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From: tim@ism780c.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.rumor,net.news.adm,net.followup
Subject: Re: ading other peoples' mail
Message-ID: <1974@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Apr-86 16:08:47 EST
Article-I.D.: ism780c.1974
Posted: Wed Apr 23 16:08:47 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Apr-86 04:09:48 EST
References: <703@frog.UUCP> <12400018@uiucdcs> <2410@jhunix.UUCP> <132@fai.UUCP> <4697@ut-sally.UUCP> <692@hoptoad.uucp> <1480@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.rumor:2033 net.news.adm:638 net.followup:5969

In article <1480@ames.UUCP> barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) writes:
>>
>> Furthermore, if I am in business and my
>>competition is dumb enough to pass sensitive data through my machine,
>>at my expense, why should I ignore this?
>
>	Sense of fair play? Or is that obsolete? Here's an
>example for you: it's well known that con men depend on the greed
>and stupidity of their victims, and some of them are quite
>vociferous in defending their own morality on that basis. What's
>your opinion?

I don't think the con men analogy is correct.  It would be correct if
I called up a machine at my competitors, noticed that they had no root
password, logged in as root, and read secret files.  They _are_ being
stupid for doing this, but I would not feel right about reading their
stuff.

But the E-mail case is different.  They are the ones putting their
stuff on my machine.  It seems to me that they are the ones taking
advantage of me!  They are using my machine to compete with me.  If
they are dumb enough not to encrypt their data, then I see nothing
wrong with reading it.


-- 
Tim Smith       sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim || ima!ism780!tim || ihnp4!cithep!tim