Date: Sat, 07 Aug 93 16:43:35 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V3#011 Computer Privacy Digest Sat, 07 Aug 93 Volume 3 : Issue: 011 Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears Email Policy Limits on advocation (Was: America Online censor) Re: First Person broadcast on privacy First Person broadcast on privacy Re: Beepers restrict or give freedom The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@pica.army.mil and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil. Back issues are available via anonymous ftp on ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 15:00:04 -0800 From: "Glenn S. Tenney" Subject: Email Policy On 03 Aug 93 17:57:14 EDT William Hugh Murray <75126.1722@compuserve.com> said: > 7. Policy should always reserve some right for management to > look at the contents of the communications in order to > preserve necessary options and to protect management when > some manager or management surrogate acts at or beyond the > limits of his authority. and many other things relating to consistent rules for all forms of communications... The last time I spoke with the USPS about mail addressed to people at a business address I was told that the rules were very clear: If a letter is addressed to someone at a company, it belongs to the receiving company. However, if a letter indicates that it is 'personal', then it belongs to the person to whom it is addressed rather than to to the company. In other words, if I send you a letter (via the US Post Office) addressed to you at work and indicate that it is 'personal', your employer would be violating Federal law to "look at the contents of the communications" regardless of your suggestion above. I should think that a similar exception must apply for other forms of communications. If the subject line of an email message says 'personal', then the company is on notice that it is NOT work related and they should not be looking at it. The company might wish to have a policy against non-business communications, but that is impossible to enforce for the receipt of unsolicited communications. --- Glenn Tenney tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER Voice: (415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 93 23:07:05 GMT From: Bear Giles Subject: Limits on advocation (Was: America Online censor) Organization: Forecast Systems Labs, NOAA, Boulder, CO USA In article you write: > >Here are a couple of excerpts, cut and pasted, from AOL's Terms of Service. > >Member specifically agrees not to ... >submit, publish, or display on America Online any ... >illegal material; nor shall Member encourage the use of >controlled substances. Is it just me, or are people rolling over and playing dead simply because someone says Drugs Are Bad? First, what do they mean by "illegal material"? If they wish to prohibit posting obscene material, they should say so directly. I can't think of anything else that is itself considered illegal, although there are certain things which the _act_ of printing/disclosing is illegal. (e.g., disclosing classified material is illegal). However, if Congress passed a law making it unlawful to criticize any member of Congress I would certainly have no qualms about breaking that law. In fact, I would consider it a badge of honor. :-) It seems that AOL is confusing "legal" (actually "lawful") with "just". Printing the "Pentagon Papers" may have been unlawful, but it was probably just and arguably legal. [BTW, "lawful" refers to the actual laws, "legal" refers to the overall legal gestalt, for lack of a better term. For instance, it is _unlawful_ to travel 80 mph on a road with a 55 mph speed limit, but not _illegal_ if you are transporting a critically injured person to a hospital and not endangering other people (e.g., you're driving down an empty rural road). Saving a life is considered more important than simply obeying the speed limit]. Secondly, that second statement is absurd. "[No] Member [shall] encourage the use of controlled substances"... Literally read, that means that you can't encourage someone to take prescribed medicines! Having participated in support groups, this isn't as bizarre as it seems -- many medicines have gruesome side effects and some people may consider the cure worse than the disease. Regarding only illegal drugs, this seems a pretty serious abridgement of constitutional rights (which, of course, AOL can try since it is not a governmental body). Consider an analogous situation from 100-odd years ago: how would you feel if the AOL regulations required that no member encourage the transportation or support of runaway slaves? While such actions might have been _unlawful_, would any of us consider them _illegal_? Today, it's hard to argue for the right to get stoned, but at the same time it seems some parts of the government are far too concerned with what citizens ingest (e.g., the suggestion to regulate (i.e, require a doctor's prescription) OTC vitamins and nutritional supplements). This would seem a reach, if TCI in Indiana had not refused to air _political_ ads for a pro-hemp organization, citing their corporate support for a "drug-free company". Imagine a TV/cable company refusing to run ads for a candidate since he was an atheist and therefore did not meet the standards of the Church-attending General Manager?! BTW, the ads simply questioned the studies the government quoted to "prove" the hazards of marijuana. Anyone who has seen the spokesman for the Tobacco Institute claim there is no "clear evidence that tobacco is harmful" while citing TI-funded studies would have to be at least a bit concerned. In summary, AOL certainly has the right to insist that subscribers not conduct actual illegal activities via AOL (e.g., conspiracy or wire fraud). However, insisting that subscribers not discuss _unlawful_ activities except to condemn them seems excessive. -- Bear Giles bear@fsl.noaa.gov -- ------------------------------ From: "Wm. L. Ranck" Subject: Re: First Person broadcast on privacy Date: 6 Aug 1993 03:23:48 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia John Higdon (john@zygot.ati.com) wrote: : "Wm. L. Ranck" writes: : > Anybody who feels seriously cut off because they don't have e-mail and : > a pager is way too hooked on tech gadgets. I'll admit, I like having <<>> : > need for a pager. I can understand the need for those things in business, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ : For me, a pager is freedom. The alternative would be to be constantly : forwarding my phone to locations all over town or to my cellular phone. : I could forget social activities that would take me out of the reach of : telephones such as concerts and picnics. You see, I am on twenty-four : hour call. If any one of number of radio stations were to go off the Like I said, some people have a business use for pagers and faxes. But, the original post was about someone who had been laid off from his job and "had to scramble" to keep access to pager, fax, and e-mail. He didn't need them for his job anymore he just thought he needed them for his personal communications. And, I think that's absurd. : waste of money. Your comment, "and I have *never* seen a need for a : pager", speaks more about the nature of your responsibilities than it : does about the necessity of pagers. I am curious: if you were on : twenty-four hour call, how would you handle it without a pager? I would probably have a pager. For my job I don't need it, but remember the post I was responding to was talking about a person who had lost his job. He wasn't on call, he just wanted to keep the pager for personal use. That's fine, but he felt "cut off from communication" because he didn't have a pager. If you didn't need your pager for your on call status would you still feel a need to carry it around? I have seen some folks who had a pager for personal use. A friend of mine carried one for the last couple of months of his wife's pregnancy because he wasn't always near his office phone. So, yes, I understand there are some reasons for wanting to keep a pager for personal communication. : That having been said, some people (myself included) tend to utilize : in-place facilities. Ease of communications can facilitate social : activities as well as business matters. If you have to wear the pager : twenty-four hours a day anyway... True, but that presumes you've already got the gadget. : Again, this is a personal preference. Do people use the telephone to : contact you for personal reasons? Where in stone is it written that : pagers and faxes are for business purposes only? I have no problem with : your personal preferences, but the fact that you post about it : indicates that you attach some universal significance to it. : MY point in all of this is that is it perfectly understandable that : employees of a firm might tend to use the company's facilities for : private use. To expect otherwise is unrealistic. But it is also I don't disagree with this. My wife and kids call me at work sometimes. If I'm not at my desk they leave phonemail. Somebody might send me a personal fax someday. No big deal. But I certainly wouldn't feel I had to go out a replace those things if I left my job or got laid off and lost access to them. -- * Bill Ranck (703) 231-9503 Bill.Ranck@vt.edu * * Computing Center, Virginia Polytchnic Inst. & State Univ., Blacksburg, Va. * ------------------------------ From: Bruce.Baugh@f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Bruce Baugh) Subject: First Person broadcast on privacy Organization: /etc/organization Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1993 02:06:50 GMT MSGID: 1:105/40.23 2c62e4bd REPLY: jac> From: John Higdon jac> "Wm. L. Ranck" writes: >> Anybody who feels seriously cut off because they don't have >> e-mail and a pager is way too hooked on tech gadgets. I'll admit, jac> Try not to be too provincial in your attitude concerning jac> communications. I do not criticize people for not indulging in jac> answering machines, pagers and the like. By the same token, I do not jac> expect to receive flak maximizing their use. Just because you see no jac> need for a pager does not invalidate its need for existence. Just so. In the case of e-mail, there are lots of people out there who are partially or completely confined to home. I'm one of them; when my immune system craps out on me, as it does from time to time, I may not be able to set foot out the door for days or weeks. Lots of people have those limitations permanently. E-mail is faster and cheaper than any other way I know to keep in touch with many kinds of folks. As for pagers, I've felt charitably toward them ever since hearing from a friend about the months she spent with one while her husband was in the final stages of dying from muscular dystrophy. Thanks to the pager, she could be available to help at critical points. jac> MY point in all of this is that is it perfectly understandable that jac> employees of a firm might tend to use the company's facilities for jac> private use. To expect otherwise is unrealistic. But it is also jac> reasonable to expect that if a person finds these alternate forms of jac> communication useful, he ought to look into establishing his own jac> implementation of these tools--independently of those of his jac> employer. Then he is free to use them at will--for business or jac> pleasure--and expect to be free from casual snooping at the same jac> time. Exactly! Bruce * Origin: Kiksht Cyberspace (1:105/40.23) ------------------------------ From: dk010b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu Subject: Re: Beepers restrict or give freedom Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York Date: Fri, 6 Aug 93 18:32:41 GMT Apparently-To: comp-society-privacy@uunet.uu.net As a student who also works several jobs I don't think I could live without my pager. From 7AM to 7PM there is no way to get in touch with me other then through my pager as there is no way that I could realistically predict where I am going to be when as my schedule changes every day. This way people can get in touch with me when they need to, but I have control over it as I can control who I give my pager number to. Dan ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V3 #011 ******************************