So, what do the Russians think?

[Tim May]

At 3:25 PM -0400 7/25/01, Trei, Peter wrote:
>One of the curious aspects of the whole Sklyarov
>affair is the silence of the Russians. I've not heard
>of any comment from the Russian government on
>the US news, the Novosti press agency has
>said nothing today or Tuesday (all I can check),
>and TASS has a couple of headlines, but (as far
>as I can tell) no editiorial material going either
>way (I can't read the TASS articles without
>a subscription).
>
>Most odd....

I'm not surprised that the Russian government is seemingly oblivious. 
Unless some crisis crosses a threshold to "infamy," like the arrest 
of Wen Ho Lee or the kid accused of being a spy in Russia, it's just 
"business as usual."

(Though I was struck by how close the arrest of the "Russian hacker" 
was to the plot line of "Swordfish," where a Finnish hacker (who just 
happens to be named Torvalds) is arrested when he deplanes at LAX. 
Now if the Adobe hacker turns up dead and a microchip has been cut 
out of his arm, we'll know we're in a John Travolta movie.)


Finally, it may be that the Russians just don't care. More arrests by 
the U.S. authorities means more chance of shaking down the Russian 
software industry for protection money. "You don't pay us, look what 
happens to you, comrade!"


--Tim May


-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns