Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Mon, 6 May 91 17:33 EDT From: Nigel Allen Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: AT&T Employee Makes Private Phone Records Public!! Message-ID: Organization: 52 Manchester Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 341, Message 4 of 9 Lines: 28 My two cents worth: I think Randy Borow acted improperly, but I don't think any serious harm was done. I was disturbed when I saw the original message, and considered sending a message to Patrick. A footnote to this incident for privacy activists: I believe that the Telegraph Act (federal Canadian legislation, probably passed in the first quarter of this century) makes telegraph company employees swear an oath to keep messages confidential. In that sense, I think that anyone who deals with sensitive information about other people, whether they work for a hospital or telecommunications company, has an obligation to make sure that any information they disclose about their work does no harm. Saying something in private to Patrick would have done no harm; posting something publicly about the calling patterns of a telemarketing company that could not be identified would probably do no harm. While the telemarketing company in this case did not lose anything by having its calling patterns disclosed, I think AT&T suffered by appearing to be a telecommunications carrier whose employees don't keep proprietary information confidential. That having been said, Randy didn't do this out of a desire for profit. He deserves to be yelled at by his boss, not fired. Nigel Allen ndallen@contact.uucp