All, As I read your replies, 1984 plays on Showtime (I kid you not!). The main character just read a printed letter (prehistoric email) and promptly burned it in his desk side incinerator.
Thank you for your thoughtful, candid, and emphatic responses. If I may wax philosophic (and Socratic), what we are dealing with is human nature and our new found ability to do things we may have wanted to do but lacked the technology. What makes 'stolen' web time or email time (or instant messenger time) different from time spent smoking by the back door or chatting is that our technology allows us to track, store, and most importantly, tally it up. As trackers, storers, and talliers, we facilitate this. Ethics asks but one question: should we? To this question, you have surprising and valuable answers. The judgment of a tool cannot be separated from its uses, so what are its uses. Employers own the computers, the software, the network backbone, the bandwidth, and the employees time; given up in exchange for the employers money. The employer then, owns the 'right' to do that which and have done with what they wish. But there is a line. Imagine a classroom full of kids whispering to one another. Now imagine that instead, they are passing notes. Now imagine they all have laptops that communicate through school owned networks (say 802.11). Kids have always been passing notes and teachers have always been catching them, some of them, once in a while. The difference with laptops and software, however, is that the school monitors ALL messages and catches ALL inappropriate notes, down to the smallest whisper. What makes 1984 so rediculous is not that so much snooping would happen, its that so many jobs/people/energy would be devoted to the task. With technology, that limitation melts away. In my particular example, the employer very likely knew what was going on (like the 'bad' kid in class). He was probably a gross time waster & deserved to be fired. My concern isn't with him, its with everyone still there. Suppose that every other employee finds out that the fired employee was in part (even the smallest part) caught because of email he expected to receive that instead went to management. What does it do to their psyche's? My greatest fear is my intelligence being used to hurt others. I push my Declude configuration to the edge of perfection and beyond so I can beat the spammers and while this is no Trinity (1st atom bomb project), I want to be aware of its potential uses and misuses. As for >> To many companies ethics is spelled ethic$. >> Hopefully we as a group are not among them. I consider Declude admins to be as Declude, a cut above. Dan On Wednesday, February 26, 2003 16:20, Dan Patnode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I realize this is two questions in one day, but its a slow list >day, so: > >Rather than deleting spam, I forward it tagged or to a shared >mailbox, clients choice. I just found out that within a week >of starting my my anti spam service (delivery choice 2), a >company fired an employee for receiving tons of porn via email. > They also have web monitoring in place so this was the last >piece to their puzzle, but... > >How does everyone feel about our role playing Big Brother >against employees? > > >Dan > > >--- >[This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus >(http://www.declude.com)] > >--- >This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To >unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and >type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found >at http://www.mail-archive.com. > --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.
