X-Message-Index: 163 X-Message-Prev: 408 X-Message-Next: 164 X-Thread-Prev: 160 X-Thread-Next: 221 From: encore!pinocchio!bzs@talcott.harvard.edu (Barry Shein) To: phage X-To: encore!pinocchio!bzs@talcott.harvard.edu, trinkle, spaf, dmr@research.att.com, phage, trinkle Subject: spaf's (and other's) comments Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 12:47:52 est X-Date: Tue 12:47:52 08/11/1988 EST Urgh, I realize that note with the graph was a bit verbose and no one probably read it, here it is in a shorter and more to the point form: Do we need to police ourselves and set up professional accreditation agencies which have clout with granting and other customer organizations? Why? Because if we don't police ourselves you can be sure others will do it for us. We have no way of officially giving folks like DARPA assurance that anything has been done to prevent such break-ins in the future or that a means of dealing with them has been established. -------------------- For example: Level 0 Information Services License: Requirements: Read a document on the meaning and ethical responsibilities of working with shared computer facilities. Answer a short exam to prove you understood it. Without a Level 0 certification you can't touch a shared facility, including university and research facilities, if there's a chance it might disrupt govt or other society member work. Organizations violating this and giving access to people without Level 0 certification may lose their ability to participate in govt and other contract work. A member will lose Level 0 certification when a Review Panel finds him or her guilty of ignoring or violating its requirements. -------------------- I realize the frontier was a lot of fun and everyone feels threatened by actually having to qualify at, say, the level of technical competence of your average auto driver before taking primary responsibility for the design and implementation of software for nuclear weapons launch systems but golly-gee. Besides, if we don't do it someone will do it for us. Guaranteed, and guaranteed you'll *really* hate what they come up with! Wouldn't RTM probably have been at least investigated a couple of times and possibly given some serious warnings before all this happened? -Barry Shein, ||Encore||