🚀 go-pugleaf

 Jon> == Jon Alperin <jona@iscp.Bellcore.COM> 

 Jon> Now let me see if I follow....

 Jon>   1. You keep files on another system, therefore you have the
 Jon> right to insure that there is proper security on your files on
 Jon> that system

 Jon> Therefore:

 Jon>   You break into someone else's account.....

Who said anything about breaking in?  Let's take a hypothetical case
(NOT the Georgia case).

Mr. Edward Foo has an account on vax99.big-u.edu.  He keeps some things
there, that (while not horrendous top secret information) he'd rather
keep out of the way of J. Random Luser.

He runs COPS on the system (say, without the PW guesser, because that
takes too damned long).  He finds that /var/spool is world-writable.  He
reports this to the sysadmins, who fix it (hopefully ;-).

Has he done anything wrong?  If he did it here, I'd be glad to hear it
so I could fix it (though I run COPS, too...).

I know some sysadmins who would take a "shoot the messenger" stance on
this (and have).  There have been accounts suspended for running COPS
when the only way the sysadmin knew COPS was run was from the report
being mailed to him...

 Jon> hmm.... If you want to have privacy and security on your own
 Jon> files, you should respect the privacy and security of others. It
 Jon> may sound childish, but unless you own the system, everyone else
 Jon> is entitled to the same rights of security and privacy as you.
 Jon> Unless, of course, you really aren't interested in maintaining the
 Jon> privacy of your own files.... :-}

Perhaps the best way to respect the privacy and security of others is to
make sure that privacy and security is better maintained.
-- 
Christopher Davis - System Manager & Postmaster, Electronic Frontier Foundation
<ckd@eff.org> <{uunet,bu.edu,...}!world!eff!ckd> NeXT: <ckd@black-cube.eff.org>
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