response 26 of 163:

Sep 24 21:18 UTC 2000

http://www.cyberspace.org/staffnote/privacy.html

NOTE: By "causing problems" we mean technical problems, not social
problems. No degree of rudeness and unpleasantness would justify any
staff investigation of a user's private files or mail.  Only actions
that appear to undermine system security or performance may do so.


This is where I think the line is being crossed here.  Sending mass
telegrams may be rude and unpleasant, but it does not hamper system
security or performance, and therefore, by Grex's own privacy policy,
there is absolutely no justification for my privacy being invaded and
my data being tampered with.  Especially in light of the fact that
'mesg n' and 'mesg ne' are both very well documented.  

This isn't an argument of whether or not mass telegrams are kosher.
I'm trying to make the point that no matter how annoying they are,
they are not justification for the action taken by Grex's staff.

Additionally, I think it a fair argument that a tool that defeats the
idle timer is also not a threat to system performance or security,
although it is admittedly rude and unpleasant for me to tie up
resources when I am not immediately available to use them.  It is,
however, just as much my right to use those resources as any other
user who might log on, and leave his keyboard to pour a cup of coffee,
or use the 20 minute party timeout to add an additional buffer to the
idle rule.

It is polite to log off when you are not at your keyboard.  It is not
destructive or disruptive to not do so.

I submit that Grex's staff has had no business, by its own stated
privacy policy, opening and corrupting my personal files, and
respectfully request an apology.

That having been said, I think my point is made.  I don't mind
standing in line to read Agora -- it's worth the wait.  I just hope
everyone who has observed this situation will give some consideration
to the amount of respect I was afforded by certain members of the
staff.  I make no claims to whether or not I deserve any respect in
this case, but I've certainly demonstrated the staff's standards of
conduct pretty clearly, I think.

Nuff said.

response 28 of 163:

Sep 24 22:21 UTC 2000

#27: Hi, Frank.  Pleased to meet you.

You'd be more indignant for my cause if it were your privacy that had
been violated because of staff impropriety.  Put yourself in my shoes
for just a moment, and ask yourself how you'd feel. 

Scott is in a unique position of not only having verbalized his very
strong feelings about my presence here, but also having the ability to
do something about it.  Were he a more professional root, he would've
turned this matter over to someone without a vendetta.  Instead, he
took it upon himself to handle the situation improperly.

The proper response to this situation would have been an E-Mail or a
telegram.  

If you want to start another item about how bad a person I am, and how
I'm the worst thing to ever happen to grex, and how I am the scum of
the earth, and how I should be shot, you go right ahead.  The point of
this item is that all of those things aside, I am entitled to the same
privacy that you should be fighting for.

response 30 of 163:

Sep 24 22:29 UTC 2000

I don't *have* to put myself in your position, because I have no history of
nor intent to disrupt the operation of grex, make other grexers' conferencing
experiences miserable, try to hack my way past the rules grex has established
for fair use.  Thus I have no fear of staff invading my privacy.  And it
wasn't just your stupid graffiti in agora that got you investigated, so don't
try to play the victim.  It's more like more pathetic attempts to get
attention.

response 32 of 163:

Sep 24 22:50 UTC 2000

#30: Okay, so when exactly is it appropriate for staff to violate
     their own written privacy standards, then?  All the time, or just
     when someone would be in a position to worry about it?

response 34 of 163:

Sep 25 02:35 UTC 2000

Mike, Grex's privacy policies weren't violated.  You were pretty clearly
running stuff to get around the idle zapper, and sending mass tels, both of
which I'm sure you knew would get people upset with you.

And this was not a matter of Scott unilaterally deciding he didn't like you
and deleting your files.  Normally, if somebody were running the programs you
were running, the files would have been splatted without a second thought.
In your case, there was some discussion in the staff conference about it,
wondering whether you were being enough of a pain that making you obey the
rules might get a worse reaction out of you.  In other words, the only reason
your case is any different from the normal twits doing what you're doing is
that in your case we waited longer before acting.

response 36 of 163:

Sep 25 04:03 UTC 2000

   I see nothing wrong with linking it--it belongs in coop.  But let
it be talked about here as well.

response 38 of 163:

Sep 25 05:11 UTC 2000

It would help if newuser announced that staff will inspect directories of
users causing system mischief such as (fill in this space), and will be
delete such scripts upon discovery. Being forewarned, no user can complain
unless an innocent script is deleted. 

response 40 of 163:

Sep 25 05:57 UTC 2000

I don't see any benefit to putting a long list of do's, don'ts, or
consequences into newuser.  It's most all common sense, and in fact most
people can figure it out.  Even for the few that might benefit, putting
it in newuser is moderately pointless.  It certainly would not have
helped in the least with this particular case.  There's no question but
that this person had much experience with this kind of environment, so
to the extent he was constitutionally capable, he would already have
understood what was not acceptable behavior, and what the likely
consequences were.  From the arguments presented by this person, it
seems extremely likely he was "testing the limits".  A more explicit set
of rules is not likely to have helped at all in this situation, because
it would have only solidified the notion in his head that he could rely
on external governance of his behavior, and externalize any blame for
the consequences of his behavior.  This is of course a very popular
solution in small to medium sized social groups where the power figures
have more actual power and greater discretionary ability to administer
corporal punishment as needed to the posterior of any offenders.  It's
not such a useful solution on grex, where there are significant
statuatory limitations on the power and authority of "those in charge",
and in many cases, a numbers and distance problem as well.

response 42 of 163:

Sep 25 11:57 UTC 2000

You people are being awfully inconsiderate of willard.  Try and have a 
little empathy.  Imagine you are in willard's place, and ask yourself 
how he must feel suddenly learning that he is regarded merely as the 
latest in a long series of anonymous vandals/twits.  Nothing special.  
A familiar and commonplace annoyance.  A small face in a big crowd, 
treated no differently than any of the others.  Add any minor self-
esteem issues willard might have, and the unpleasantness of your 
treatment of him begins to seem cruelly deliberate.  Shame on you.

response 44 of 163:

Sep 25 16:12 UTC 2000

I'm sorry, I thought Grex was different than the computer where you
work.  My mistake.  I apologize.  :-P

response 46 of 163:

Sep 25 17:05 UTC 2000

To be technically precise, the document quoted above is not Grex's privacy
policy.  A policy would have have to be enacted by the board or by the
membership.  The document quoted above is an ad hoc description by staff of
their normal policies and procedures.  It's written half for internal use,
to try to give staff members a sense of what other staff members think is
sensible, and half to inform users of what our thinking on things is.

In saying that, I don't mean to suggest that we don't want to live up to
what is there.  I do mean to suggest that lawyerly nitpicks over the exact
wording of the document won't necessarily get you anywhere.  If you say
"what staff did doesn't exactly fit what the document says" then we have
two possible responses: change our behavior or change the document.  This
will remain true until an actual policy is passed.  Actually writing a
document that does say precisely the right thing would be so hard that I
suspect it will never happen.  The staff notes on privacy serves a useful
function in the abscense of a formal policy.

To address the particular points:

  - If staff found willard's postings in Agora so annoying that they decided
    to go fishing through his directory looking for nasty stuff, then that
    would be extremely inappropriate behavior.  I don't believe that
    happened here.

  - If staff had some good reason to suspect that willard was running an
    idle blocker, then doing a limited search through his directories to
    confirm this is justified.  I think this is what happened.  Note that
    the one he called 'watch' wasn't noticed for a while.  Nobody did a
    search through all his files for idle blockers.  Only when we had
    clues that 'watch' needed looking at did we look at it.

  - Use of an idle-blocker wastes system resources and reduces Grex's
    availability.  If lots of users did it, getting access to Grex would
    be extremely hard.  This is a clear impact on Grex's "performance."
    Willard's reading of this suggests that "performance" is only CPU
    speed.  It isn't.  Possibly better wording is needed here, but I think
    it should be obvious that hte "performance" we are interested in is
    everything that effects the ability of Grex's system to provide 
    services to users.

  - The telnet-bomb thing is more ambiguous than the idle blocker.  The
    privacy notes do not include a list of all the things that constitute
    "abuse."  It  is a privacy statement, not a "conditions of use"
    statement.  The paragraph about mere rudeness not being "abuse" doesn't
    mean what willard wants it to though.  It means that mere content of
    messages is not a reason to treat a user as a villian.  So sending
    rude tels does not justify searching a users directory, and tel-bombing
    is against the rules even if you use it only to send polite messages.
    This could use some clarification.

  - There is no 'list' of bad-guys people get on.  If you run a fork bomb,
    we take immediate action.  Staffers have memories though.  A person who
    has caused problems in the past is likely to be suspected more easily
    in the future.  After willard was found running an idle blocker the first
    time, staffers probably were paying a little more attention to his
    login times and process lists than they were with other users.  But
    basically when an incident is over, it's over.

  - In the best of all possible worlds we would spend more time talking to
    people about what they did wrong.  We used to do so.  But it takes a lot
    more time.  Write a message to the user, explaining the error of his
    ways.  If he replies, maybe engage in a conversation.  If not, remember
    to come back and check if the user stopped or not.  Staff rarely has time
    for this these days, not with a couple of these every day.  We tend to
    try to handle things in one transaction and forget about it.

response 48 of 163:

Sep 25 18:40 UTC 2000

You people make me sick.