Computers and Academic Freedom News
Re: Ethics of complaining to site (was Re:
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Ethics of complaining to site (was Re:
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 12:33:54 GMT
spraggej@Jeff-Lab.QueensU.CA wrote:
>swaim@owlnet.rice.edu (Michael Parks Swaim) writes:
>>Apparantly this behavior had occurred enough at the site for them
>>to consider it suspicious activity.
>
>If someone sets up an anonymous FTP site, that strikes me as the equivalent
>of hanging out a shingle that says "public office". It doesn't matter whether
>or not they intended to have it used that way; if you put that type of system
>out on the net, you invite people in. In my opinion, you have no business
>complaining unless and until someone actively attempts to subvert a restric-
>tion.
Ah, but don't we (as system administrators) *also* have an obligation to
attempt to minimize such subversion *before* it happens? If I see "sus-
picious" activity and do nothing, I'll hear my users exploding in anger
when something does happen. Someone in this discussion said that sysadmins
are, by and large, hypervigilant; while that person may have intended it
as a perjorative, I'll suggest that it is an almost-necessary quality.
I've said this several times, but it's worth repeating -- if *your* system
dies because of some third party's tweaking/exploring/cracking/whatever, are
you going to say "well, I'm glad that the admins didn't get involved until
something happened"? I doubt it; I strongly suspect that you'll be wailing
and moaning (along with every other user) about the disruption of your work.
It's happened here, and I've seen it happen at dozens of sites. Everyone
seems to counsel patience and non-intervention "unless and until" something
nasty happens. When it's *your* site, are you going to accept something
like "well, we saw some suspicious things in our logs, but we decided to
let it ride"?
>Do you have confidence that everyone at your site on whose desk a complaint
>might land has the required wisdom and judgement and technical knowledge?
>Now, can you say that about every site?
>
>It seems to me that you can't take an action knowing that you may trigger an
>overreaction and just wash your hands of the responsibility by leaving it all
>with the site you complain to.
Oh, yes, you can!
Look at it this way:
- I might send email to someone at another site, but I have
no way of verifying that the message reached the proper
person. (If, for instance, a cracker is misusing someone
else's account, they'll just delete the message, right?)
- One usually doesn't have the time to track down the person
via telephone. If I am successful, I (again) have no way of
verifying that I'm talking to the right person.
- In the case of "suspicious" activity, postal mail is far
too slow a medium for problem resolution.
- The *only* people I can reach with any degree of certainty
are the adminstrators of that system. They also happen to
be the people who can contact the individual user with some
degree of certainty.
If I make it clear that I have no intention of proceeding with legal action,
I have no problem "washing my hands" of the issue until/unless it happens
again. Case in point:
- This site (engr.uky.edu) does not allow the sharing of userids.
- If I find evidence of sharing (such as jwayne at foo.bar.edu
using telnet to log into one of our systems as jdoe), I'll send
a note to jwayne, with a Cc: to root@foo.bar.edu.
- The note says something like this:
"I've noticed that you are connecting to our systems
and logging in under the 'jdoe' userid. This site does
not allow the sharing of userids; I have already spoken
with jdoe. I have no intention of initiating legal or
disciplinary action as a result of this incident; I merely
want to inform you of our policy. If you have any ques-
tions or comments, please get in touch with me. A copy of
this note has been sent to root@foo.bar.edu."
- 99% of the time, I receive an "I didn't know -- sorry" reply, and
the situation is resolved. To the best of my knowledge, no remote
user has ever been penalized as a result of my actions in these
mundane situations. (There have been a few occasions in which
other, more serious activities were uncovered while resolving
situations such as this.)
I certainly agree that we cannot predict the technical competence or
temperament/reaction of every site admin; however, I do not believe
that you can ask admins to ignore suspicious activity "unless or until"
more serious incidents occur. Asking us to do so is tantamount to
requesting that we abdicate our responsibilities to our users.
--Wes
--
Wes Morgan - University of Kentucky - morgan@engr.uky.edu
Mailing list for AT&T StarServer E/S admins - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
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gharshana-neti -- mental floss?
Re: [KWR] "UW to probe offensive images in
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz (moz)
Subject: Re: [KWR] "UW to probe offensive images in
Message-ID:
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 10:34:24 GMT
Hey look, excuse me here, but I seem to have missed the start of this
discussion completely. Are you arguing about whether the Net should face
the same laws on porn as the rest of the media, or whether we should
start a group soc.child-rape?
Have you covered the New Zealand situation yet?
We're in the process of a law to merger the censors into one body, and
make electronic media subject to them in the same way as everything else.
At the same time, the University of Canterbury has just cut alt.binary.pic.erotica
and alt.sex* (incl. a.sexual-abuse-recovery) in a reaction to a news story!
Two different subjects, both relevant here, have either been covered by
you people?
--
*love* and *hugs*
moz (moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz)
The strawman .sig: Porn may be harmful
You can either have censorship or porn
We must therefore have censorship.
Julian Visch (jsv@math.canterbury.ac.nz)
Re: USA Today jumps on a.b.p.e
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship
From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: USA Today jumps on a.b.p.e
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 21:09:52 GMT
>ab2@acpub.duke.edu (Arnold Baker) writes:
>>The sexual harassment squad have once again targeted the Internet. USA Today
>>printed an article today (Fri, Aug 6, p. B1) discussing the case of Stephanie
>>Brail, a West Coast freelance writer, who was, in her paradigm, sexually
>>harassed by usenetters. I don't have time to transcribe the entire article,
>>but here are the main points (about 1/2 the article):
>>
>>: Until two weeks ago, Stephanie Brail, a West Coast freelance writer, was
>>: receiving harassing e-mail messages - including profanity-laced rape
>>: threats. They were apparently in retaliation for anti-sexist remarks she
>>: had made to a computer discussion group. She asked others on her network
>>: if they had ever been harrassed; more than 75 women said yes....
Here's a question for you -- when does a discussion of a controversial
issue, or even a flamefest, cross the line into sexual harassment? If
one's comments take a personal tone (as in, "yeah, you'd probably like
XXXXXXX"), I think that most of us would consider that "over the line."
However, what about generic comments? What about the fellow who makes
generalizations about women? What about women who make generalizations
about men? Can we apply the highly individual nature of the harassment
laws/regulations to generalizations and broad statements?
If I say something like "you can't understand impotence, since you're a
woman," have I sexually harassed anyone? As an aside, I'll point out
that I've been told that my testosterone prevents me from understanding
PMS, pregnancy, motherhood and the abortion issue......
I think that we need to tread rather lightly when making bold statements
like "more than 75 women said that they were harassed in a computer dis-
cussion group." There's a line between offense and harassment; let's not
blur that line further.
I'll give a open invitation to anyone, male or female, who believes that
they have been sexually harassed via electronic forums (Usenet, mailing
lists, and online public forums) to contact me with examples. All respon-
ses will be held completely confidential. If requested, I'll post anony-
mized excerpts of the "harassing" materials. I'd like to see exactly what
is being construed as "online harassment."
--Wes
ps> Notice that I did not include personal email in my request; I'll be
the first one to admit that harassment can (and does) take place in
personal email. I'm concerned with the allegations of harassment in
the public forums of Cyberspace.
--
Wes Morgan - University of Kentucky - morgan@engr.uky.edu
Mailing list for AT&T StarServer E/S admins - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
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gharshana-neti -- mental floss?
Re: Where's the "Banned Computer Uses" list?
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.admin.policy,comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Where's the "Banned Computer Uses" list?
Date: 11 Aug 1993 14:52:35 -0400
Message-ID: <24bf5j$okr@eff.org>
I've removed the UMass/Boston entry from the latest banned.1992.
kadie@uiuc.edu (Carl Kadie) writes:
> Would this be better?
betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz) writes:
>It would be completely inaccurate. No complaints were received by me.
>If you are asking, here's the complete stories. Quotes are
>approximate, of course:
[...]
Thanks for the clarification. I've removed the UMass/Boston entry from
the banned.1992 list. I apologize for the embarrassment that my
misunderstanding of your articles and the subsequent listing caused.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
Re: A policy draft paraphrase
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.admin.policy,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship
From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: A policy draft paraphrase
Message-ID:
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 13:06:06 GMT
kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) wrote:
>This is a paraphrase of part of a draft policy for a departmental
>computer system. The department is part of a state university. The
>department doesn't want to be identified because this is only a draft.
>Please respect this wish.
>
>============================
>* You have a right to free speech.
>* Communicate whatever you want privately (and consentually).
>* Please do not post graphically violent or obscene material to public
> forums. There is no sanction if you do post graphically violent or
> obscene material to public forums, but we believe that such posts
> are disrespectful to others and inappropriate for a university
> enviornment.
Most of you know (by now, anyway) that I'm somewhat moderate.
From a cold, hard free speech viewpoint, this seems agreeable.
However, this policy doesn't address the *nature* of the forum
in question. Material which is quite acceptable in alt.sex.*
could easily be disruptive/far-off-topic in comp.sys.hp.
I also fail to understand how the university can guarantee a
"no sanctions" policy; it almost seems like a blanket protec-
tion. I could accept a "no *prior* sanction" clause, but this
policy does not acknowledge the fact that complaints may be made
(and sanctions levied) through the University's judicial system.
I'll assume that this university does, indeed, have such a judi-
cial system in place; I doubt that the computing folks can simply
override the decisions of that system.
Perhaps something like this would be more appropriate:
"We provide you with access to various public forums.
You enjoy the right of free speech, and we support
that right. However, you should realize that you
bear full responsibility for your contributions to
those forums. While we will not apply any restric-
tions to your participation, you should remember that
you are still subject to the University's judicial
system, as well as local, state, and Federal law.
In short, we won't stop you from expressing yourself
in public forums, nor will we protect you from the
results of such expression. You are responsible for
your own words and actions in these forums."
The burden of responsibility should be clearly placed on the user.
--Wes
--
Wes Morgan - University of Kentucky - morgan@engr.uky.edu
Mailing list for AT&T StarServer E/S admins - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
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gharshana-neti -- mental floss?
Prono problem in Okla. Expands to Internet
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
From: markg@okcforum.osrhe.edu (Mark Grennan)
Subject: Prono problem in Okla. Expands to Internet
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 22:09:53 GMT
Because of local politics and commumity standards, the Oklahoma Regients
for Higher Ed. have turned of any News group with the word SEX in it.
Big brother lives. I can't beleave there realy doing this.
-------------------------------^----------------------------------------
Mark T. Grennan / \ markg@okcforum.osrhe.edu
2604 Reeves Ct. / \/\ 76545,2506@compuserve.com
Okla. City, OK 73122 /\/ \ (405) 728-9836 Home
oo/ \O ^ \ (405) 521-2780 Work
Author of o/ _|\ \/\ PGP key avaible by Finger
ProLog Cycling Diary / /\ \ \
[ Never slow down ] / / \ \ [ Climb Free or Die ]
Re: Prono problem in Okla. Expands to Internet
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
From: wee@darkside.osrhe.edu (Operator)
Subject: Re: Prono problem in Okla. Expands to Internet
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 14:33:47 GMT
Mark Grennan (markg@okcforum.osrhe.edu) wrote:
: Because of local politics and commumity standards, the Oklahoma Regients
: for Higher Ed. have turned of any News group with the word SEX in it.
: Big brother lives. I can't beleave there realy doing this.
Yes, that is true. The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE) has
turned any newsgroup with the word *sex*, *erotica* in it. But this only
concerns the OSRHE agency. It is not a state-wide policy. It is a
departmental decision. It does not extend to any University. The only
person it affects is *YOU*, since you are using their server to read news.
The justification?
"What the hell are you doing at work reading pornography and looking
at dirty pictures? This is what I pay you for?"
: -------------------------------^----------------------------------------
: Mark T. Grennan / \ markg@okcforum.osrhe.edu
: 2604 Reeves Ct. / \/\ 76545,2506@compuserve.com
: Okla. City, OK 73122 /\/ \ (405) 728-9836 Home
: oo/ \O ^ \ (405) 521-2780 Work
: Author of o/ _|\ \/\ PGP key avaible by Finger
: ProLog Cycling Diary / /\ \ \
: [ Never slow down ] / / \ \ [ Climb Free or Die ]
--
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Huy Nguyen | "It's not nearly enough to survive,
wee@darkside.osrhe.edu | But to live." - M.M.
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