Leftybloggers: "Ethics Are For Peasants!"
There's a famous, possibly apocryphal story in which Winston Churchill, attending a cocktail party in the 1930s, got very drunk. A woman accosted him.
"Sir, you are drunk!"
Churchill, appraising her, responded "“Yes Madame, I am drunk. You, on the other hand, are ugly. Tomorrow I will be sober; but you will still be ugly.”
We'll come back to that in a few minutes here.
===========
Among my many jobs in college, I worked at a Holiday Inn. A really crappy Holiday Inn that eventually had its franchise removed because it was such a lousy excuse for a Holiday Inn - but I digress.
I was a "Bell Hop", which at that particular hotel meant I set up tables, chairs and arrangements for banquets, changed the sign out front, drove the airport van, cleaned up messes, cleaned the pool and jacuzzi, provided after-hours maid and room service, made new keys, hauled beer and ice to the bar, fixed faulty air conditioners, chased bums out of the pool shower, bounced at the bar, and occasionally even hopped bells hauled bags.
And among the things I was taught was, in the event someone checked in with no intent to check out but on a gurney (as happens in hotels sometimes, although it never happened on my watch), how to jimmy the doors and pick the locks.
As a result, while I'm far from a master thief and am very out of practice (like, I haven't had to jimmy a door in about fifteen years), I can get through some doors, and I can often (not always, but often) tell which doors provide better security than others.
So if you, innocent homeowner, happen to leave your new plasma-screen TV in your living room, and your door doesn't provide adequate security, then you really have only yourself to blame if I waltz in and kype your TV. Right?
For that matter, if you or one of your kids screws up and leaves the door unlocked, or leaves a first-floor window open (or even just unlocked), really, it's your problem if someone like me waltzes in off the street and makes off with your stuff.
It's not my fault at all, right?
Well, of course it is. Leaving your doors open is dumb, but theft is a crime - even if you do make it easy for the thieves.
Even, for that matter, if you leave the door on your house wide open?
All by way of saying - if you live near a Twin Cities leftyblogger, you might want to double-deadbolt your doors, buy an attack dog, and booby-trap your valuables. If you don't, well, anything that happens is your fault. At least, according to some of them.
===============
Before I go on, let me make one thing clear: I think the Mark Kennedy campaign will do a lot better by showing the people what an empty skirt Amy Klobuchar is, than by yakking that a dim-bulb local leftyblogger went tapdancing through his consultant's ill-secured website, found confidential information, and passed it directly on to A-Klo's campaign. The average Minnesotan could hardly care less, and the Kennedy campaign has limited time to get its message across against a full-court media press.
But I'm not Mark Kennedy's campaign. I can spend my only resource - time - any way I want.
And the troubling part about this whole moronic flap is that a whole bunch of Twin Cities' leftybloggers seem to have a strange idea of what "ethics" is. They've leapt to the defense of Noah Kunin, the giggly fratboy who started the whole flap by:
- Going to Kennedy's consultant's web site
- Seeing that there was a "password" blank on the page - something that tells most rational people "if you don't have business here, please go away".
- Entering 18 different passwords before getting access to a yet-unreleased Kennedy ad
- Passing the ad promptly (but apparently completely at random, and with no collusion, no sirree bob, from the A-Klo campaign) to an A-Klo staffer (apparently just to show how technologically un-savvy Kennedy's consultant is, rather than to actually steal intellectual property or anything
The response from so many - too many - among the Twin Cities' sinistrosphere?
There are two:
- "It's what all the kids are doing these days!"
- "Conservatives aren't big enough geeks!"
Let's talk about 'em both.
===================
One local leftyblogger - Chuck Olsen, I think, a guy I personally know not to be an idiot - said:
""Kunin's foray into the website reflects an ethic of discovery among the Internet generation. "When you come from a computer or an Internet background, there's this attitude of 'Let's see what we can find,' " Olsen said. "It's not like hacking. It's just the way things work on the Web."...
Put another way, part of the "internet generation" has no respect for other peoples' privacy - which I think is fascinating, coming from a group that has been shrieking like stuck cats at the notion that the NSA might eavesdrop on cell phone calls to the US where there is probable cause to believe there's a terrorist making the call, and think the notion of wanting a teenager's parents to know she's having an abortion is an intolerable assault on privacy. Now, maybe it's true - some kidz today really, really
like the challenge of playing little security games on the internet.
Some people love the "ethic of fisticuffs", picking fights and punching people out. It's called "assault". Other people like "ethic of theft", the mano-a-mano rush of pilfing goodies from stores; some killjoys call it "shoplifting".
Somewhere, there's probably a group of people who enjoy the "ethic of body waste", the challenge of dumping little jars of urine into peoples' drinks. I don't even want to know what the charge would be, but I feel confident that there is one, no matter how much someone might enjoy that "ethic".
Of course, your right to enjoy hitting me, stealing from me, poisoning me and looking at my stuff ends where my nose, store, food and online stuff begin.
==============
The other "justification" seems, to some of the dimmer leftybloggers, to be "because I can!".
Most offices have a refrigerator where brown-baggers keep their lunches and snacks. And most of the offices will have one person who figures if it's in the 'fridge, it's fair game; he or she will help him/herself to anything in the fridge. It's not "illegal", per se, it's just the kind of petty wrong that most people are just plain beyond.
The term for this person is "assh*le".
On Saturday, Swiftee noticed in a comment thread on local leftyblog "New Patriot" that a little fella named Jason Heiser had found the Northern Alliance's "private" show blog. :
This whole Mark Kennedy "website hacking" imbroglio reminds me: progressives really have the edge on these reactionary dimwits when it comes to technology.
This was surely a wake-up.
I mean, it's just that after all these years of figuring that life's greatest joys were things like curing disease, comforting the afflicted, creating deathless art, learning to coax or wrench emotion from a musical instrument, making love, raising children, finding grace, seeking enlightenment, spreading good Karma or feeling the presence of God, I was mistaken; it's really futzing around with security settings on web servers!
But I digress. What was it that got Jason so exercised?
Witness the Northern Alliance Radio Network's super top secret private blog.
Heiser posts a link to the show's internal blog - where the Northern Alliance plans out its weekly broadcasts and special events.
Now, Jason flatters himself; there never was anything "super top secret" about the blog. Frankly, we figured that nobody would ever care to find the internal scheduleblog of a simple little weekend radio show. So in a way I feel a bit jazzed that this simple exercise has brought such fulfillment (misguided and inflated as it is) to the life of Jason Heiser.
You're welcome, Wargames!
OMFG, did I just br8k th3 l@w?!
OMFG?
Br8k th3 l@w? Well, you showed y0uR @ d0rK, anyway. K3wL! A/S/L? But, J@s0n H3]$3R, if you had a policy of leaving the door on your apartment (or mommy's basement, as the case may be) unlocked, it would still be illegal for me to walk in and take a look around.
Nah, you didn't break the law - because, like a dummy, I didn't put any sort of security on the NARN private site, since I never figured anyone outside the show would be pathetic enough to care.
But Noah Kunin didn't plow into an unpublicized but open site. He tried 18 different passwords to get past a "password" page, before finding an ineffective, easily-guessed password.
Like the guy who walks past a house and sees a plasma-screen TV behind a door with a cheap lock and helps himself, like the gal who kypes her co-worker's pizza, Noah Kunin was confronted with an obstacle that wasn't big enough to keep him honest - but was big enough to tell any reasonable, ethical grownup that "This is not your stuff. This is my stuff. Don't go here". Unlike the burglar or office assh*le, we don't have a handy name for what he did.
One of Heiser's beeves seems to be that conservatives, owing to the presumption that they don't live and breathe software security, have it coming.
I guess it's OK. I asked for this document, and the server gave it to me. If my access to the NARN's "private" blog were truly illegal, the server would have given me a response code of "401 Unauthorized" or "403 Forbidden."
[
Yawn]. Sure. Whatever.
Except that when Jason says...
The same is true for Kennedy's website. It's a publicly accessible website; Kennedy staffers tried to hide confidential information behind a bush in plain view of the entire world. Now they're trying to cover their technical incompetence with specious bluster.
Let's assume Jason's right - that Kennedy's staff "tried to hide confidential information...in plain view". Putting a cheap lock on a crappy door doesn't exonerate the burglar. If I leave my plasma-screen TV
on the lawn, it's still mine, not yours. While it may be incumbent on Kennedy's staff to use better security, that failure doesn't take anything away from the ethical depravity of assuming that everything you
can reach is fair game, any more than stuffing your pockets with stuff off the shelves is OK as long as you get away with it.
Well, to most of us, anyway. Apparently, according to Jason Heiser, the ends justify the means. If you get away with it, it's OK.
Which is par for the course from the current American whacko left: Chuck Schumer's staff started it all last year by hoovering up Michael Steele's credit report, believing - as Jason seems to - that as long as you can get away with it (and the target is an apostate!), it's OK.
Most of society, of course, disagrees.
For Jason Heiser's eyes only:
To paraphrase Churchill: I am guilty as charged. When I should have been seeking enlightenment through software security, I was busy comforting the afflicted, creating deathless (to me) art, learning to coax or wrench emotion from a musical instrument, making love, raising children, finding grace, seeking enlightenment, spreading good Karma, rocking the blog world, doing my best to build a better nation, and feeling the presence of God. I gotta admit it; you may be morally bankrupt, but you do know security!
Except that I can pick up security in a couple of days - at which time you'll still be...
...well, you know where this ends.
Maybe. I guess I shouldn't assume.
That's what got me - and Mark Kennedy's consultant - in trouble in the first place.
Posted by Mitch at
September 25, 2006 05:00 AM
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Actually, gol-darn it, I agree with your point regarding Mr. Kunin's actions.
And the side story to the Holiday Inn was interesting. Long. But interesting.
This whole thing has certainly helped me decide how I'm going to vote this fall.
I'm definitely not voting for Mr. Kunin.
Posted by: Rick Mons at September 25, 2006 12:00 AM"Chuck Olsen, I think, a guy I personally know not to be an idiot"
:: Aww shucks, i love you too mitch!
"Kunin's foray into the website reflects an ethic of discovery among the Internet generation."
:: Maybe I should've recorded my side of the interview, but I don't think I spoke those exact words. I stand by it to the extent of his Google search, and trying different URLs to see if anything is there (which I don't know that he did.) These are really the same activities that lead people to discover lonelygirl15 and Plain Layne -- you know that very well, Mitch. And you're much handier with the computers than you insinuate here.
Let's also recognize that the modern day political campaign is a media war and increasingly a technology war. All these fine points about what web pages and vidoes are legitimately available, what is a password screen, etc. are not issues we can really afford to ignore.
Posted by: chuck at September 25, 2006 12:34 AM"And you're much handier with the computers than you insinuate here."
I am just a caveman. Your "computers" and "internets" conFUSE and FRIGHTen me...
"All these fine points about what web pages and vidoes are legitimately available, what is a password screen, etc. are not issues we can really afford to ignore."
True. Conservative bloggers found MoveOn's infamous "Bushitler" TV ads the same way Heiser found the NARN internal blog, and I certainly didn't complain then. Of course, neither had to actually pry anything open to get there.
But I design software (which should not imply that I'm a programmer or netg33k; I'm not); I can't get around one little bit of technical semantics: Putting a password on a file/feature/function implies "Beyond Here Be Draggons". A password screen implies that one needs to take an *explicit* action to authenticate oneself - meaning that people who don't belong there, shouldn't be there.
I'm not seeing any way around the notion that getting past the password implies specific intent to go where a reasonable person would assume they were not wanted.
Posted by: mitch at September 25, 2006 12:50 AMI know there are a few bloggers out there still defending Noah, but I think for the most part people have reached the conclusion that he did something wrong. Whether he did something illegal is another question, but it often is. I will be the first to admit I hesitated t' throw him under the bus when the story was that he went to a website, entered a search term, and voila!--but doing that eighteen times into a field marked "password" is something different.
And then sending that to the Klobuchar campaign was something different again.
That said, the Klobuchar campaign did the right thing by disclosing this and firing the staffer involved, and the Kennedy campaign's overheated attempt t' turn this into a Huge Whomping Scandal by "shutting down" their website (except for the contributions page) and trying t' make Patrick Timmons into some sort of hax3r for using his 1337 skills to call them on the telephone and ask questions--that was beyond the pale.
So yes, as for right now, there's a liberal blogger who tried to hack a website. Bad liberal blogger. And there's a campaign that tried to slime a liberal blogger. Bad campaign.
There's a difference, of course: neither Noah Kunin or Patrick Timmons are on the ballot this fall. Mark Kennedy is.
Posted by: Jeff Fecke at September 25, 2006 06:59 AMRighty Bloggers:Ethics, What are ethics?!?
The breaking an entering analogy is so far off base it is simply humorous. But since the Right side of the blogosphere still believes all they have to do is say it for it to be true, they will pound the dead horse.
What Noah did, as inappropriate as it was, was more akin to looking through a window that the resident forget to draw the blinds. See, the file was viewable by anyone who bothered to look, there was know locked door to break into. But that doesn;t work out so good for you, so you have to manipulate that facts. And you accuse the Left od ethical issues
But that OK, I don't expect you guys to be objective and reasonable, that's why you're Republicans to begin with. You don't have to be.
And while the Left continues to condemn the actions of Mr. Kunin, the Right will believe Kennedy shut down his website, which is the most despicable media manipulation ever. Here is a candidate who blatantly lied and deceived the people for political gain. Mitch, you know exactly what a stunt this was, and you're giving him a pass on it.
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 07:13 AM"See, the file was viewable by anyone who bothered to look, there was know locked door to break into."
Question, Flash: If one of your students tries *18 times* to crack a password, what do you say about it?
" But that doesn;t work out so good for you, so you have to manipulate that facts."
Was there or was there not a password dialog?
If so, what does that imply? What would you tell your kids and/or students that that implies?
Posted by: mitch at September 25, 2006 07:18 AMAlso, Flash, let's accept for a moment that...
"...breaking an entering analogy is so far off base it is simply humorous...What Noah did, as inappropriate as it was, was more akin to looking through a window that the resident forget to draw the blinds. "
OK. So looking in peoples' *windows* is acceptable?
And let's complete the analogy; this wasn't an accidental glance in the front window; this was, at the very least, bringing a garbage can over to stand up to look into the bathroom.
Posted by: mitch at September 25, 2006 07:24 AMYou're onto something, Mitch. It's not a new thing, it's a new manifestion of an old thing, but you're the first to point it out in this context.
The attitude of Flash and Fecke and others seems to be: If I can get figure out the password to get into your computer, then anything I find is mine to take.
That reminds me of the late Napster fiasco in which the argument was: somebody once bought a copy of this music and put it on his computer, to which I have access through a file-sharing program, therefore the music is mine to take.
You're arguing property rights with people who don't believe in it. At least not for you. For them, sure, their property is inviolate. They're Right-Thinkers, the nomenklatura. But you are a Wrong-Thinker, a kulak. Your property is fair game.
In the olden days, we had a name for those people. But it's become unfashionable to say out loud in Minnesota. You haven't said the banned S-word yet, but you're leading up to it. Good for you.
Posted by: nathan bissonette at September 25, 2006 08:58 AM.
Mitch,
Ladies and gentleman, here is why it is better to argue with a brick wall then a blinded conservative apologist.
I said:
""What Noah did, as inappropriate as it was, was more akin to looking through a window""
Mitch said:
"OK. So looking in peoples' *windows* is acceptable?
Is ' inappropriate ' really synonymous with 'acceptable' in the GOP Thesaurus.
AS for Passwords:
I have actual user names and random alpha numeric passwords. I also have a generic login that anyone could figure out so that there is limited access for those who just need to type something quick or hop on the net to do some quick research. Do some sit there and try 18 times, NO, cause after three failed attempts it locks them out. Come on, we're dealing with Middle school kids. Do I have a password login screen that people access without me telling them the password, yeap! And it is set up that way be design, the same design that Scott-Howell may have used. And easy unsecured why for people to access public files.
Now, you skipped my last question, why do you continue to give your candidate a pass on a blatant deception and media manipulation but pretending to bring down his site when in fact, he NEVER DID ! It was nothing more then a redirect script that could be disabled by one click in your own browser setting. THAT is why Mark Kennedy doesn't have the integrity to be a US Senator.
And to be clear, Noah was wrong and their is no justification for his actions, but to sit back and watch you all use analogies that are totally inconsistent with the facts is more evidence of your total lack of objectivity!
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 09:41 AMHmm, sounds like Flash may be a teacher.
It is frightening to think how many flaming left wing ideologues must infest the teachers union with access to our precious children, corrupting their innocent, inquiring minds with Godless, communist propaganda!
Posted by: Robert Brown at September 25, 2006 10:19 AM"What Noah did, as inappropriate as it was, was more akin to looking through a window that the resident forget to draw the blinds. "
Flash, meet Peeping Tom. Tom would like to meet your daughter.
Posted by: kb at September 25, 2006 10:40 AMRobert,
I am not a teacher, I am Computer Lab technician/supervisor. Since I don't actually have a teaching license, Mitch won't let me use the word 'teacher'
kb:
When I saw you and MDE were going to tag team on the NARN show, i thought maybe that would move MDE into reality, what I was shocked to find out is HE was the one that moved you further into the dark side.
Sill waiting to hear any of you justify Kennedy's actions in all this as nothing more then a deceptive media stunt.
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 11:50 AM"Sill waiting to hear any of you justify Kennedy's actions in all this as nothing more then a deceptive media stunt."
Media stunt? Stop the presses - politicians playing politics!
Deceptive? Not at all. His site was being pilfed by unauthorized ne'er-do-wells. Who knows what liability issues awaited had his staff not taken a step back and regrouped? This is not some MySpace page being dinked with.
And don't be yipping about the fundraising page, y'all - its security was handled by a third-party vendor, and was both a black box and a non-worry to the campaign.
Posted by: mitch at September 25, 2006 11:59 AMalthough i have many things to add to (or subtract from) this conversation, i'll throw out a curveball:
i don't by the "18 attempts" meme. let's see the server logs.
what are the IP addresses? over what span of time?
i think it's ridiculous that the Strib took that claim at face value considering it was coming from -- Kennedy's ad man. not exactly a disinterested 3rd party security expert!
Posted by: chuck at September 25, 2006 12:07 PMMitch,
I am not aware of any substantiated claim that Kennedy's Campaign site was vulnerable, it was the site of Scott Howell's that was involved.
KENNEDY'S SITE WAS UP THE WHOLE TIME!! It was never brought down. It was fully functional to anyone who went into their browser and turned off the Meta redirect setting. Again, just because they said what they were doing doesn't mean they were. Kennedy played the media on this one in a very manipulative, deceptive, and dishonest way.
If they had brought the server down, they would have had the DNS set to redirect to a different IP so they could bring down their Web server for 'precautionary methods'. That never happened.
Come on, Mitch. You know exactly what I mean and can't find a single way to justify this stunt.
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 12:36 PMFlash cries: "It was fully functional to anyone who went into their browser and turned off the Meta redirect setting."
Oh yeah, all those people!
You might as well be saying "all you need to do is reverse the torque settings on the Wangenstein mid-collaborator dampers" for all it means to 99% of the visitors to Kennedy's web site.
I guess that's something you learn in computer lab technician/supervisor school.
Posted by: Saint Paul at September 25, 2006 02:16 PMIt was fully functional to anyone who went into their browser and turned off the Meta redirect setting...???
I thought you had to reset the Heisenberg compensators and then re-align the dilithium crystals in the Anti-matter chamber!
Freaking liberals and their science!
Posted by: Tracy at September 25, 2006 04:20 PMAnd you said "Conservatives aren't big enough geeks!" Everyone knows it just takes a little manipulation of specific quarks...
Posted by: Kermit at September 25, 2006 05:03 PMI feel this love! *laughing*
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 07:07 PMPutting listening devices in the campaign headquarters of his political opponents brought down a U.S. President in my lifetime. In this age of cyber space, how is electronic bugging less ethical than computer breaking and entering and the taking of electronic property?
I'm glad to hear that Flash isn't a teacher. Lefties or not, I like to believe that teachers know the difference between "no" and "know".
Posted by: MLP at September 25, 2006 08:18 PMPutting listening devices in the campaign headquarters of his political opponents brought down a U.S. President in my lifetime. In this age of cyber space, how is electronic bugging less ethical than computer breaking and entering and the taking of electronic property?
I'm glad to hear that Flash isn't a teacher. Lefties or not, I like to believe that teachers know the difference between "no" and "know".
Posted by: MLP at September 25, 2006 08:18 PMLet me assure you that E. Howard Hunt, the Cubans and I would not have tried 18 different lock picks to break in to the DNC offices just to find out that John Dean's wife was a call girl. It only took one lock pick, so breaking into their committee headquarters was no big deal because they had such cheap locks. You think Kennedy overreacted by shutting down his website?? Hell, the Democrats launched a senate subcommittee after us and put me in prison.
Posted by: G G Liddy at September 25, 2006 08:37 PMAt the risk of having this comment lost amidst the ad debate (which, I assure everyone, about 17 people care about), I'll submit it anyway.
Mitch said: "I think the Mark Kennedy campaign will do a lot better by showing the people what an empty skirt Amy Klobuchar is..."
My reply: Kennedy's inability to do this is what led to the ad obsession to begin with.
Posted by: minntelect at September 25, 2006 08:54 PM"You think Kennedy overreacted by shutting down his website?? "
Had he actually shut down his website, that would be a different discussion. The point is, he NEVER did, he just lied and said he did.
Flash
Posted by: Flash at September 25, 2006 10:10 PMNo, the point is Ms. County Attorney, champion of the righteous, defender of the weak, slayer of crooked DFL judges, plea barginer extrodinaire and guarator of new mother's rights to unneccesary hospital stays, was playing the same dirty tricks as her opponent.
Posted by: Kermit at September 25, 2006 10:28 PMThe Empress has no clothes (and that's a very disturbing image).
The high priest of internet security, Bruce Schneier, has rendered his judgment on this matter:
It's illegal.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/09/21/bloggerdaytwo/
Bruce Schneier would know, because Bruce Schneier's secure handshake is so strong, you won't be able to exchange cryptographic keys with anyone else for days.
(http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/facts/top)
Pardon the geek humor.
I think Bruce is partially right, but I also think he was tapped for a quick sound bite and didn't dig deeply enough into the interesting technical nuances of this story.
Here's a simple fact:
If you would have clicked on this link (http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/allen.html) seven days ago, you would have seen the ad(s) that Noah Kunin "illegally" accessed. You would not have needed to enter a password to see them.
(It doesn't work now, of course; Scott Howell's webmaster has moved/deleted them.)
But Noah did not know the URL without first probing Scott Howell's site. He started by trying to enter a password on this page, here: http://www.scott-howell.com/netview.html.
This took him to a web page that said:
HTTP ERROR 404 - FILE OR DIRECTORY NOT FOUND
Looking up in the address bar, Noah saw that the password he typed was actually the name of a file located somewhere in http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/.
But the filename he had just requested could not be found.
So he clicked on the address bar and tried typing different filenames. According to Scott Howell's webmaster, Noah Kunin tried 18 different filenames in all.
If you were to click on any one of the following links, you would have emulated Noah's technique exactly 8 times:
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Groucho.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Chico.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Harpo.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Zeppo.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Moe.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Larry.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Curly.html
http://www.scott-howell.com/cybersession/Shemp.html
Careful with your mouse! You don't want to hack into Bruce Howell's webserver!
In the end, Noah successfully guessed the URL of a file that indeed existed on Scott Howell's website. Scott Howell's webserver had no problem with handing this file over to an anonymous user with no credentials whatsoever. If access were truly disallowed, Noah should have been staring at "401 UNAUTHORIZED" or "403 FORBIDDEN," not "200 OK."
This is a crucial technical distinction that matters a great deal to guys like Chuck Olsen and myself, but to few others for a very simple reason: Noah Kunin would not have known this filename without trying to guess it. 18 times.
Whether you call them filenames or passwords, it doesn't matter; the ethics behind Noah's intentions are more than a little shaky.
Whatever legal wranglings will stem from this controversy, it will be very interesting to see how these technical semantics factor into the outcome.
My apologies for lifting the skirt on the private NARN blog. I felt it was necessary to make my point ("security through obscurity doesn't work") but it really wasn't. Nor was it necessary for me to be so rude and insulting about it. I should be disemvoweled for my impertinence.
I'm glad to see Mitch now has the NARN blog locked down at the protocol level with HTTP authentication. It's what Scott Howell should have done a long time ago for his clients. You can't hide something on the internet and hope people won't uncover it and take a look. Google will find it. Archive.org will find it. Your enemies will find it.
Cheers and good luck with the final lap of your WordPress installation. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.
Posted by: Jason Heiser at September 26, 2006 12:34 AMThat's a great, thorough analysis Jason.
I easily found video ads on Howell's web site, for a different client, without ever seeing the redirect page. And indeed, without even guessing any URLs - I just looked up his site in the Internet Archive. This is not a crime. It's called looking at a public web page. I could also easily find the same page Noah found, as could anyone, by guessing the URL. In this case, guessing the URL and guessing what word to type in the redirect page are exactly the same thing.
Obviously you can rightly question the ethics of what Noah did, but everyone needs to *understand what he did* before you can pass judgement on ethics or legality.
Posted by: chuck at September 26, 2006 01:24 AMI echo Chuck echo chuck e c h o c h u c k e c h o c h u c k...
My earlier snarks aside, Jason, that was a useful, clear analysis.
Posted by: mitch at September 26, 2006 05:35 AM"Looking up NARN's skirt" conjures a frightening image...
Posted by: chuck at September 26, 2006 06:48 AM