From:	Mark Imbriaco <perlhacker@*********.NET>
Subject:	Re: Couple of things...
Date:	Wed, 25 Feb 1998 19:17:09 -0500

>Of course the sysops are supposed to be better than the average shadow
decker.
>My original statement was that there are members of the corporate or the
>government that should be considerably higher-powered. Not that a conflict
>between the two camps is imminent, as I said, but...

I suppose this whole conversation is my fault for over-generalizing. I
said that the deckers of Shadowland and the Nexus are among the best in the
world, and I still mean it. That does not preclude as you've said, there
being deckers of the same caliber. I hesitate to say better -- it's a
great deal like two Superpowers colliding -- who would win is a crap shoot,
and is a conflict best avoided.

>>As for governments shutting them down. They have the resources to hamper
>>and cripple them but they would never be able to keep them shut down as
>>another pirate board would just develop from the survivors. In the end it
>>would be a continuous battle in which the resources used could be better
>>spent elsewhere, as well as the fact that these boards do serve a purpose
>>for the very governments themselves in the long run. It's a good source
>>for intelligence after all, though they would still have to take them to
>>research and confirm it.
>
>Certainly cracking down on the electronic underground is tough and in the
main
>a waste of resources. That's not to say that if killing a _particular_
cell of
>that underground was politically or economically advantageous that they
>couldn't do it. All I was complaining about was the stance that Shadowland
>is an unassailable bastion of godlike deckers who can't be foiled by outside
>forces.

The reason that Shadowland and the Nexus survive is not that there are
not the reasources to shut them down, but that the information that is
buried in the Nexus poised for release to the world is too volatile for
any corporation or government to take the risk of trying to take out the
Nexus. I'd even go so far as to say that they'd likely be VERY unhappy
with any who did try and force the issue.

-Mark