We have just been witnesses to Joe Baptista masquerading as Elisabeth
Porteneuve and writting things that, were I Elisabeth, would be personally
embarrasing. Regardless about how I personally view Elisabeth (neutral) or
my disagreement with her ideas, this behaviour is patently ungentelmanly, in
the "old country" sense of the phrase.
Last year, when we found out about the huge hole in the security of IFWP
list, I tried to convince folks that we needed tighter authentication
mechanisms. This was not only ignored, but ridiculed by some, in private
e-mail to me. Notably, William Walsh was most aggressively vocal in his
objections.
These authentication mechanisms take a bit more work to setup, but are
largely automated in operation. Using Public-Key cryptography tools, such as
OpenSSL and PGP, one can even have strict authentication between the list
user and the list hub. With the proper signing procedure, one can even have
absolute knowledge that the message sender is truely the message author.
If we can't acertain the message's source then we can't trust the message
itself. I always was of the opinion that this sort of forum has no place for
anonymous presences. Especially, since this list is the OFFICIAL meeting
place of the DNSO General Assembly, this imperative should be even more
strongly felt. That it is not, says a lot. How can we conduct the business
of the GA when we don't even know how many of us are here, in how many
changes of clothing? Alternatively, how can we reach any sort of consensus
when we could have the same individual arguing both sides of a debate, under
different guises, just to keep the argument going?
I think that my point has been proved.
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R O E L A N D M. J. M E Y E R
