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Subject: Re: RE: [suse-security] UE draft on cybercrime
From: r.maurizzigvs.it
Date: Fri Oct 27 2000 - 08:43:56 CDT

> Legislation is not courtesy of the european council but of all of us.

There's more than a little suspect that this legislation is a brainchild of NSA,
and that they are trying to impose this on Europe and all their other commercial
partners, using methods ranging from "it's in your best interest" to "If you
don't do this, then we won't do business with you because you're insecure".

In the US they have (or are about pass) similar bills/laws, and a discussion
like this one was made I think 1.5 years ago on the NTBugTraQ M/L. The nicest
thing of the US proposed bill is that bugs and security deficiencies will be
considered *Intellectual Property* of the program creator/distributor, and
(under the DMCA) it can become illegal to disclose them publicy (as in "they can
sue you out of business" if you disclose a weakness in a commercial program)

IMHO, the day a similar bill passes and Micros^H^H^H^H^H^H big IT firms start to
use it to silence the security people, it will be the start of the end for the
Internet Age as we now know it, because in a matter of a few months all security
firms and consultants will be out of business and the real black hat crackers
will have easy access to all the "C2 security certifiable" systems that are out
there. And after that, all hell will break loose... ;-)

BTW, the fact that it's a european company is not my first reason to use SuSE,
but it's quite up in the "list of reasons" I give to all the "why don't you use
RedHat" people I know... ;-)

Ciao,
  Roberto.

P.S.
The same problem (USA forcing on a more or less complacent/clueless EU council
all their stupid laws) is a problem that doesn't afflict IT security only: from
trade rules to consumer rihgts, in the last few years EU had a lot of fights
with the US over a lot of things. And practically, they lost them all.

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