From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2003 - 11:38:38 MDT
I wonder what this means? Frazier was arrested in October 2002, when Customs agents tracking his operations found computer chips and hacking gear in his luggage on a flight from Canada.[Hermit: Quotation from the originally cited article.]
"Hacking gear"? I wish I knew what this comprises. I wonder if such equipment is sold, or whether it is merely conventional equipment such as logic analyzers, oscilloscopes etc. In which case, did Frazier's equipment bears a special label ("This are hacking equipments"? [Hermit: 'fawlty' grammar entirely intentional]) for the benefit of the usually not terribly bright customs inspectors? If not, do they now have special powers of discernment unknown to normal people? In which case, how do I know whether or not possessing an oscilloscope will land me in jail or not? Of course, a further important question is whether "computer chips" now contraband, after all, millions of people have access to them, and so far as I am aware, and in spite of the media mogul's best efforts (and apparently M$'s enthusiastic cooperation), possession of "computer chips" is not yet totally outlawed. Finally, I hadn't realised that "hacking" was an illegal activity - despite some confusion over what it means...
So if this article was not merely the completely erroneous product of confusion on the part of a reporter (not terribly unusual), this sounds like yet another wonderful "rail job" designed to establish a "squawking crow*" type precedent while disregarding once valued civil rights.
Hermit
*A squawking crow is an historic technique deployed by game rangers to prevent crows from becoming pests. When the crow population became too dense, the gamekeepers of yore would capture crows, tie them to a fence and torture them. The other crows would hear their cries of distress and evacuate the neighbourhood. Similar techniques have worked (using recordings of distress calls) to keep birds away from airfields and indeed, the strategy is often used in the business world, where a small competitor to a large company (or a loose conglomerate of large players, e.g. credit card suppliers) is permitted to survive, but kept hurting, so that when potential competitors evaluate the field, they are warned off. It appears to me that this technique is being adopted not only by the US government, but also by the media companies.
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