Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 03/28/2017 06:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> When I did media conversion for people, I ignored their content,
> other than monitoring for quality control. Same as when I used to do
> photographic color printing, and did some for other people. Anything
> else would be seriously unethical. THAT is simple professional
> ethics.

Just so--I still do a fair amount of conversion and a lot of it is very
personal stuff.   I may spot-check the output in places to make sure
that it's not garbage, but otherwise, it's strictly not for my eyes.

Back when I used to do forensic processing for various law enforcement
organizations, I was sometimes called upon to help reconstruct data.
The only time that I paid attention to one such process, it was the
journal of a sexual predator.  It made me ill to read it and I vowed
never to do that again--and I didn't.

--Chuck

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal letters? At some
point personal information ends up being historic information.


The item in question seems to be ten years old.
THAT doesn't sound like "historical" can or should over-ride current 
rights holders.


At some point, "grave robbing" turns into "respectable archeology", but 
this doesn't seem to have reached that point.  THESE "presidents" are 
still alive, and their PERSONAL letters are not yet "history".


On Tue, 28 Mar 2017, Tony Aiuto via cctalk wrote:

"not private to begin with" is a conveniently loose interpretation of the
law. What you do on a company computer is certainly available information
to the company - I won't argue that. You can not, however, conflate that
with the many things that might be stored on company computers are
protected from disclosure outside the company and individual. A
conversation with HR about recovery from your alcoholism would certainly be
protected from disclosure.


There is a concept of "in the public eye" that takes away most privacy of 
things done in public, or as official actions.   Nixon's Oval Office 
actions did not have an expectation of privacy, but his bedroom did.
(Not that that would be interesting, I'm willing to believe from his 
values and attitudes that Nixon was a virgin)


SOME privacy ceases on death.  SOME lasts until it is clear that the 
actions are "historical" rather than "personal"



(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos, and
photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find
drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user
that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the
drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the
machine.


If it is a person who is alive, or RECENTLY deceased (Jobs?), it should be 
returned to them or their estate. 
Long ago, no problem.


There is not a clear line to draw.


Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no
written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know
what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all
the websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or
saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find
the programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can
run on.


Who said, "the internet is written in sand"?


Maybe the wayback machine will keep this all, but that is not irrelevant to
this thread.

So I think a small random fraction of users lives should be around to
learn from.


But, not while they (or theirs) are still around to be affected by the 
release.



But we are not talking about users from the distant past. We are talking
about people who are still alive today - and probably discoverable with an
easy web search. We should respect their privacy.


Al's link was for Turok source code.  It came out in 2008.  I seriously 
doubt that it could be considered to be "abandoned".  Even if acquired in 
good faith through oversight or accident, it would not be appropriate to 
release somebody's source code.



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 3/28/2017 6:38 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one SGI machine that he knew 
had video game source code on it.
Not unusual.  The more people crow about it the more hammers will swing 
on good hardware that could otherwise be repurposed.


I worked @ a company which was famous for their what I call Tidy-bug 
attitude.  They gathered up a lot of stuff about 6 months in and make a 
huge pile of free take stuff at the back door.


including one techs private stuff while he wasn't at his desk (he had 
permission) and several other such small nits.


but the satisfying bit of karma for this old hoarder was that they 
insisted on taking all the disk drives out which were of course 
"sensitive" and rather than hook them to a Linux machine or such with a 
wiper program, insisted on actually ball peening them.  just so sad.


They had three drives with irreplaceable no backed up software and pulls 
from systems which were rarely used but had software loaded which were lost.


I hate to take satisfaction but I just don't work the way of ignorant 
solutions being the way to go because they seem simple. This one really 
bit them in the ass.  An intelligent solution of wiping the hardware and 
then checking would have worked since all were sata or Pata or IDE 
drives easily readable.


but none of their data got out in the exercise.

thanks
Jim

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Tony Aiuto via cctalk]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 6:51 PM, TeoZ via cctalk 
wrote:

> How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal letters? At some
> point personal information ends up being historic information.
>
> If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a
> company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this
> angle for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines *is not
> private to begin with.* What exactly are we going to learn other then
> people asking for vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company
> probably used some pirated software, and early artwork or code for games
> might have been pretty shitty.
>

"not private to begin with" is a conveniently loose interpretation of the
law. What you do on a company computer is certainly available information
to the company - I won't argue that. You can not, however, conflate that
with the many things that might be stored on company computers are
protected from disclosure outside the company and individual. A
conversation with HR about recovery from your alcoholism would certainly be
protected from disclosure.


> I get computers all the time with hard drive intact full of company data
> (some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos, and
> photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find
> drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user
> that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the
> drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the
> machine.
>
> Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no
> written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know
> what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all
> the websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or
> saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find
> the programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can
> run on.


Maybe the wayback machine will keep this all, but that is not irrelevant to
this thread.


> So I think a small random fraction of users lives should be around to
> learn from.


But we are not talking about users from the distant past. We are talking
about people who are still alive today - and probably discoverable with an
easy web search. We should respect their privacy.

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/turok-source-code-ebay

On 3/28/17 6:36 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/28/17 6:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> Anything else would be seriously unethical.
> 
> the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one SGI machine that he knew 
> had video game source code on it.
> 
> 
> 

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 3/28/17 6:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

> Anything else would be seriously unethical.

the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one SGI machine that he knew 
had video game source code on it.

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

When I did media conversion for people, I ignored their content, other 
than monitoring for quality control.
Same as when I used to do photographic color printing, and did some for 
other people.

Anything else would be seriously unethical.
THAT is simple professional ethics.


Otherwise, it's on a par with accidentally overhearing somebody else's 
conversation, credit card number that they are blabbing into a cellphone, 
ets.
If and when I end up with somebody's old drive, I check for anything that 
they might want back, and wipe the rest.
On one recent laptop, I found a folder of pictures that the previous owner 
had forgotten about, and was grateful to get.
On another machine, the previous owner had lost a password to a site, but 
it was stored in the machine.  I used the "saved password" to login and 
changed it to a known one.


Not only do I not feel a right to somebody else's work, I don't have an 
interest.


An exception is that after a friend died, I saved his documents and 
his non-personal pictures, as if he had shared them with me.

(I kept his landscape photos, but erased his personal erotica)


When I get rid of a machine, I'd like to just hand it off to somebody who 
would have use for it.
But, if people are going through what's on old machines, then I will have 
to start wiping hard disks before parting with them.  There are SOME 
people whom I would trust if they promised to wipe the content after 
receiving them.  For others, . . .


That's a hassle!
Yes, it really isn't much work, but, . . .
I've got a 200MB 3.5" ESDI drive to get rid of.  But, now I don't think 
that I can do so until after I locate a WD '07 controller, connect it, and 
low level format it.  Since "scrounging" that controller is on a priority 
level comparable to cleaning the gutters, it's not happening.


I've got a crate of ST4096s.

I've got a large collection of OQOs.  I guess that before I can give them 
away, I need to get each and every one working, or remove its HDD.


When I run into a TRS80 model 1 disk with some data and system, should I 
bulk erase it, or rely on the ethics of somebody who might need a boot 
disk?  Or do I need to delay giving away anything such until I get around 
to setting up a system to read it?   Would anybody WANT a TRSDOS 2.0 disk?

APR-DOS?
or a PC-DOS 1.0 disk with the weird double side (as second drive) patch?
Gavilan MS-DOS 2.11J? 2.11K?
Gavilan "bubble memory"? (already gave that away to somebody trustworthy)


There is an implicit level of TRUST when dealing with used media and 
hardware.  Let's not abuse it.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Chris Hanson via cctalk]

On Mar 28, 2017, at 2:36 PM, JP Hindin via cctalk  wrote:
> 
> While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm kind 
> of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something I've 
> been confronted with personally lately.

It’s going to make it harder for people to get castoff hardware, because 
companies are going to err on the side of destroying anything that might 
possibly be sensitive. (Just as many already do.)

Do you really think such companies will pull drives and shred just the drives 
before scrapping systems? Or is it more likely they’ll just put the entire 
systems through a shredder? And even if they did just pull drives, what if they 
use a hard-to-find interconnect, or an OS that can’t be easily reloaded?

  -- Chris

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 03/28/2017 02:36 PM, JP Hindin via cctalk wrote:

> But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray
> J90 and I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public
> and I just can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it
> belonged to NASA, which might mean some/all of the information may
> even be Public Domain - but this has people's usernames, and lord
> knows what kind of effort they put into the work. (And that's
> ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the PD assertion)
> 
> It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.

Well, as someone who occasionally does work for JPL, I should mention
that a lot of the stuff you may find from the 80s and 90s may still be
classified--or at least sensitive.

Doubtless there are federal laws about this sort of thing and you really
don't want the black van pulling up in front of your place.

--Chuck

Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[Toby Thain via cctalk]

On 2017-03-28 6:51 PM, TeoZ via cctalk wrote:

How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal letters? At some
point personal information ends up being historic information.


I am not a lawyer, but it almost seems like something that actual law 
should cover.


* http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/general-business-law/gbs-sect-399-h.html
* http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/intellectual-property
* http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts



If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a
company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this
angle for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines is not
private to begin with. What exactly are we going to learn other then
people asking for vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company
probably used some pirated software, and early artwork or code for games
might have been pretty shitty.


"Nothing to hide" arguments don't justify making this public wholesale 
(or depriving anyone of privacy).




I get computers all the time with hard drive intact full of company data
(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos,
and photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to
find drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come
across a user that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it
(remove the drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby
interest with the machine.


Perhaps what you should do, is contact them, ask if they want the data, 
and if they say no - or you can't reach them - wipe it. But it seems 
that even doing this much may expose you to liability, so ask your own 
lawyer.




Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no
written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to
know what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by
since all the websites will be long gone and all our files will have
been erased or saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales
of let alone find the programs that can read the files and computers
that the programs can run on. So I think a small random fraction of
users lives should be around to learn from. If for some reason we nuke


How about making this an opt-in scheme, not "my stuff fell into am 
unscrupulous stranger's hands and now it's all over the internet".




ourselves into oblivion (or more likely just keep destroying the
environment until we can no long function as a society) then maybe
people down the road should look over out private files, posts, emails,
blogs, etc. to see how people could allow it to happen. You won't be
able to see government files because everything will be stamped Top


Your governments have been destroying their internal communications, or 
otherwise concealing them, for decades.


--Toby


Secret (or more likely deleted) including your own data they illegally
obtained.





-Original Message- From: JP Hindin via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 5:36 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy
(with data, emails, etc) on eBay



This guy is on Reddit and has been posting lots of stuff from these
machines and I can't help but feel a bit suspect about all of this. While
they're old machines, the information is presumably no longer of any
commercial value and the company no longer exists... I can't help but feel
that this is an invasion of someone's privacy. The commercial content is
one thing - although whether it's truly "abandoned" runs down into all of
those arguments we see flare up in cctalk about once every two years, so
let's not go there again...

But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray J90 and
I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public and I just
can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it belonged to NASA,
which might mean some/all of the information may even be Public Domain -
but this has people's usernames, and lord knows what kind of effort they
put into the work. (And that's ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the
PD assertion)

It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.

While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm
kind of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something
I've been confronted with personally lately.

Cheers;

 - JP

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Re: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

[TeoZ via cctalk]

How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal letters? At some 
point personal information ends up being historic information.


If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a 
company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this angle 
for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines is not private to 
begin with. What exactly are we going to learn other then people asking for 
vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company probably used some 
pirated software, and early artwork or code for games might have been pretty 
shitty.


I get computers all the time with hard drive intact full of company data 
(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos, and 
photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find 
drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user 
that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the drive 
and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the 
machine.


Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no written 
records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know what we 
were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all the 
websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or saved 
using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find the 
programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can run on. 
So I think a small random fraction of users lives should be around to learn 
from. If for some reason we nuke ourselves into oblivion (or more likely 
just keep destroying the environment until we can no long function as a 
society) then maybe people down the road should look over out private files, 
posts, emails, blogs, etc. to see how people could allow it to happen. You 
won't be able to see government files because everything will be stamped Top 
Secret (or more likely deleted) including your own data they illegally 
obtained.






-Original Message- 
From: JP Hindin via cctalk

Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 5:36 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with 
data, emails, etc) on eBay




This guy is on Reddit and has been posting lots of stuff from these
machines and I can't help but feel a bit suspect about all of this. While
they're old machines, the information is presumably no longer of any
commercial value and the company no longer exists... I can't help but feel
that this is an invasion of someone's privacy. The commercial content is
one thing - although whether it's truly "abandoned" runs down into all of
those arguments we see flare up in cctalk about once every two years, so
let's not go there again...

But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray J90 and
I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public and I just
can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it belonged to NASA,
which might mean some/all of the information may even be Public Domain -
but this has people's usernames, and lord knows what kind of effort they
put into the work. (And that's ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the
PD assertion)

It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.

While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm
kind of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something
I've been confronted with personally lately.

Cheers;

 - JP 



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