An item in which Grex's staff crosses the line ...

Sep 24 14:12 UTC 2000

Users beware, Grex's staff is patroling your home directories, reading
your personal files and making adjustments to them at whim.  I have
not used this script to evade the idle timer, but just happened to
notice that it had been modified:

Sorry, but this sort of thing is not allowed.  If you've been idle, you'll
get logged out so that other people can get a chance to use Grex.  -staff
#!/bin/sh
#while :
#do
#party_
#done

I find this incredibly offensive.  Would the "-staff" member who is
invading my privacy and corrupting my files please identify himself?

response 2 of 163:

Sep 24 14:20 UTC 2000

So what are you saying?  That not only can I not run around killing
people, but I can't so much as own a knife?  Or better yet, I can't
keep knives in my house without fear of 'authorities' coming in
whenever they want looking for them just to see if I have them?

response 4 of 163:

Sep 24 14:59 UTC 2000

Sounds like so staff woke up and smelled the coffed....

response 6 of 163:

Sep 24 15:14 UTC 2000

Respond or pass? !ps -tta
  PID TT STAT  TIME COMMAND
 5814 ta IW    0:24 -tcsh (tcsh)
10865 ta IW    0:01 /bin/sh ./evade-idle-zapper.sh
10932 ta IW    0:00 watch ...
14494 ta S     0:00 bbs
16109 ta IW    0:00 sleep 59
16211 ta R     0:00 ps -tta

response 8 of 163:

Sep 24 15:50 UTC 2000

And I'll be extra nice this time:  

Please don't run this sort of thing.  If you persist, staff will have to take
more serious action.

response 10 of 163:

Sep 24 15:56 UTC 2000

Ah.

Nope, those aren't allowed either.

response 12 of 163:

Sep 24 16:53 UTC 2000

Well, let's see now.  You did use that script, since I was also on when it
ran.  So you didn't just write it.  (and it's not like you didn't have another
system to learn on, anyway).

That aside, I wasn't the one who deleted it, so why bother me about it?

I get your point, I think.  You're trying to be obnoxious enough to where I'll
give up and say "not worth the bother".  You're obviously smart enough to know
the difference between these sorts of toys and actual free speech, so I won't
bother trying to answer your leading question.

response 14 of 163:

Sep 24 18:50 UTC 2000

Willard, Grex is a community based on free speech and interaction.  Because
of its open nature and anonymous access, Grex requiers rather far-reaching
prerogatives for self-preservation from abuse.  One of those prerogatives
is unfettered access by root to user directories for the purpose of identifying
and removing programs which are judged to exist for the purpose of subverting
Grex's security and fair sharing of resources.  These judgements are not
codified, but are made on the fly by a staff of persons approved by the board
as being capable of handling this responsibility fairly and properly.

You can clutter up the conferences with your mental diarrhea, but when you
keep and use programs for which the sole function is to undermine Grex's fair
and free access, you cross a line.  The only reason Grex has survived this long
against vandals and abusers is that the staff has no compunctions about
targeting identified abusers, and they have the full support of the board in
this.

Consider yourself fairly warned.

response 16 of 163:

Sep 24 19:51 UTC 2000

Only clarification by example of which activities are on which sides of the
line.

response 18 of 163:

Sep 24 20:21 UTC 2000

Willard and Eric, please see the Grex staff's statement on privacy at
http://www.cyberspace.org/staffnote/privacy.html

We certainly do not believe in allowing roots to have "unfettered"
access to people's files.

However, it is true that Grex does not and can not provide an absolute
guarantee of privacy to its users.  We do our best, but there are
exceptions.  You walked into one of them, the one described in the
document above as "Users Causing Problems on Grex."

Our resources are very limited.  Any user running programs that cause
the use of an excess number of resources (telnet ports, in this case) is
eventually going to be investigated.  Our responses vary from ignoring
it, to asking the user to stop (sometimes by Email, sometimes by
embedding a note in the program so they will see the message next time
they try to use it), to removing the tools, to deleting the account, to
reporting the abuse to the ISPs from which the user connects.  We try to
scale our responses to the severity of the offense and the persistance
of the user.

You're being treated in a manner consistant with the way we treat dozens
of other users every week, and consistant with our long-standing
policies.  Also, I think, a manner consistant with common sense.  I
can't imagine M-Net handles things much differently though I couldn't
find any form of privacy policy posted there.

response 20 of 163:

Sep 24 20:24 UTC 2000

Without knowing every detail of this "case", I would generally recommend
that a user be *warned* first before any action is taken to change
the contents of a user's directory. 

response 22 of 163:

Sep 24 20:34 UTC 2000

Up until I said I was evading the idle zapper, Grex's staff had no
reason to believe that I was doing anything wrong.  I think it
would've been more appropriate for scott to ask me to stop (I would
have) than to take it upon himself to waltz through and modify private
files.

response 24 of 163:

Sep 24 20:42 UTC 2000

#21: I dunno.  I'm assuming I'm on the list, which means that my home
     directory and its contents are subject to inspection by any Grex 
     staff member at any time with or without cause, justification or
     warning. 

     You guys wanna read my E-Mail, too?  Your access to the system
     allows you to do so, so have at it, why don't you?