kerry miller astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu
-----
Note from NativeNet facilitator:
Hi. I'm still here, but thankful for the lull in postings that I
invoked with my recent request of a respite. I'm using the time to
good advantage, though, setting up some of the special-purpose lists
I've long wanted to bring into being, including the one to plan for
the survey and another to talk about the NativeNet brochure project.
I'm also preparing to move the native education mailing list to a
listserv in Indiana, and just generally reorganizing. Perhaps I'll
extend the moratorium a few days to give myself the time to relax
that some folks have been urging on me. Thanks for all the kind words!
Kerry is right. There is no easy way to protect against someone reading
any mail message you send by means of electronic mail, even when it is
sent to a private mailbox. The points of greatest vulnerability are at
the machine from where it is being sent (your own) and the machine which
receives it. However, unless a systems programmer were to have written
special software to record copies of outgoing mail, it would be difficult
to intercept outbound mail on systems connected directly to Internet or
Bitnet, since messages spend only a very short time in the outgoing queues.
It is much easier for a system administrator to read a message from your
mailbox, which is usually just a text file, on your own machine. It is
possible to use encryption software, which is readily and cheaply avail-
able to protect mail messages. I have had good results with one package
called "PGP" (Pretty Good Privacy) that runs on the IBM-PeeCee and its
clones. I also know of UNIX encryption packages that work similarly.
I would not worry too much about the danger of someone reading a mail
message in transit, since it requires special equipment to tap a phone
line and decipher a character stream being exchanged by modems. It is
well-nigh impossible (unless you're the CIA, and even they would have
a hard time of it, I think) to intercept traffic routed across Internet,
since it is a packet-switched network, which means that each transmission
of a message file (or any other file) is done by means of breaking it up
into packets which are transmitted as independent units. Each packet
may travel via a different route through the network, and they will be
interspersed with lots of other packets. It would take a very thorough
knowledge of the network and special equipment and software to even make
an attempt.
In any event, our survey planning group has been leaning toward doing a
paper-based survey, though I think we should permit responses to be sent
electronically for those who want to and who don't mind taking the (small)
risks outlined above.
I am still hoping that our survey planning group will get some suggestions
for questions to be asked on the survey from our membership at large. If
you can think of any questions you would like to have asked, please send
them to our planning group at "nn.survey@gnosys.svle.ma.us" Thanks much!
--Gary