Mulling over Rene Laederach to Steve Asher 23 Mar 2004

SA> Dean's current stand on privacy appears to leave little wiggle room: 
SA> His campaign platform pledges unwavering support for "the 
SA> constitutional principles of equality, liberty and privacy."

 RL> Go figure why he didn't get elected. Looks like the democrats in
 RL> the US want shepherd to rule the sheeple...

Well, they would have got him. It is hard to support any politician
that flip-flops more than a freshly caught bream ... and that's most
of them. :(

SA> There's probably a good reason why Dean spoke so vaguely: It's 
SA> unclear how such a system would work in practice. Must Internet 
SA> cafes include uniform ID card readers on public computers? Would 
SA> existing computers have to be retrofitted? Would tourists be 
SA> prohibited from bringing laptops unless they sported uniform ID 
SA> readers? What about Unix shell accounts? How did a politician who 
SA> is said to be Internet-savvy concoct this scheme?

 RL> Because he's either clueless or invented the internet. Frankly, 
 RL> how does this prevent John T. Hacker to use his father's card 
 RL> to go into a porn chatroom.

It will stop J T Hacker if he is also required to peer into the webcam
& put his dabs on a finger print reader to ensure that his biometrics
match those on the card.

 RL>   Or a chatroom hosted outside of the US?

I'm sure the UN will find ways of regulating & enforcing policy
on the 'net, if it gets the power to do so. :(

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http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5179694.html

United Nations ponders Net's future
March 26, 2004
By Declan McCullagh

UNITED NATIONS--The United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet.
At a summit here this week, delegates from around the world gathered 
to take a preliminary step toward U.N. involvement in some of the areas 
that are bedeviling Internet users and governments alike, including 
spam, network security, privacy and the regulation of the technical 
underpinnings that control the sprawling global network.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan set the tone in a speech Thursday, 
criticizing the current system through which Internet standards are 
set and domain names are handled, a process currently dominated by 
the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Such structures "must 
be made accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world's 
people," Annan said.

On Friday, the summit will hear recommendations from five different 
U.N. working groups on topics including everything from domain names 
to root server operation to free speech and intellectual property 
to privacy.

Although the U.N. process is still in its early stages, the result 
could dramatically reshape the way the Internet is run and put an 
end to some of the informal, collaborative processes that exist today. 
The master "root servers" that serve up addresses for country codes 
and all other top-level domains, for instance, are operated in part 
by volunteers instead of through a U.N.-style apparatus.

(snip / snip)


Cheers, Steve..

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