Hi Thaths,
>>>>> "Thaths" == Sudhakar Chandrasekharan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Thaths> Raju Mathur proclaimed:
>> I hope this isn't one of those company policy things where all
>> mail received and sent by staff is subject to review by the
>> powers-that-be. I had someone else also ask me that same
>> question (management wants to keep track of and read each and
>> every message sent/received by the scurvy knaves of employees)
>> and I flatly refused to even consider thinking of a solution.
Thaths> Screening all emails is a very short sighted policy. The
Thaths> invasion of privacy is terrible.
Agreed.
Thaths> 1. What exactly counts as email that is counter-productive
Thaths> to the company? I am subscribed to various mailing lists.
Thaths> Some of them are directly work related (mozilla
Thaths> development lists, for example). Some of them are sort of
Thaths> work-related (linux lists) in the sense that emails I
Thaths> receive from these lists are not directly related to the
Thaths> work I do but the info I gain from these lists would be
Thaths> useful to me in doing my job some day. And some are
Thaths> totally unrelated to work (Simpsons list, for example). I
Thaths> can always claim that reading the simpsons lists make me
Thaths> happy. And a happy employee is a productive employee.
Uh, while I agree in principle, this could be taken too far: e.g. I'd
be /really/ happy if my company paid me tons of money to stay at home
and browse for pr0n :-)
Thaths> 2. If someone REALLY wants to circumvent these controls,
Thaths> they can always use PGP / GPG to encrypt their email. Are
Thaths> you going to ban PGP GPGP at work next? What if they
Thaths> start using Yahoo mail if you do this? How are you going
Thaths> to prevent your employees from conspiring against you
Thaths> then?
PGP has an employer escrow option. In fact, we're working out a
company policy on message encryption and digital signatures where I'm
working right now. I'm torn between the requirement to have top
management have everyone's key in escrow (from the security point of
view -- this is an ISP and has to conform to national policies) and
the privacy aspect. I have a sneaking feeling that privacy will tell
government and management to go stuff themselves in the end :-)
Thaths> 3. A healthy work environment is built on trust. If you
Thaths> don't trust your employees, how are they going to trust
Thaths> you?
The issue is larger in my opinion: we have tons of small to medium
companies jumping onto the internet bandwagon in an attempt to keep
up. These people udnerstand the returns that they can get from this
technology without having any concept at all about the culture. This
combination of the [not meant to refer to any particular
tribe/community] ``Lala'' mentality and internet technologies is what
is bringing all these issues to the fore today.
Thaths> 4. Authoritarian regimes always tend to crumble
Thaths> eventually. Look at a long term solution.
Well, you don't record each and every conversation your employee has
on the office, so why scan e-mails?
I just realised that I have something to be really proud of: In the
past 10 years I've been postmaster for or had root access to mail
servers for over 5000 people. During this period the only times I've
ever opened a user's e-mail from the spool is either at their own
request or because the mail was choking up the system (to see the
context and decide whether it was safe to delete or not).
*Spraining spine trying to pat oneself on back*
BTW, privacy is one of the points in the charter/vision/mission of
Linux Delhi.
Regards,
-- Raju
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