At 7:32 PM -0700 10/2/97, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

On Thursday, October 02, 1997 11:54 AM, Attila T. Hun [SMTP:attila@hun.org] wrote:

...

if Phill is secure, what difference does it make if you assault him? my guess is he is not secure, and probably has no clue how to get from there to secure.

Because when you ring the alarm bell on my system it is answered by law enforcement and it costs about $10,000 a time to deal with the issue.

Hmmmhhh, you must have a law enforcement arrangement different from the ones around here (here being the Bay Area/Silicon Valley). Around here, law enforcement is usually the last to be brought in, and they in fact have little interest in answering computer intrusion alert calls. If it costs you, or the taxpayers (through your law enforcement situation), $10,000 for each quiver of your alarm system, maybe you ought to find ways to cut the costs. And setting off an alarm is not necessarily a crime, of course. Depends on where the alarm was placed. If someone bumps a car in a parking lot and sets off a motion sensor alarm, no crime has generally been committed. At least this is the situation in all the places I know of. And if dealing with a false car alarm cost $10,000, or even $100, this would tell the alarm owner to do something to reduce the number of false alarms.

Setting off fire alarms costs real money.

Indeed, because people panic, evacuate, leave work in progress, lose manufacturing runs, etc. But I can't think of many computer intrusion alarms which have the same effect, nor should they. If someone sets off panic alarms because an incorrect password is typed too many times, or some biometric test fails, or access to some files is unexplained, or whatever the alarms are, then this is an overreaction. Better security, better firewalls, write protecting Web sites, air gaps with the Net, or whatever, these would seem to be better alternatives than calling in the cops and running up a $10,000 bill for each alarm. (In any case, cops in my area will definitely _not_ come to my aid if I call them to report an attempted incursion into my system. Your cops must be different.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."