The User's Committee recently discussed the possibility of making the restricted WWW servers/pages at APO and/or those that archive these email lists at Princeton open to unrestricted access over the net. The pros and cons of such an action are summarized briefly in the minutes of the recent User's Committee meeting. If you have views on this idea, please read those minnutes and convey your opinion to your institutional UC rep. In addition, if you have posted anything yourself to one of the email lists which you would not want to see openly available on the net, please identify the specific material to Michael Strauss (strauss@astro.princeton.edu) in some brief way (no need to explain why, etc.). I append below an excerpt from an email message in which I summarize my reasons for considering such an open access policy. Thanks, Ed Turner ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Somewhat paradoxically, I think security would actually be improved by declaring our web sites public. As it stands, they are nominally restricted which encourages people to feel that they can post sensitive material without consequence. However, in fact (as illustrated by your experience with the UC student), they are not very secure at all. Many machines at several institutions give a very large group of people, at many levels of seniority down to undergrads at least, complete access. Anyone who can cut and paste has the ability to pass this info on to anyone else on the net. Also, only a very low level of hacking ability (I think I could do it!) is required to penetrate the restricted access we impose. In other words, I think that it generates a false sense of security (or more accurately, privacy) and may even attract the attention of snoops or hackers. More generally and philosophically, I think we should operate as openly as possible and feel that the burden of proof should be the other way. In other words, I would prefer no more restrictions on information than are demonstrably needed to a policy of no more access than is actually required. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 42 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://astro.princeton.edu:82/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO