From healthmaps@home.com Mon Jul 30 14:22:29 2001 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f6ULMS0126128 for ; Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:22:28 -0700 Received: from femail40.sdc1.sfba.home.com (femail40.sdc1.sfba.home.com [24.254.60.34]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f6ULMRX21200 for ; Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:22:27 -0700 Received: from c501552d ([24.19.225.248]) by femail40.sdc1.sfba.home.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.20 201-229-121-120-20010223) with SMTP id <20010730212224.BGVE13445.femail40.sdc1.sfba.home.com@c501552d> for ; Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:22:24 -0700 From: "Richard Hoskins" To: Subject: WAPHGIS: Can Internet backlash can harm public health? Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:22:26 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 In-Reply-To: Fair enough, but at least from an oblique angle, this topic is at least a little relevant. It seems that Internet abuse fostered by unscrupulous businesses, virus authors, and pornography vendors is impacting those of us who have responsible work to do - public health surveillance, assessment, and meeting the responsibility of government to inform the public, and the medical practice community of the state of our community's health. People are getting angry and frightened by Internet abusers. Sometimes they think government is just one on the list of the same. I for one have learned a whole lot about a world of people who want access to my humble machine by installing a firewall, cookie crushers, and software to protect children from Internet abusers. Why does some company in Hong Kong keep trying to write files on my disk every night at 11pm? GISers are members of a larger community, so perhaps this is what this discussion is all about. Just how are GIS & public health people particularly vulnerable to Internet abuse? Dick Hoskins Spatial Epidemiology Office of the Assistant Secretary Epidemiology, Health Statistics and Public Health Laboratories WA State Dept of Health Olympia, WA (360) 236-4270 richard.hoskins@doh.wa.gov GMT -7 If you would like to subscribe please send email to listproc@u.washington.edu with one line in the message: subscribe WAPHGIS Your Name .