government monopoly for handling regular mail.  With a
government agency handling mail, private snooping was less of a worry,
but Thomas Jefferson, even when he was President, would sometimes
encipher letters sent via the Post Office, just as some people today
encipher their email using PGP.

Ron Kean

.

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