East meets West part II
Response to Igor Drokov
July 21, 2001
Planet eBook received the following letter from Peter Zelchenko in response to a letter from Igor Drokov who was responding to Peter's article, 'Sklyarov meets Copyright, East meets West'.
Following is a letter from Peter Zelchenko, reproduced verbatim:
Igor, thank you for your thoughtful reply. Please re-read certain critical parts of my essay. What I wrote was this: "Over and above the rudimentary and relatively low-key 'Here's a neat little cracking program I've posted,' [Sklyarov] has gone to Def Con in Las Vegas, a sort of Revolutionary Paris for the EFF/WIRED crowd." By that I meant that he had a choice: He could quietly have posted his program (and he did), though I disagree with the assertion that it is a mere enhancement tool. Instead of stopping there, he boldly came to Las Vegas and announced his findings.
You say that he came to Def Con from a "natural [researcher's] desire to share his discoveries with the world."
Def Con is not an academic environment, but a West Coast techno-geek hacker "bacchanalia," by its own admission. Why did Dmitry go there to share his research, and not to a legitimate cryptographic forum? It was, I think, a reckless decision. I have been to a number of these things, and they are populated by a few intelligent people, but most of them are rich kids who are looking for ways to circumvent security for fun and fame.
Of course I agree with you that Dmitry's actions are not "sufficient ground for a criminal prosecution of an individual." I believe it was also a reckless decision for Adobe to do what it did, and even more reckless for the State Department to do what it did. I agree that this was one huge fiasco, but it began with a controversial program. In effect, ElcomSoft dealt the first impulsive blow, and all of the rest is history.
I fully understand that Dmitry is not a mere hacker. This is one reason I wrote that "Dmitry is quite a bit more than [a Hollywood Hacker], but he is also this." What I know about him is that he is a true cryptographer and a scientist. But his action suggests that he was lured to the cracker idea of popularity for a product which can be used for ulterior motives.
I have read about his background, and I see him as a family man, and very upright. I've seen his work, and I suspect him to be a genius at cryptography. None of this necessarily contradicts the notion that he is a fool for the EFF mentality.
My truck is not with Dmitry, who I believe is among the best of people. It is more with the West Coast wired intelligentsia, who are to the Internet what Trotsky and Lenin were to Russia. They have strong libertarian ideologies, but they do not have the wisdom to temper them with truth. This would not be bad if innocent people were not involved.
If Dmitry was encouraged by others to publicize his findings in this way, then that is the story I would wish to write about. If you know Dmitry was encouraged by someone in the U.S. to come to Def Con, please find out who it is and I will be very glad to fight for Dmitry in the press.
Chicago, Illinois
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