Hi All,

I live Portland OR and the news just announced that FBI will ramp up staffing of its Portland Office bringing in 20 New Agents to work as cyber security specialist. They will tracking hacking/cracking, internet fraud, child porn and other computer related crimes. I think this is both good and bad. I think Internet fraud and child pornorgraphy are wrong and must be stopped. I think that cracking is bad when it does damage. However, I think if I find a security hole on a OS/app that I use I should be allowed to tell the vender and also posts warnings to others -note I do not condone using the holes to cause my competitors or suffering or to gain finiancial benenfit. I also wonder how the cyber security department ties in with the comments made by the White House security advisor who told attendees of Black Hat 2002 that finding holes is good as long as they do not exploit them. I am quoting 2 separate sources in this commentary. The first is K2 news in Portland the second is InformationWeekly (Aug 5th 2002 http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020802S0022). It seems the 2 departments might step on each others toes. Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Cheers,
-D