Forwarded From: Aleph One <aleph1@dfw.net>
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/11732.html
The Netizen: Order Out of Chaos
by David Hudson
7:25pm 17.Apr.98.PDT
As the spokesperson for Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC), Andy
Müller-Maguhn is changing Deutschlanders' attitudes toward the hacker
community by advising the German government on information policy.
Last year he warned his country's parliament, the Bundestag, about the
dangers of holding ISPs liable for content carried on their networks.
The resulting multimedia law exempted providers from outright
liability, although they must still take steps to block Web sites
known to serve up child pornography or neo-Nazi propaganda.
Since its informal founding in 1981 the CCC has exposed security
holes in systems people count on, such as the German post office
network from which the CCC extracted, and promptly returned, DM135,000
(about US$75,000). More recently, the organization has shown how
easily the PIN code used in Eurocheque ATMs can be obtained, even as
banks have insisted that the cards are secure.
As Deutsche Telekom's monopoly grip on German telephony loosens, and
as European Union telecommunications commissioner Martin Bangemann
forges policies that will shape Europe's role in the information
society, advocates of privacy and free access to information will
continue to turn to the CCC for guidance and technical assistance. "In
America hackers are perceived as a threat," Müller-Maguhn says. "But
here in Germany, we have a more positive view."
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Wired magazine.
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Received on Tue Apr 21 17:17:22 1998