Re: seen recently at ACS/ITD

Joshua Graham Pitcher ((no email))
Fri, 19 Apr 1996 08:49:55 +1000 (EST)

>
> Their current policy as per the message of the day basically says that
> they can go look at anything anytime and if they dont think it is course
> work punish you as per the universities rules and i presume this goes as
> far as exclusion if you do something they consider pretty bad. In my

[stuff deleted]

>
> >From a privacy standpoint this is REALLY REALLY REALLY fucked.
>

Please do not take this as me being on ACS's side. In 6.5 years at UTS every
contact I have had with ACS _without exception_ meant dealing with an arrogant
self-important fuckwit too distracted by his computer to be botheres to help
solve my problem. However...

I have no problem with ACS viewing our accounts. I am sick of waiting hours
to download legit stuff because some dork on a Sun has 10 FTP sessions running
downloading .gif files while the rest of the room is full of other dorks on
IRC doing much the same thing. If people want to do that sort of thing I
suggest they give progsoc $10 and do it on ftoomsh or buy a modem and pay an
ISP for the priviledge. I have no objection to these activities going on in
moderation, but some students use ACS equipment solely for the above purposes.
And that shits me.

> Question:
>
> > Does ACS have some sort of code of ethics for people
> > with superuser access or is that sort of thing covered by an acceptable
> > usage policy if there is one as such ?
> Official awnser is no ( why am i not surprised).
>
> My opinion of what is going on here is that ACS are way overstepping their
> boundaries by actively looking through peoples accounts, looking at
> anything they want to and making some sort of value judgement on its

IMHO I disagree. I do not bileve it is an invasion of privacy to monitor
peoples acounts for the purpose of verifying appropriate usage of ACS
accounts. However this monitoring must be done under STRICT guidelines and
staff with the authority to do this must be limited.

If ACS fell they have the right to freely browse peoples accounts and check
out the .gifs they have been downloading, then they do not. Such activity
is a GROSS invasion of privacy. Staff at Telecom and the ATO face criminal
prosecution for such behaviour, and I don't see why ACS staff should be any
different.

It does not surprise me that ACS has no AUP or code of ethics, after all the
whole department is an incompetent bunch of idiots too obsessed with policing
their network to be bothered maintaining it.

Josh.