E-mail Privacy

[Kral]

In article <1991Jun14.153835.8709 at cc.curtin.edu.au> chooper at cc.curtin.edu.au (Todd Hooper) writes:
>
>Personally, I totally ignore the 'subject' header of bounced mail. In this
>case, I would have ignored it as well. It is the job of academic staff to
>uncover plagiarism - not mine.

How is this different from:

	"It is the job of the police to deal with robberies, not mine (so
	I won't report this obvious burglary I'm seeing to the police)"

	"It is the job of the police to deal with rape crimes (etc)".


>I think a consistent policy of enforcing privacy
>is the best defense. If it is known that you might read mail, or interpret the
>contents in some way (even if this only involves looking at the subject line)
>then you may leave yourself open to more problems (e.g. why didn't you stop
>this hacker mailing /etc/passwd to someone?).

This is easy to explain in economic terms: does the administration wish to pay
for someone to spend all day long looking into other peoples files and
monitoring all email?  Explain it to them like that, and they will have to
agree that it is an unreasonable expectation.

-- 
kral * 408/647-6112 *               ...!uunet!drivax!braun * braun at dri.com
"Talking trash, touching on truth"	-- Micheal Hedges "1-900-I-LUV-YOU"