Conference 7.286::digital

    Well, in theory, you should only be using Digital's property to conduct
    Digital's business.  Does Digital pay you to copy pictures from
    alt.sex.pictures?  
    
    However, walking down the hallway in my group can certainly turn up
    people playing solitaire, reading the cooks notesfile, discussing
    town politics, etc. (none of which involves Digital's business).
    If Digital allows people some non-work activities, then reading
    "dirty" articles/pictures shouldn't be a problem (as long as the
    employee then doesn't sexually harass a co-worker by doing so).
    
    If we're going to start firing people for looking at pictures, then
    we should fire them for playing a computer game.
    
    				-John

    If the police were brought in to make a statement, there is a probably
    a belief that a law (of the United Kingdom) was violated. If the charge
    is valid, which would involve any relevant workplace privacy laws,
    there's no reason why Digital should somehow shield an employee it
    believes to have been violating such a law.
    
    Granted that anything to do with SEX tends to be a hot button but I'd
    imagine the same reaction if, say, a large file turned out to contain
    the contents from the unreleased Beatles-reunion CD, which would
    probably violate copyright laws.           

    I *would* like to see all the games deleted around here.  Sometimes I
    think we've got an entire floor devoted to uncovering the secrets of
    Solitaire.  They apparently misinterpreted our "Commitment to
    Competitiveness" to mean something entirely different.  My own department
    has no computer games, except on laptops.
    
    There's also been talk for years of doing away with all the non-work
    related notesfiles. 
    
    I don't see any real drive here in the States to do either, nor have I
    heard of anyone checking hard drives for naked pictures of Nude
    Gingrich.  Given the laxer atmosphere in England towards nude pictures
    (page 3 girls...or is it 5?), I'd wonder if his GIF contained pics
    deemed illegal, such as child porn, bestiality, snuff, etc.
    
    								Tex

    
    	Cool.
    
    	A topic now devoted to whether "dirty (whatever *that* means)
    pictures" is a hanging offense at DEC. And I'd thought we were always
    covering old ground here (UNIX vs. VMS, no salary increases, etc.).
    
    	Personally speaking, human beings have always shown a particular
    bias both for and against virtually everything. If Digital's *new*
    management wanted us to stay the hell off the Internet, then why did
    they give us sales types these neat HiNote Ultras with Netscape. If
    I'm gonna cruise might as well start with something I can spell...
    
    	On the other hand, if a DECCie is truly decadent, firing 'em is
    better than making 'em a VP. 
    
    	I really think this place is "interesting up". Good....
    
    
    			the Greyhawk

I don't know what the laws are like in the UK, but Digital's written policies
(in particular, P&P 6.54), while giving Digital the right to search for files
on any of its systems, also state that:

  POLICY VIOLATIONS

  Managers who suspect systems are being used improperly should discuss
  the problem with the employee in question and, if appropriate, involve
  security.  In cases where improper use has been clearly established,
  the employee should be dealt with in accordance with the Corrective
  Action and Disciplinary Policy (6.21).

Calling in the police and firing the employee seems to go a bit beyond what
policy calls for.  Then again, "policy is whatever managers want it to be".

Nevertheless, I would hesitate to get all fired up about this until it was
confirmed that it actually happened.

					Steve

    
    Steve -
    
    	Stop confusing reality with a great story. Given that this Monday
    seems crazier than most, I'd let this thing run its course. Now here
    in Chicago we'd make this guy a Congressman.
    
    
    		the Greyhawk

    I'd like to point out to the noting populace as a whole that Mr. Corson
    has, indeed, abdicated his position as "Pundit of the Midwest" in favor
    of a more temperate climate, ie: Florida (which, in Seminole Indian
    means "Land of Old People Driving Slow").  
    
    Please note that the LAC part of his node name probably makes reference
    to the fact that it is/was used for work in the old Latin-American
    Carribean Region (my old stompin' grounds), well known mainly for the
    downstairs cafe that served Heinekin, Ham, and Eggs as a breakfast
    special.  No sporks there, I assure you.  They also didn't let us have
    knives, but I think that was a different story.
    
    "Here in Chicago" means "I'm drinking a Margarita on the 17th hole and
    typing this into my laptop plugged into the data port on my cellular
    phone waiting to play through".  These translations are oft times
    difficult to make, so trust me on this one.
    
    Time to come clean, Greyhawk.  S'long Windy City, hello Warm Winters.
    
    								Tex

It isn't all sweetness and light down here.  Greyhawk moved down just im time
for hurricane season.

Old-timers down here (like me) used to just get a few cases of their favorite
beverage and other stuff for hurricane parties, and then took a few normal
precautions for their house and property.  No big deal.  Then Andrew hit a
few years back, and scared the h*** out of people...  Nobody relaxes anymore.

-- Ken Moreau
   helping my kids get ready for hurricane Erin, which is heading right for us

    Trust me, Ken, I *know* it ain't...but don't make it sound any worse,
    OK?  Corson's got this comin', and if you give him a "poor me" crutch
    to lean on right now, he's gonna use it as a weapon!
    
    								Tex

    
    Be safe, Ken.
    
    
    Mike

    
    	Since the two of you want to make my private life completely
    public, I'm a commuter, folks. Little long from O'Hare to Ft.
    Lauderdale, but the frequent flyer miles are something else...
    
    	Now as soon as my mansion in Chicago gets sold (probably to
    someone from Dallas), I am definetely moving to South Florida where
    hurricanes happen, usually when you are out of town and everyone
    else is too busy to nail plywood into your cinder blocks.
    
    	If anyone reading this drivel can tell me how to configure a
    TL810 into two Alpha 1000s and a 2100 under VMS, give me a scream
    off-line. We are making all this stuff so confusing not even a genius
    sales guy can figure out what runs with what under who anymore. This
    is becoming a full-time job...
    
    	As for Tex, he owes me two beers and tickets to the Cowboys
    game. Ken virtually lives next door, so he gets his next week.
    
    		the Greyhawk

    re: .0
    
    It's happened before in the states.  Exact same reason.  Mis-use of
    Digital Assets. I wonder why they never dinged all the people with huge 
    gif directories full of airplane, space, or beavis & butthead pictures?  
    It's arbitrary enforcement of a vague policy 'Digital Style'.  No doubt
    someone will even get a promotion after they show how many man hours,
    and the total asset values saved by the company with these little 
    nighttime account raids.
    
    Bottom line....don't do nothin but work, at work.  You want to do what
    this guy got busted for, get your own internet feed and download to
    you heart's content.  You got no problem that way.
    
    Demolition Man - "This fascist crap makes me wanna puke."
    
                                                      

    BBC World Service reported last night that UK police had run a "sting"
    operation over the weekend and arrested 43 people suspected of 
    trafficking illegal material via the Internet.
    
    No company names were mentioned.  If the employee referred to in .0
    was among the "sting" targets, then Digital would have had no option 
    than to fire him.

    I don't think we should go to the extent of calling Police to punish
    our own colleague. 
    
    I feel we should not be bothered much about ALL employee activities as
    long as they do not affect the business.
    
    WE ARE NOT IN THE MORAL SCIENCE BUSINESS.
    WE ARE IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS.
    
    (Reminds me of an IBM Slogan).
    
    Sunder
          

    Firstly, some informed comment rather than paranoia.
    
    Late last week, there was a major swoop on Internet based paedophilia
    pornography. This was co-ordinated on a worldwide basis and featured
    heavily on the news. Much equipment & software was seized and many
    arrests made in several countries including the UK.
    
    No mention was made of any corporate swoops in any of the programs I
    saw.
    
    As a UK worker & manager I have heard nothing of any "policing" by IS.
    We are currently rationalising down to two clusters from a dozen or so,
    and everybody is being asked to slim down their accounts. This is also
    happening on the cluster here in London as we are short of disk space
    and they don't want to upgrade just before the consolidation.
    
    If either:
    
    - an employee was arrested as part of the police action
    
    or
    
    - as part of the general clean up IS came across files that breach the
      civil law
    
    That employee should be put on suspension at the very least. As a
    manager, I feel it is my duty to discipline any employee *excessively*
    abusing company assets (this does not include the odd personal phone
    call, photocopy or pad & pen). Storing AND distributing pornograhy that
    would fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act in the UK would
    constitute that abuse.
    
    As I said - I have heard no mention of Digital in any new items, and
    the raids seemed to be all on private homes not businesses.
    
    Paul 

>    Storing AND distributing pornograhy that
>    would fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act in the UK would
>    constitute that abuse.
    
unfortunately, that's a bummer for managers of News Servers, who have
little or no control of what material is stored and forwarded, short
of shutting the entire system down.  I don't have time to wade through
several hundred megabytes of new data each day, even if it was funded
by Digital!

Chris.

Chris:

> unfortunately, that's a bummer for managers of News Servers, who have
> little or no control of what material is stored and forwarded, short
> of shutting the entire system down.  I don't have time to wade through
> several hundred megabytes of new data each day, even if it was funded
> by Digital!

  Remember, "free speech" ends at the company's front door.

  Maybe you just shouldn't carry alt.sex.hamsters.ductape;
  then you wouldn't need to "screen" it.

                                   Atlant

Wrong.  That is exactly the wrong thing to do.

One of the reasons that Prodigy lost its libel case is that it did actively
moderatw the contents of bboards.  That allowed the court to classify
their actions as one of an editor.  The Compuserve case of a few years back
was won by Compuserve precisely because they did not moderate and so were
help to the standards of a publisher or a library (which are not responsible
for the contents of what carry/print).

Indeed, it is for these reasons that Digital news server should not 
censor any newsgroup.  It we decide that all.foo is unacceptable but
we allow alt.bar and something litigious happens to be posted to
alt.bar we could be in very serious trouble.

I've been through the Corporate Secuity maze on this and so far I've
been able to prevail.  

    It would be interesting to know, although we may never, if the 
    rumoured dismissal recounted in .0 was related to the police activity
    described in .16, since that would seem to settle the matter. (I am
    aware secondhand of at least one person being dismissed a few years ago
    from a position in a GMA site as a result of a similar investigation in
    the United States.) Workplace privacy and speech issues aside the
    alleged activities are out-and-out illegal.
    
    In the U.S., it is dangerous to act as a partial censor. The commercial
    online service Prodigy has learned this to their embarrasment when they
    lost a recent court case, primarily due to the fact that because they
    set themselves up as a monitor and/or censor of some types of
    information posted on their service, they were responsible for all of
    it and had failed to act on one item in particular. 
    
    I highly doubt that there is a regular policy of scanning large files
    for "hot button" strings such as s-e-x. (That word alone has many
    innocuous uses.) If Digital employees are wasting their time on such a
    process it is very probably only when it is politically convenient.

there's at least three very good reasons not to get involved with
censoring or moderating newsgroups:

1. as already mentioned, you may be seen as liable for what is being posted.
2. it's a slippery slope, and before you know it a reason would soon be
   found to bar practically every newsgroup.
3. it'll drive some of the more, er, distasteful discussion underground,
   which may attract some more serious undesirables and their offerings.

Chris.

Ben:

> Wrong.  That is exactly the wrong thing to do.

  We, Digital, in our role of bringing you the Easynet are
  *NOT* a common carrier, not by any stretch of the imagination.
  Because of this, you *CAN NOT* generalize the Prodigy decision
  to the set of facts that we're discussing.

  Furthermore, it is entirely possible that we're not just dealing
  with libel laws here. Harassment laws also come into play, as
  do laws dealing with illegal sexual activities involvingminors
  and such. So far, there's no clear case law yet on whether the
  company's providing alt.sex.hamsters.ductape could be used to
  show that it colluded in harassment.

  You're no lawyer, and neither am I. But I'll bet that most of
  our attorneys would suggest that we *NOT* carry Alt.sex.paedophilia
  or whatever is vice-du-jour.

                                   Atlant

I ain't Ben.  Never have been.

I've been doing this since the mid-1980s.  I've dealt this issue many times
and have dealt with the lawyers.  Also note that news flows through Digital 
(and the Easynet) to various sites outside of Digital.

It really comes down to either we carry everything or nothing.  I don't
about you but I'd rather do the former than the latter.

  Whatever.  You pays your lawyers and you makes your choice.

  But I'd rather *YOU* be the one found managing the system
  that just happened to pass through <whatever>.

                                   Atlant

    
    Don't suspect a friend - report him!
    

    Hell, why report him?  Shoot him!

I am the person managing the system.  So when the &^%& falls,
I'll be at ground zero.

Unless there is evidence to suggest a crime is being committed or a serious 
breach of policy has occured then nobody should be snooping around other 
people files. There's a lot of confidential information held which general 
snooping would compromise.

Dave.

>                           -< Plus, it ain't polite >-

as well as the fact that some of the customers may get a bit tetchy if
they realised that "confidential" memos and projects are available for
effectively any Tom, Dick or Harry to look at.

Chris.