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From: woods@hao.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,news.misc
Subject: Re: News and Motss
Message-ID: <568@hao.UCAR.EDU>
Date: Fri, 6-Mar-87 22:12:07 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.568
Posted: Fri Mar  6 22:12:07 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 10:45:55 EST
References: <1237@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <1130@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 30
Keywords: news fascist paranoia REALITY
Xref: mnetor soc.motss:1262 news.misc:211

In article <1180@midas.TEK.COM> hankb@midas.UUCP (Hank Buurman) writes:
>In article <2990@ihlpg.ATT.COM> ejbjr@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Branagan) writes:
>>
>>Assume even private email messages might be read by anyone.
>
>Administrators: Is this a common practice?
>
>Regardless of the argument put forward in your article, I consider e-mail
>to have the same privacy privilidges (sp?) as snail mail.
 
   What's your definition of "common"? Here, mail messages are occasionally
scanned for the header information when new mailers are being installed
or current mailers are being changed. I'm not interested in the message
content, but I cannot 100% guarantee that I won't see something in the 
content of the message as I do this. I am a human being; certain patterns
will catch my eye. No, I'm NOT going to peruse the rest of the message,
but are YOU willing to take the risk that I or someone else in my position
WON'T do so? All moral arguments aside, you are foolish if you make that
assumption. Secondly, E-mail is NOT legally the same as USmail. You can
consider what you like, but you're living in a fantasy world. At present,
as administrator of this machine, I'm bloody well entitled to look at ANY
file stored on OUR disk (whether I *wish* to do so is an entirely separate
issue), and as long as I'm expected to continue my job competently, there's 
NO WAY I'm going to give up that right.

--Greg
-- 
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