phone lookups

[Julian T J Midgley]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Tom Thomson wrote:

> > > Personally, I don't think it wise to send random individuals' names
> > > and
> > > addresses to a public mailing list, even if you aren't actually making
> > > available otherwise hidden information; however, the argument you pose
> > > above is flawed, and the degree of damage done is much greater in the
> > > case
> > > that you release information to those not authorised to have it.
                                                ^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > Mmmm... the logic of that is suspect, methinks. How does the fact that
> > one
> > is 'authorised' (by whom and for what purposes?) make one necessarily a
> > 'white hat' whilst being 'unauthorised' makes one, of necessity, a black
> > hat?
> >
>
> Well, that question may have some relevance to something.  However, I
> can't find any occurrence of the word "authorised" or of any related word
> in the quoted material to which the remark above purports to be a reply.
> Just what is the relevance of your comment?

Word 'authorised' highlighted with caret's above '^' ;-)

And to answer the original question, being authorised or not doesn't
necessarily make you a white or black hat.  However, surely you agree that
if a law says "information X may only be released to persons belonging to
departments A, B, and C", then giving X to a person belonging to
department D is a more serious problem than releasing information Y to the
general public when the general public are already able to obtain
information Y in any number of ways (one of which is purchasing a
particular CD)?

Anyway, we've probably been round the houses enough on this one.

Julian


-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                      http://www.xenoclast.org/
Cambridge, England.                          PGP Key ID: 0xBCC7863F