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From: inc@fluke.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: computer security, privacy, and ethics
Message-ID: <626@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 12:56:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: tpvax.626
Posted: Thu Jun 13 12:56:31 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 01:50:37 EDT
References: <250@phri.UUCP> <226@timeinc.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 80

In article 226, Ross Greenberg writes:


> A certain university requires anyone wishing a backup to
> provide their own tape.
> 
> You mistakenly take the source code for 4.2 with you while doing your tar.
> The source code was previously available (read permissions) and
> had been moved into a sub directory of your ownership. And you forget.
> 
> The tape is in the posession of the university and has not left their 
> premises. Later a member of the super-user community for reasons
> of thir own decides to examine your tape. They find the source code
> and accuse you of trying to rip off the code, and you lose your account
> because of that accusation.
> 
> Questions:
> 
> Does anyone have the right to go through a tape that, by university policy,
> must be your personal property and is labeled accordingly?
> 
> Even if they do, has any "crime" been attempted if the tape is still
> within their custodianship?
> 
> Is it moral or ethical for a super-user to (ab)use their super-user status
> to go through anothers property?
> 
> At this point the tape was confiscated. The user offered to 'rm' the
> offending sorce code, but the super-user community refused and did it
> themselves.
> 
> Did they have the right to alter anothers property like this?
> 
> What if they mistakenly erased other data that was valuable to
> the user and was previously on the tape from a different machine?
> 
> What are the ethics of such things?
 
Well Ross, I for one do not think that these are tangled ethical/moral/legal
questions: it is clear that the only thing in this whole matter that is your
"property" is the medium (not the message |-) The university requires you to
provide it just as they require you to provide notebooks, pencils, and other
tools of the student trade. By insisting on custodianship, however, it seems
to me that the university itself is legally/morally/ethically responsible
for the contents. Since that is so, it is in their interests to insure that
no laws are violated and that all student tapes in their posssession meet
their requirements.

This might be compared to a doctoral thesis that you give the university for
keepsies even though the paper, typing, and duplication costs came out of
your pocket. If the thesis is found to contain plagiarized material, I can
envision them taking certain steps. It's true that in the case of the
thesis, they would probably not take a scissors to the offending material,
but on the other hand, you would probably never see any of it again.

They did show an extreme lack of sensitivity though, and the fact that they
proceeded as they did after having all the facts explained seems pretty
high-handed. Be that as it may, I think they were within their rights,
including looking at the contents of the tape. Retaining the rights to the
information on the tape is probably their reason for wanting to keep
physical possession of it in the first place.

To sort this all out, you need only put yourself in their shoes: what if it
*weren't* accidental that the 4.2 source showed up on your tape? If in fact
you had puposely copied it with a mind to eventually selling it on the black
market? The university has only your word that it got their by accident, and
they may be more inclined to trust a super-user's opinion that it's unlikely
that a person could "accidentally" get such a collection of bits on their
tape than they would be to believe you that your intentions were strictly
honorable.

I do sympathize, so don't get me wrong. It is just this sort of behaviour
that turns people off to institutions. While they are undoubtedly
responsible for the contents of the tapes, they should also be careful to
instruct everyone about the rules before they go off the deep end as they
seem to have done.

-- 
 Gary Benson  *  John Fluke Mfg. Co.  *  PO Box C9090  *  Everett WA  *  98206
   MS/232-E  = =   {allegra} {uw-beaver} !fluke!inc   = =   (206)356-5367
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