[techtalk] Sick of surf and porn addicts

[James Sutherland]

On Mon, 28 May 2001, Penguina wrote:

> (I'm taking out the attribution here, because the debate is about the
> ideas, not who said them)

Attribution is still relevant, and it's rather rude to anonymise others...

> > > Or if I'm working in the same office and offensive material is on display
> > > on someone else's PC, I'm not involved in any "unauthorised access" but I
> > > could be the object of harassment dur to the display of such material.
> >
> > If it's on display (i.e. visible to others), that's another matter; I was
> > meaning the contents of the user's home directory or whatever, which is
> > private to that individual. Obviously, the level of privacy of each user's
> > PC will vary from place to place: I tend to think in terms of individual
> > offices/cubicles, where what the user does on the PC is private unless
> > they have a visitor.
>
> I don't think that the person who pays the rent on the office space,
> financed the PCs and pays for the bandwidth every month would feel
> the same way.

We aren't talking about the EMPLOYER here, but about other people. Of
course the employer can set certain limits on usage, subject to respecting
those users' privacy - the point is that others who happen to be in the
area do NOT have any control over each other. Just as a company is free to
ban personal 'phone calls, or charge for them, but not to record them, the
company can prohibit WWW surfing, or charge users for the bandwidth they
use - but logging what users do is a violation of their privacy. Usage
logs must not be made available to ANYONE without a court order (that
bit's a legal requirement, BTW).


James.