[Vision2020] Not On The Palouse, Not Ever (Update #66)

[heirdoug at netscape.net]

Greetings Visionaires -

Not On The Palouse, Not Ever (Update #66) consists of:

How other memebers of the community have a sense of humor 
and they are not all NSA/Christ Church students.

http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse

Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Not On The Palouse, Not Ever

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of
others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of
hope."

Robert F. Kennedy
(1925-1968, American Attorney General, Senator)

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Moscow police: Spoof e-mail broke no laws
Written by By Brian Rich -Argonaut
Friday, 28 October 2005
 
No law was broken in the sending of a fake e-mail to 28,000 University of Idaho accounts, officials from the 
Moscow Police Department said. No law was broken in the sending of a fake e-mail to 28,000 University of Idaho 
accounts, officials from the Moscow Police Department said. The e-mail, purporting to be from UI President Tim 
White, was a tongue-in-cheek response to White's Oct. 4 letter stating Intelligent Design will not be taught as science 
at UI.
 
While no crime has been committed, UI Information Technology Services officials said university policy was broken. 
"Certainly university policy has been broken, and we've talked to two people of interest," said Chuck Lanham, 
associate director of ITS. UI technicians concluded the e-mail was sent by an Adelphia IP address, and two students 
thought responsible were questioned by ITS and members of administration.
 
The university determined the two students weren't involved, but their Internet connection, which broadcast an 
unsecured wireless signal, had been used by another unknown person to send the e-mail.
 
UI Dean of Students Bruce Pitman said it is unfortunate the sender of the e-mail cannot be found and punished.
 
"I think that if we were able to discover who did it, and if we were able to determine that it had occurred on campus, 
then the punishment would have been quite severe," he said.
 
Lanham said the problem of unsecured signals can be common in populated areas. "Anybody off the street can go sit 
in the parking lot, log in to your network and send an e-mail from your connection," he said.
 
Because of the way the e-mail was sent, the university has given up on finding the individual. Lanham said new 
policies are being written to prevent future violations on campus, but off-campus connections are impossible to 
monitor.
 
"We're working on policy to prohibit something like this from happening on campus," Lanham said. "How people 
have their off-campus Internet connection set up is not under the jurisdiction of the university."
 
Pitman said the policy would guarantee harsh penalties for anyone sending fake correspondence from campus 
connections. "The university judicial system has sanctioned that it could include suspension and expulsion," he said. "I 
can't say with certainty that . would have been the outcome, but certainly we would have been pursuing this with 
that outcome." Moscow police said technicians concluded there was no evidence any UI computer system was 
compromised or illegally used to send the e-mail, though how the individual got the 28,000 e-mail addresses is still 
uncertain. Lanham said the university cannot track off-campus Internet activity, which leaves many questions 
unanswered. "We can't dictate what people do or don't do in their residencies around Moscow," Lanham said.
 
The only thing off-campus students can do to help, he said, is use an encryption for wireless signals so random people 
can't use them to access the Internet. "If you have a wireless access point in your apartment or house, take 
appropriate measures to make sure someone can't unknowingly use your bandwidth," he said. Pitman said he is 
disappointed Idaho laws aren't keeping up with technology. "It was a serious act that could have had even greater 
negative consequences than it did, and it probably is an illustration of how changes in technology have perhaps 
changed more quickly than Idaho law."
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