🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <jpe.724345261@ee.egr.duke.edu>, jpe@ee (John P. Eisenmenger) writes:
>I think you're wrong here.  Just because your friend owns the physical medium
>does not give him the right to monitor your phone calls.  Your phone call is
>your intellectual property and you deserve a right to privacy.

I disagree with holding "intellectual property" as an important issue
here.  The right to privacy is more important.  Of course copyright
steps into the picture if the caller is reading some of his work, or
singing, etc.

Just a note against equating "intellectual property" with property.  I
think "intellectual property" is a misnomer, as it is not property but
merely some limited monopolies on the use of the result of one's
intellectual or artistic creation.  I don't think John was doing this,
but I think it's a dangerous road to try to solve everything with
"property rights".

>BTW: I have yet to figure out why I would monitor an individual while doing
>system maintenance.  Anyone have any examples?

In an university here, rules of computer use are being worked on and
the admins have voiced opinions against limitations in monitoring
users or examining the files of users.  The obvious case is monitoring
an intruder or a suspected intruder.  They have stated examples of
looking at which users use which software packages (elm) so they could
be notified of a version change (or something like that).  Personally,
also having worked administrating systems, I think monitoring a known
intruder (with permission from the real account holder) would be a
reasonable example of valid monitoring, but other examples don't come
to mind.

>>	- drive a car
>>	- come and go as we please
>>	- drink alcohol
>
>Privacy *is* a right, not a privilege.  I agree that many Americans mistake
>privileges as rights and you cite several good examples, but this is not one
>of them.

I don't think the three examples above are good examples, either.

>Because it is sometimes necessary to use keystroke-logging to protect the
>accunts of authorized users, we must sometimes resort to using it.

One way to solve this is for the computer-using society (users,
admins, owners) to make rules and require a signed form for using the
systems.  The rules would spell out in which situations monitoring may
be done, how the users should be informed of it and so on.

//Jyrki