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From: jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Foothead, Foothead, on the net/Who's the biggest liar yet?
Message-ID: <1073@epimass.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Apr-87 14:03:19 EST
Article-I.D.: epimass.1073
Posted: Mon Apr 20 14:03:19 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Apr-87 01:19:41 EST
References: <1128@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <1065@epimass.UUCP> <5553@eddie.MIT.EDU> <5558@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 27
Xref: mnetor news.misc:293 news.sysadmin:129

In article <5558@eddie.MIT.EDU> ooblick@eddie.UUCP (Mikki Barry) writes:
>An important factor that everyone seems to have missed here is that
>Foothead's home directory was PROTECTED.  I have spoken to foothead on
>this issue, and he told me that not only are his directories protected,
>but the "shell scripts" in them were created to give net access to
>Pooh, and to Paul Zimmerman, a FACT, that I have checked with both of
>them.  This was done with the full concent of OTHER EECS staff.

Foothead did not own any part of the machine he was using.  Ambar was
using her root privs properly; I would do the same on my machine.
The info gathered against Foothead was quite sufficient to justify an
investigation.

>Charging somebody with faking mail and news before you have proof, and while
>the only evidence you have is obtained by using your root privs to read
>other's protected directories is quite the case of the pot calling the kettle
>black.

It is not.  The system administrator not only has the right, but the
DUTY, to investigate in cases like this.  If she had come across any
confidential information in the process of investigating, it would be
her moral obligation not to reveal it to anyone else.  But if she
came across incriminating evidence -- burn the dude!

-- 
- Joe Buck    {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck
	      seismo!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck  {pesnta,tymix,apple}!epimass!jbuck