Peter Trei wrote:

Jim Choate wrote:

...

I have been looking at how to impliment picketing on the web. To date I have been unable to come up with a way to force a connection to one machine to go through a third machine in order to express some view about the original target.

It occured to me that since one could argue that the links between sites are public avenues a site could 'picket' another site. The question became at this point, how?

Jim: You may dislike one of the sites linking to yours, but you really can't hijack their connections and force people to listen to you who don't want to.

Wrong! It's done every day in every media from newspapers to TV and points in between, including the InterNet.

Imagine if you could! Anyone who dislikes any other page on the web could block access

Like CyberSitter, for instance. They can keep your child from using the local library computer to access Humane Society pages and animal rights groups because they have the word "bitch" on their websites.

There are two things you *can* do. (With Peter's approval, but many more things you can do with my approval.)

1. You can put a disclaimer on your page "If you linked here from XXX.XXX.XXX, please be aware that I object to that connection for the following reasons..."

"...and I have uploaded a virus to your machine. Have a nice day."

2. If you or your webmaster have any kind of technical sophistication, you can force links to your page to go to a CGI script, which uses the HTTP-referrer: header to provide different pages depending on the source of the connection.

"You have linked to the CHILD PORNOGRAPHY Home Page." "Information regarding your sexual proclivities will be forwarded to the FBI, the local religious and law enforcement authorities in your home town, as well as to your employer and known associates." "Have a nice day."

But please, don't try to extend the 'information superhighway' (blech!) metaphor to include virtual sidewalks with picketing rights

Peter Trei Disclaimer: The above represents the opinion of the people who are holding my family hostage. or invent whatever "facts" suit their purpose: "Dr. Vulis is a murdering Armenian and Jim Choate sends the ASCII art spams to the list. These are well-known facts to which

Please, do! There is not a day goes by where government and corporate entities do not promote legislation or software standards, etc., which are designed to influence what we may and may not see, as well as in what manner we perceive it. There is no reason that the individual cannot work in their own way to counter activities that they see as working against their own personal interests. It is possible to promote a wide range of "links" to web pages which are "spoofs" of another page or which link to the page but do so by opening them in a window which has surrounding windows revealing contradictory opinons, links, etc. Provide a link to the "Pretty Lousy Privacy" homepage, but add a window which mentions that your ten year old son cracked their cryptography program. Provide a pointer to a copy of the latest crypto legislation, which you have "translated" to include phrases such as, "despite its blantant unconstitutionality" and "in order to shear the sheeple." You are under no obligation to produce links or pointers, or to respond to links or pointers to your own site, in a manner that runs contrary to your own self-interest, or which allow those following those links to do so with blind faith that they will receive information slanted only toward a pre-conceived view of the world. Someone posted a URL to a web page "spoof" done by a number of cypherpunks (Hal Finney??,??) who had placed a number of options such as "Click here to destroy your hard-drive.", etc. on the site. It was a very Zen koan type of page which made one think about what they were doing and the possibilities of what the web page authors were/could-be doing. Click on a link that states, "Click here to see Hot, Teenage Sluts" and you are likely to end up at hotmail.com, adding to their list of spammees. To join the Dorthy Denning fan club, send email to majordomo@toad.com with a message body that says "subscribe cypherpunks." One can change the content of another's message when replying to an email: they have admitted in the past." I have a lot of respect for Peter's work, opinions and for his integrity, but my perception is that he fails to understand that the InterNet is a growing mosaic which can and should reflect *all* of life, and that his perception of what the InterNet is and should be somehow dictates what should and should not be done on the InterNet. I think that what should be done on the InterNet is exactly what people *want* to do. It is up to their own conscience as to whether their actions are done with integrity and up to the rest of us to interpret and respond to those actions. Tim May replied to someone on the list that a subject header he had used was "guilty(?)" of being inflammatory, and that he had used it for that very reason, to draw attention to his post. Is this manipulative? It is the way life works. I used Peter Trei and others' software for the DES Challenge, but I posted a suggestion to the list that perhaps their programs contained subterfuge designed to thwart others in their attempts to find the secret keys. Was I spreading FUD? The responses to my post gave me much more information about the processes behind the software than any direct inquiries I had made about their workings. (And they reinforced the fact that "blind trust" in their programs or anyone else's is foolish.) In short, I do not see Jim's concept of "picketing" web sites to be lacking in ethics, any more than Dr. Vulis' "rants" or John Gilmore's "unsubscribing" of the good Doctor or Tim May's "prodding" of our attention by his choice of subject headers. Each of us is responsible for interpreting and analyzing the information we access whether it says the king is wearing clothes or the king is naked. I could put a pointer to Peter's software which opens an adjoining window which warns that it may be compromised as a result of ulterior motives. The fact is, however, that Peter might himself put a disclaimer on his page saying, "If you can't read code, then you can't be certain of what my software is doing." (As a matter of fact, I believe his documentation mentions that there is no guarantee his logic is not in error.) And in the extreme case of anti-abortionists intercepting the email of pro-choice groups and inserting "Abortion is Murder!" messages--if the person receiving the message can't figure out that something is amiss, then maybe its not a good idea for them to be having children, anyway. (maybe) TruthMonger (maybe not) To view the contents of the whitehouse.gov hard drive: http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/carljohn/