The Demise of Damocles

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Greetings Folks,

Last year I was frustrated by the too-slow disclosure of issues relating to embedded systems. Out of that frustration and a desire to do something about the situation, I came up with the idea of 'Project Damocles.'

The concept was simple enough:

Collect data relating to embedded systems from people around the world and erase from these communications, all record of the sender;

Make the remaining problem report freely available to the manufacturers of the devices in question and keep a record of that correspondence, hoping that they would do the right thing, even if for the wrong reason (i.e., the threat of recorded evidence prior to an actual incident).

The purpose of the Damocles Project? To speed up the transmission of error reports to the marketplace.

Summary of response? Enough activity to make the time I spent on the project worthwhile. But... (there's always a 'but' isn't there?)

Project Damocles, as of the moment this is posted on the webpage, is shut down - canceled, terminated.

Why?

Not because Damocles was not beneficial, but because of the threat to myself.

Strange things happened after Damocles started. I got lots of free advice from lawyers (unheard of, I know). This advice fell in two categories:

"Peter... you could be in violation of various 'trade secrets' acts. As a recipient of information a company might deem 'confidential' they might sue you, etc., etc., etc."

Folks, the reality is that any day you conduct business or draw a breath, you are potentially going to be sued - especially if you conduct any business with the USA. I make no attempt to hide my disdain for legal systems which allow, or even encourage, frivolous lawsuits. I don't believe it's necessary to cite any examples of the insanity which has corrupted the concept of 'justice' into that of a state-sanctioned lottery system.

This by itself did not deter me from continuing Project Damocles. I had faith, no matter how naive, that good intentions and diligent, prudent behavior, would 'protect' me. (See just how stupid I really am?)

However, the thing which has finally forced me to sheathe the sword of Damocles was the advice I received in the second category: lawyer after lawyer has suggested that since I have already made it clear that I will not accept any 'Y2K Expert Witness' work, and since I will have information in my possession relating to specific court actions, I will most likely be subpoenaed, as this is the only alternative they would have to placing me in the witness stand.

Why no expert witness work? Simply because my goal has always been to get people to wake up to a glaring problem. Once that's done (if ever), then I'm done with Y2K as a specific, tightly-focused topic. Court cases arise when people fail to fix a problem. I'm not interested in this; my goal was to avoid the problem. So I'll leave all that work, and the associated income, for others. (So much for the claim I was in this for the cash.)

The threat of perpetual subpoena is what did it for me. I have no desire to be subpoenaed for the rest of my life. The airline seats over the past 3 years have been bad enough, and I have no intention of subjecting my weary bones to uncomfortable wooden benches for the duration of the ensuing lawsuits.

So, there you have it. Project Damocles is no more.

I still believe that manufacturers should disclose what they know about their systems. I know devices which will fail, but cannot speak about them because I don't have the necessary proof.

Project Damocles should be a government-managed endeavor. It would protect us from the embedded systems which are broken but which we can't fix because the information is not freely available.

Yours truly,

Peter de Jager

pdejager@year2000.com

For the record, all records relating to Damocles have been erased from my computer, and all files placed with the lawyer have been retrieved and destroyed. There are no records pertaining to Damocles in existence. I know enough about computers to erase data completely from my hard disk, and I know enough about the buffers and caches of the various products I use to make sure that these have been cleansed as well. The data is gone, and Damocles is no more.