🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep9.121142.4840@ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>There is an interesting article in the September 1992 issue of "Corporate
>Computing".  Entitled "E-mail Snooping", it's an overview of the current
>controversy in email privacy.  It included discussion of the Epson case,
>comments from Eastman Kodak and several other firms, and an editorial by
>William F Buckley.  It's an interesting piece of reading material.
>
>I called Corporate Computing, and they refused my request to post the
>article or excerpts thereof.  (I realize that they have a healthy business 
>in selling reprints, but this seems a bit extreme.)
>
>I noticed something else interesting.  The article includes an interview
>with a director of the Electronic Mail Association.  After digging through
>several name servers (and nic.ddn.mil), I discovered that the EMA doesn't
>even have a registered domain!  Ya just gotta love it.......
>
>--Wes
>-- 
>MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
>morgan@ms.uky.edu   | Engineering  Computing |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
>morgan@engr.uky.edu | University of Kentucky | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
>  Mailing list for AT&T StarServer S/E  - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu

The Wednesday, Sept. 9, 1992 issue of the San Francisco Examiner has an
interesting article of how the "Email's trail of evidence in software case"
has brought civil suits against Gordon Eubanks, president of Symantec Corp., 
and Eugene Wang, a former executive of Borland International.  At this point in 
time, everything is "alleged" to have happened.  In a nutshell the DA office
has what they consider evidence in which both parties communicated using
MCI Mail. The contexts of the message have been determined to be marketing
plans and other confidential information from Borland that have aided
Symantec in the battle for software market share.

Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 

Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

-- 
        ---------  John Gloria - jpglori@pacbell.com	--------	
 		"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination
	       is out of focus."   -     Mark Twain

jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:

>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 

>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
>When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

No, he did *not* have the right (unless a prior contract specified otherwise)
to view Wang's email.  He should be prosecuted, found as guilty as he is,
and treated as harshly as possible.  That said, the evidence that Wang was
involved in crimes of his own *exists*.  It cannot be ignored.  Two wrongs
do not make a right.  Wang should also be tried, convicted, and probably
shot ("if you don't like the consequences of your actions...").

-JTT

jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:
>
>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 
>
>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?

I wouldn't think so, but I'd have to read an MCI Mail contract to be sure.
(I don't use any commercial email services, so I'm on foreign soil.....)

>When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

I follow the same pattern......I don't have time to snoop either.

--Wes

-- 
MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
morgan@ms.uky.edu   | Engineering  Computing |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
morgan@engr.uky.edu | University of Kentucky | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
  Mailing list for AT&T StarServer S/E  - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu

In article <1992Sep10.190922.900@dcatlas.dot.gov>, joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:
|> jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:
|> 
|> >Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
|> >When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
|> >I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.
|> 
|> No, he did *not* have the right (unless a prior contract specified otherwise)
|> to view Wang's email.  He should be prosecuted, found as guilty as he is,
|> and treated as harshly as possible.  That said, the evidence that Wang was
|> involved in crimes of his own *exists*.  It cannot be ignored.  Two wrongs
|> do not make a right.  Wang should also be tried, convicted, and probably
|> shot ("if you don't like the consequences of your actions...").
|> 
|> -JTT
|> 

Not so fast.  The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986
specifically exempts providers of electronic communications services
from the prohibitions against seeing the messages:

        Section 2701.  Unlawful access to stored communications

             (a)  Offense.-- Except as provided in subsection (c) of this
        section whoever --

                 (1)  intentionally  accesses  without  authorization a
            facility through which an electronic communication service is
            provided; or

                 (2)   intentionally exceeds an authorization  to access
            that facility;

        and  thereby obtains, alters, or prevents authorized access to a
        wire  or  electronic  communication while  it  is  in electronic
        storage  in  such  a  system shall be  punished  as  provided in
        subsection (b) of this section.

[...]

             (c)   Exceptions.-- Subsection (a) of this section does not
        apply to conduct authorized--

                 (1)  by  the  person  or  entity  providing  a  wire or
            electronic communications service;

In addition, the worker has the right to divulge what is inadvertently
discovered to law enforcement agencies if it pertains to a crime:

        Section 2702.  Disclosure of contents

             (a) Prohibitions.-- Except as provided in subsection (b)--

                 (1)   a  person  or  entity  providing   an electronic
            communication  service  to  the public  shall  not knowingly
            divulge   to  any  person  or  entity  the  contents   of a
            communication  while in electronic storage by  that service;

[...]

             (b)   Exceptions.--  A  person or  entity  may  divulge the
        contents of a communication --

[...]
                 (6) to a law enforcement agency, if such contents --

                      (A)  were  inadvertently obtained  by  the service
                 provider; and

                      (B) appear to pertain to the commission of a crime.

The only possible issue is whether the worker's discovery was
inadvertent.  Given that he/she was not specifically looking for
evidence of a crime, and was in the process of doing a normal account
deletion, it seems to me that it was inadvertent in the context of the
law.  I am not familiar with the all of the details of the case, so
there may be a subtlety involving how they came across the information,
but as far as I can tell, that worker was completely within the
allowances of the law on this one.

-- 
Joseph A. Watters, Jr.		jaw@owlnet.rice.edu
Deputy Director, Owlnet
Rice University
Houston, Texas

In article <1992Sep10.190922.900@dcatlas.dot.gov> joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:
>>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 

>>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
>>When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
>>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

>No, he did *not* have the right (unless a prior contract specified otherwise)
>to view Wang's email.  He should be prosecuted, found as guilty as he is,
>and treated as harshly as possible.  That said, the evidence that Wang was
>involved in crimes of his own *exists*.  It cannot be ignored.  Two wrongs
>do not make a right.  Wang should also be tried, convicted, and probably
>shot ("if you don't like the consequences of your actions...").

That all depends.  If the company paid for the mail account, then the mail
is *not* Wang's personal property, it is the company's, by implicit contract 
and also IMHO by moral standards.  The company has put it there for their
benefit, not Mr Wang's personal use or anything else.

I agree with you that Wang should be tried in either case.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays"
                                                       - Douglas Adams
  - Patrick Taylor                                       (Arthur Dent)
    Ericsson Network Systems
    exuptr@exu.ericsson.se                       "Don't let the .se fool you"
    or exuptr@ZGNews.Lonestar.Org, exu.exuptr@memo.ericsson.se

In article <1992Sep10.170535.1335@ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
>Subject: Re: MCI E-mail Snooping
>Keywords: Corporate Computing, September 1992
>Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:05:35 GMT

>jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:
>>
>>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 
>>
>>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?

Who paid for it?  Was it really a "personal" account, or was it a business 
account.

>I wouldn't think so, but I'd have to read an MCI Mail contract to be sure.
>(I don't use any commercial email services, so I'm on foreign soil.....)

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays"
                                                       - Douglas Adams
  - Patrick Taylor                                       (Arthur Dent)
    Ericsson Network Systems
    exuptr@exu.ericsson.se                       "Don't let the .se fool you"
    or exuptr@ZGNews.Lonestar.Org, exu.exuptr@memo.ericsson.se

Please note that in my original somewhat harsh post I _did_ say "unless a
contract states otherwise..."  There are all kinds of contracts, implicit
as well as explicit.  These also include questions of ownership of the
message(s).

I can't see how the reading of someone's email while an account is being
deleted could possibly be considered "inadvertant".  Does this mean that
deleting an account _causes_ its remaining/existing messages to be read?
If so, then 1) This was probably understood when the service was
initiated, and so may be legit, but 2) how can this be "necessary" when
an account is removed?  I find it inconceivable that many people would
subscribe to a supposedly private email service if they *knew* that any
messages [still] in their accounts could be read when the accounts were
removed.

I'm glad we're in agreement that Wang should get his just comeuppance; I
hope we can agree that the employee has something coming too, whether
prosecution for rights violation(s) or discharge for incompetence.

-JTT

morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:

>>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?

>>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

>I follow the same pattern......I don't have time to snoop either.

It isn't a question of whether you have the _time_; the question is, do you
have the _right_?

Unless it's in the contract, how can the answer be anything but "NO!"?
Why would it be in the contract?  Who would sign such a contract?

-JTT

In article <1992Sep11.161638.3832@dcatlas.dot.gov> joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:

>I'm glad we're in agreement that Wang should get his just comeuppance; I
>hope we can agree that the employee has something coming too, whether
>prosecution for rights violation(s) or discharge for incompetence.

>-JTT

The only problem I've got with this one is it sends a message to others:
"Even if people are using their account to steal corporate secrets or 
consortwith other employers, leave them alone."
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays"
                                                       - Douglas Adams
  - Patrick Taylor                                       (Arthur Dent)
    Ericsson Network Systems
    exuptr@exu.ericsson.se                       "Don't let the .se fool you"
    or exuptr@ZGNews.Lonestar.Org, exu.exuptr@memo.ericsson.se

joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:

>jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:

>>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 

>>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
>>When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
>>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

>No, he did *not* have the right (unless a prior contract specified otherwise)
>to view Wang's email.  He should be prosecuted, found as guilty as he is,
>and treated as harshly as possible.  That said, the evidence that Wang was
>involved in crimes of his own *exists*.  It cannot be ignored.  Two wrongs
>do not make a right.  Wang should also be tried, convicted, and probably
>shot ("if you don't like the consequences of your actions...").

When i was one of the LAN administrators for a medium sized company, we
didn't *have* a policy on such things (though we were agitating to get
the higher ups to *set* one)

What we did when closing a user account was nuke the email, make a quick
pass through their directories and nuke anything that appeared to be personal,
and make a scan for files marked as being owned by them elsewhere. 

After cleaning up the "personal" stuff, and nuking "irrelevant" stuff
(like config files for various programs), any remaining files were referred
to their supervisor to see if they were "needed". (ie for their replacement
or as general company data, sday a process spec the person had been writing).

Anything that wasn't "needed" got nuked. 

Yes, we read "private" files. But it was our job to cleanup the account,
and better *us* than their supervisor! I frankly couldn't have told you
the next day what had been in 90% of the files that got deleted as 
"personal". 

In fact as I had occasion to tell users who were worried about the fact that
I could read any file on the LAN "There are something like 4 gigabytes of
files out there. *Thousands* of them. Even if I *wanted* to snoop, there's
too much to go thru!"


-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)

In article <1992Sep11.234228.25430@qiclab.scn.rain.com> leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) writes:
>From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
>Subject: Re: Article on E-mail Privacy/Snooping
>Keywords: Corporate Computing, September 1992
>Date: 11 Sep 92 23:42:28 GMT

>joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:

>>jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:

>>>Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.  According
>>>to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then deleted. All
>>>these came to light when a staff worker was closing the account and "looked"
>>>into Wang's account and was suprised on the contents of the messages.  This
>>>started court orders to search offices/residences on both parties. 

>>>Question:  did the staff worker have the RIGHT to read Wang's email?
>>>When I close accounts, I tar everything to tape and then remove everything.
>>>I don't have time to read user's files or email that is still in queue.

>>No, he did *not* have the right (unless a prior contract specified otherwise)
>>to view Wang's email.  He should be prosecuted, found as guilty as he is,
>>and treated as harshly as possible.  That said, the evidence that Wang was
>>involved in crimes of his own *exists*.  It cannot be ignored.  Two wrongs
>>do not make a right.  Wang should also be tried, convicted, and probably
>>shot ("if you don't like the consequences of your actions...").

>When i was one of the LAN administrators for a medium sized company, we
>didn't *have* a policy on such things (though we were agitating to get
>the higher ups to *set* one)

>What we did when closing a user account was nuke the email, make a quick
>pass through their directories and nuke anything that appeared to be personal,
>and make a scan for files marked as being owned by them elsewhere. 

>After cleaning up the "personal" stuff, and nuking "irrelevant" stuff
>(like config files for various programs), any remaining files were referred
>to their supervisor to see if they were "needed". (ie for their replacement
>or as general company data, sday a process spec the person had been writing).

>Anything that wasn't "needed" got nuked. 

>Yes, we read "private" files. But it was our job to cleanup the account,
>and better *us* than their supervisor! I frankly couldn't have told you
>the next day what had been in 90% of the files that got deleted as 
>"personal". 

>In fact as I had occasion to tell users who were worried about the fact that
>I could read any file on the LAN "There are something like 4 gigabytes of
>files out there. *Thousands* of them. Even if I *wanted* to snoop, there's
>too much to go thru!"


There's another point here - there are more appropriate places for "private" 
stuff than company property, or company-paid accounts.  IMHO, if you want 
something to be private, encrypt it, or keep it in a private place.

IOW, leave your resumes at home ;-)
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays"
                                                       - Douglas Adams
  - Patrick Taylor                                       (Arthur Dent)
    Ericsson Network Systems
    exuptr@exu.ericsson.se                       "Don't let the .se fool you"
    or exuptr@ZGNews.Lonestar.Org, exu.exuptr@memo.ericsson.se

exuptr@exu.ericsson.se (exuptr@exu.ericsson.se) writes:

>In article <1992Sep11.161638.3832@dcatlas.dot.gov> joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:

>>I'm glad we're in agreement that Wang should get his just comeuppance; I
>>hope we can agree that the employee has something coming too, whether
>>prosecution for rights violation(s) or discharge for incompetence.

>>-JTT

>The only problem I've got with this one is it sends a message to others:
>"Even if people are using their account to steal corporate secrets or 
>consortwith other employers, leave them alone."

No.  It means that you leave them alone without what the shysters call
"probable cause".  Remember too that a man is innocent until proven
guilty.  Having violated the rights of others, the guilty lose their own
rights (unless you take politicians seriously); then it would be acceptable
to go into their email [to check for evidence of additional crimes].
In the case above, there's no satisfactory explanation of how deleting a
mail account necessitated reading any remaining messages.  If the employee
meant to save them in a file in case they were requested by the account
holder, but hit "Print" instead, and then _read_ what came out, he screwed
up in one or both ways I mentioned.

-JTT