Fun_People Archive
11 Apr
Dave Barry responds to e-mail hacking charges

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 94 16:31:47 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Dave Barry responds to e-mail hacking charges

Forwarded-by: dante@microsoft.com
From: Erik Nilsson  <netmail!erikn@goldfish.mitron.tek.com>

CPSR/PDX received the following letter from syndicated columnist Dave
Barry's office:

> Let me tell you what happened, and you can decide how immoral it was.
> During the Olympics, a lot of rumors about Tonya Harding were floating
> around the press center.  One of these was that some numbers were
> Tonya Harding's e-mail code.  A lot of people punched these into the
> computer to see if they were.  I was one of those.  As soon as I saw
> the numbers worked, I signed off, _without_ reading any e-mail.
>
> Perhaps you wouldn't have done what I did.  I respect that.  But I
> view what I did as checking out a rumor, and no more.  I never saw any
> private correspondence, nor, as far as I know, did other reporters.
> When some reporters' names surfaced in connection with this, I
> volunteered the information that a lot of people, including me, had
> tried those numbers.  I was trying to put what happened into
> perspective; Unfortunately, the quotes that were printed made it sound
> as though I was defending the practice of reading other people's mail.
> I wasn't.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dave Barry
>
> DB/js

© 1994 Peter Langston