Great, so you're suggesting punishing good locksmiths or windowmen. -Mat Butler -----Original Message----- From: Christian Kuhtz [mailto:ck@arch.bellsouth.net] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 4:35 PM To: mdevney@teamsphere.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Port scanning legal On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 04:26:33PM -0800, mdevney@teamsphere.com wrote:

I do not understand why people get so uppity about a scan. Let's be real here, a simple portscan is about equivalent to walking along a sidewalk and checking out the houses for open windows and doors. And about as harmful.

What is harmful is what sometimes comes after that. (Not always; not usually; not even half the time I'd bet.) But the only damage a portscan does is a few packets over your network and maybe 4M of logs (depending on how you're logging). When writing and enforcing laws, it's important to punish what's harmful, not what may be harmful. Or else looking at houses as you walk down the street may be illegal.

I do think there is a difference between looking at houses and windows from the street and walking up to them and rattling the door and windows to see if it they are locked or determining what model lock, door or window is used etc.