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From: seward@CCVAX1.NCSU.EDU (Bill Seward)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: E-mail privacy and "vacation" messages
Message-ID: <0094970A.3B0DBBC0@CCVAX1.NCSU.EDU>
Date: 31 May 91 23:57:54 GMT
References: <1991May31.211508.7023@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System)
Reply-To: seward@CCVAX1.NCSU.EDU (Bill Seward)
Organization: North Carolina State University
Lines: 52

In article <1991May31.211508.7023@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>, earle@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Greg Earle (Sun Software)) writes:
>
>You work for company XYZ.  XYZ has an explicit policy that says that reading
>another employee's e-mail is considered Gross Misconduct, punishable by
>immediate termination.
>
>One of the users on your system(s) goes on vacation, and sets up a "vacation"
>message to automatically reply to e-mail. [...]
>
>Now, consider the following.  What if the user instead had a message like
>
>	I am out of the office for N weeks.  I'm stressed out and I can't
>	handle being around all these annoying (insert appropriate term,
>	like "Jews" or "Niggers" or some other potentially-offensive
>	epithet).  Your mail concerning "$SUBJECT" will be read ...
>
>or, perhaps not so blatant or milder,
>
>	I am out of the office until <Date>.  I was suspended by XYZ for
>	being a bad boy/girl and am being punished.  Your mail concerning ...
>
>Someone receives this "vacation" message and contacts Joe User's boss about it.
>Joe User's boss contacts you and demands that you change the .vacation.msg file
>to remove anything which does not say "I am out of the office until ..." or
>"Your mail concerning ...".
>

An interesting hypothetical.  I'd say in the first case, the mail should be
considered 'harrassing' and the sysadmin should edit the offending file
*and* notify Joe as soon as possible that it has been modify and why.  (Also,
just for CYA reasons, get the order from his boss in writing.  Might not help,
but it couldn't hurt.)

The second case is a lot grayer.  If Joe was indeed suspended and this is
fairly common knowledge among the employees of XYZ, you might be steping
on his freedom of speech.  After all, XYZ has thier side, he has his.  If
I were placed in that situation, I would both get it in writing and document
in a return memo my objections to it.  But I would also probably go ahead
then and do it anyway, since if I didn't, I might well wind up suspended
for insubordination/refusal to follow orders/failing to knuckle und

(And before anybody flames me for this response, bear in mind that as you
get older and accumulate responsibilites and dependencies, you tend to
supress your sense of outrage.  Ten years ago I'd have told XYZ to stuff
their request.  But my family can't live on my wife's take-home.)


******************************************************************************
  Bill Seward -- Analyst, Programmer, System Manager, User Training,
                 Operations and whatever else needs doing.
        Cutaneous Pharmacology & Toxicology Center, NC State University
  SEWARD@NCSUVAX.BITNET                            SEWARD@CCVAX1.CC.NCSU.EDU