Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!bucsb!ckd
From: ckd@bucsb.UUCP (Christopher Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Ten Commandments of Personal Computing
Message-ID: <2832@bucsb.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jul 89 00:39:43 GMT
References: <66667@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Reply-To: ckd@bucsb.bu.edu (Christopher K Davis)
Followup-To: comp.misc
Organization: Boston University School of Management
Lines: 46

In article <66667@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> root@yale.UUCP (Root Of All Evil) writes:
- In article <42793@bbn.COM> you write:
- > In article <TALE.89Jul15133947@imagine.pawl.rpi.edu> tale@pawl.rpi.edu writes:
- > } > IX.  THOU SHALT NOT SNOOP IN THY NEIGHBOR'S FILES
- [ . . . ]
- Most people who discuss this overlook one fact in their analogies:  When you
- look through someone's directory, the owner probably doesn't know that you
- are doing so and can't really find out.  (I'm not talking about contrived
- cases of world-readable log files and such things here.)
- [ . . . ]
- I don't mind when others look through my files.  Files that I don't want read
- I hide. (And highly confidential files I don't even keep around on a computer
- accessible to others.) Read permission from me is implicit permission from me
- to everyone else to read, copy, &c, the file bearing the permission.
- (Naturally, any copyright or other messages apply.)

I have a READ-ME! file in my directory spelling things out.
Basically, I either lock things I don't want people reading (RMAIL &
RMAIL~ are the top two) or toss 'em in a "lock" directory if I don't
even want them knowing the filenames, and in READ-ME! give them
blanket permission to poke around.  It simplifies things nicely.

- At times, I probably forget to deny permissions on files hastily created.

Have I ever done this?  Sure--as someone here at BU knows quite well. :-)

- Again, I'm prepared to take on any damages that I suffer because of this.
- But this is where the ethics issue comes in.  Everyone knows that no one
- intends for a directory of love letters or tax information to be spread all
- over the net--or even seen by some malicious local user.  Although I would
- lock such things, I wouldn't rummage through them in someone else's unlocked
- directory.

And in the instance I alluded to, I was notified (in a private
message) that the person involved had found an "interesting" file.  It
wasn't anything particularly sensitive, but was something that could
have been mis-interpreted; the information in it was all from various
public places.  I think the other person acted fully appropriately in
this case--and I hope most people would.

- 					--Scott
-- 
  /\  | /  |\  @bu-pub.bu.edu <preferred>  | Christopher K. Davis, BU SMG '90
 /    |/   | \ %bu-pub.bu.edu@bu-it.bu.edu |      uses standardDisclaimer;
 \    |\   | /  <for stupid sendmails>     |       BITNET: smghy6c@buacca 
  \/  | \  |/  @bucsb.UUCP <last resort>  or ...!bu-cs!bucsb!ckd if you gotta.
 --"Ignore the man behind the curtain and the address in the header." --ckd--