[sf-lug] Black hats declare war on Scientology

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Kristian Erik Hermansen (kristian.hermansen at gmail.com):

> Didn't that argument work in court?  And additionally, I bet you have
> been following the new German and UK legislation banning hacker tools.
>  You see?  It proves misunderstanding...

There's indeed a reason why, e.g., the author of nmap uses a (good,
respected) pseudonym for his publishing of that tool:  There are two
many idiots in legislatures who fail to realise that, as Asimov wrote, a
good blaster fires both ways.

However, the fact that morons in legislatures sometimes take misbegotten
measures (usually later quietly repealed) against security software
(_both_ proprietary and open source) that can be used to equal effect by
either bad guys attempting to do harm or by sysadmins shoring up and
testing their own security, does _not_ equate to a potential public
bigotry against open source generally.