On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 12:52 -0500, Gregory Foster wrote: > If we're going to require people to use their brains, perhaps its not > too much to ask that individuals take responsibility for paying > attention to who they are speaking to.
Necessary but not sufficient. I have lived long enough to learn that _other people_ will make mistakes that harm me and that I should proactively prevent them where I foresee them. Simply taking responsibility for my own actions is not enough. Let me take you back to my example: A: <operational discussion on activist group list> B: Right on! ps: how's <extremely embarassing private matter> going? B: Oh SH*#&$#*T, I'm SOOOOO sorry, I didn't mean to reply-all!! I feel horrible!! For the record, I was A here, not B. Yes, B should have used her brain and never committed anything confidential to email, especially given the numerous discussions of operational security we'd had prior to that point due to many of our associates being called before grand juries or worse. This was not sparkly-ponies-discuss, folks. But tell me, how exactly does B "take responsibility" for this class of error anyway? Written apology? Some number of lashes or hail marys, perhaps? Foregoing all future use of email? None of this is any consolation to A. Here's an opportunity to demonstrate some real responsibility instead. If you voted FOR reply-to, recognize that in doing so, you've effectively admitted that you can't be relied upon to accurately address your own mail. And that makes you exactly the sort of person (aka "normal human") who might some day mistakenly send a privacy-violating reply (or worse!) to a public mailing list where reply-to is on. Before that happens, consider making a proactive effort to reduce the odds of that sort of mistake by yourself and everyone around you by asking for reply-to to be disabled. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
