On Mon, Nov 22, 1999 at 11:38:35PM -0500, Daniel Golding wrote:
>
>
> Dean,
>
> Have you considered that, while your stand may be legally correct, it is
> ethically questionable? By leaving your relays open, you invite abuse and
> facilitate the theft of other networks' resources. I can not imagine what
> legitimate purpose you might have for such a practice. Perhaps the most
> disturbing aspect of this is your steady beat on the drum of law and
> order, combined with your strange zeal to block out IP addresses from a
> large block of law abiding folks.
>
> I can only wish you luck in your endevour to have Federal law enforcement
> officials deliver warrant on international spammers. Clearly, those folks
> don't have enough to do, and need the extra work.
>
> - Daniel Golding

His stand is not legally correct, I assure everyone on NANOG. You cannot criminally
trespass a public mail server; and you cannot define "authorized access" to said
mail server by simply putting up a banner that says "authorized use only". The
definition of authorized access lies in the configuration of said program.

I sincerly doubt the FBI takes Mr. Andersen very seriously, however, they did seem
to jump when more than 6 months ago Verio Legal started accusing me of hacking into
their worthless network. Thankfully, no one at the Cleveland office seemed to know
anything about such offenses. Dean's claims are 100% hot air, from accusing me of
everything from relay-rape (no) and extortion (it may seem laughable, but Verio
Legal gives Andersen more credit on this than I did, unfortunately).

I will neither confirm nor deny having anything to do with Dean's mail server being
posted to Usenet, but lookie here:

telnet odie.av8.com. smtp
Trying 198.3.136.141...
Connected to odie.av8.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-odie.av8.com ESMTP Sendmail; Tue, 23 Nov 1999 12:43:22 -0500 (EST)
220-Authorized Users Only
220-Notice: Unauthorized use billed at $1 per message, $10 per bounce,
220-$90/hr for cleanup.
220 Unauthorized use over $5000 defined as criminal by 18 USC 1030(6).
EHLO happy.cow.org.
250-odie.av8.com Hello noise@happy.cow.org [198.88.20.7], pleased to meet you
250-EXPN
250-VERB
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE
250-DSN
250-ONEX
250-ETRN
250-XUSR
250 HELP
MAIL FROM: <>
250 <>... Sender ok
RCPT TO: <root@cert.org>
250 <root@cert.org>... Recipient ok
RSET
250 Reset state
QUIT
221 odie.av8.com closing connection

Anyway, I'd like to see Dean try to send me a bill.

--
This is the reason we find most "computer crime" legislation so absurd.
The laws try to protect computer systems from being misused, when the
only definitive expression of what constitutes "acceptable use" is in the
code itself, which may or may not be a precise manifestation of the
author's intentions, depending on his competence as a programmer.
-Liraz Siri <liraz@bigfoot.com>