Understand in advance that I am playing devil's advocate here for a moment.
On Dec 9, 2010, at 12:29 PM, unix_fan wrote: > Independent of *personal* opinions on the legality of the Wikilieaks > disclosures, I believe the Code of Ethics speaks on point: > "Privacy > I will access private information on computer systems only when it is > necessary in the course of my technical duties. > > I will maintain and protect the confidentiality of any information to > which I may have access regardless of the method > > by which I came into knowledge of it." As someone else has said, once THIS information was released, it's released. Absent folks who have explicitly agreed to handle classified documents in certain fashions, for everyone else out there, this is just "data". But if we're talking about from the "initial leak" perspective, this ethical line is still not a "supreme law". If I came across, in the course of my duties, evidence that my company is behaving in an illegal manner, for example, there becomes an interesting legal and ethical debate as to whether or not I now become culpable if I do not report the crime immediately, or otherwise blow the whistle on the illegal activity, especially if the found evidence points to knowledge at-the-top of the activity. > Further, a series of DDOS attacks have resulted against various web sites as > a > result of the Wikileaks disclosures. I hope we can all agree that LOPSA > expects > every professional sysadmin out there to <snipping the very obvious #1> > 2. Not engage in a DDOS against another site > While we do not directly repudiate engaging in DDOS attacks, we do have > this > in the Code of Ethics: > "Laws and Policies > I will educate myself and others on relevant laws, regulations and > policies > regarding the performance of my duties. " > I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, but I am skeptical that any legal > jurisdiction would permit DDOS attacks on sites one did not own. This one I'll take a much more devil's advocate role. If the corporations and the government are colluding with each other to take away the essential liberties of the press, and the courts aren't standing up for those freedoms, what exactly is the alternative except to begin to wage what essentially amounts to an InfoWar. I really do sympathize greatly with the position that the 4chan and anonops.net folks are staking out. When a viewpoint - unpopular to the people who get to use weapons of mass destruction - is stifled mostly because it annoys the gov't folks, isn't there likewise an obligation to stand up to defend against that? I'll admit it - I've considered letting some of my "spare hardware" get indoctrinated into the LOIC hive. I haven't done it, though, but not out of some ethical quandary, but more out of a feeling of cowardice that I should be doing something bigger and greater to fight that injustice, and that just joining some random BotNet is a cop-out. Cheers, D _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
