On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Zachary Uram wrote: > this is silly position but understandable considering we live in > most litigitous country in the world. > this is analogous to saying if you don't have "The Club" on your > car you are liable if someone steals it and commits a crime. Well, lets actually pick an example that (in the US) is supported by current law. In California, at least (not sure if this is State or Federal), if I have store a firearm in the house in an unsecured manner (e.g. under my pillow), children gain access to that firearm, and though playing with it a child is harmed, there is a criminal liability. I know some people have been prosecuted for this. There are a lot of questions that I think have not been answered yet, especially since it's a new law. For example, it's pretty clear to me that if I regularly have children in the house, I should account for their presence in the house when looking at weapons storage. What if I live alone with no children? What if, say, I have guests but the bedroom door is closed? Hell, what if children break into my house? It's a murky topic. I think it's clear that at one extreme, the answer is clear -- we blacklist people who refuse to turn off open relays, and most people (who have a clue) are comfortable with that. At the other extreme, the answer is also clear -- if my computer is running no services other than a well-configured SSH server and you break into it because you used EM snooping to listen to my keystrokes, I'm obviously not at fault for what you did with the computer during the ten minutes between the time you started hacking other sites and my well-configured IDS caught you and automatically disconnected the line. Now all we have to worry about is everything in between these extremes :) -roy - [To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@lists.gnac.net with "unsubscribe firewalls" in the body of the message.]