🚀 go-pugleaf

jpe@ee.egr.duke.edu (John P. Eisenmenger) writes:

>This borderline legality is comparable to what we as administrators face when
>trying to maintain the security of our systems.  This is the reason we have to
>put such a banner on our systems.  Does such a banner give blanket protection
>to the administrators?  It does not - notice the phrase "In the course of
>monitoring individuals improperly using this system, or [...] system
>maintenance".  This restricts the authority of the administrator, and I would
>imagine that if a legal case were to ensue the administrator had better have
>a d*mn good log of the evidence that lead to the monitoring.

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

I think that part is more aimed at reading *files*.

As administrator of the LAN at a company I used to work for, I sometimes
had to free up space. Which meant looking for "backup" files, redundant
copies of drivers (some folks kept putting copies of drivers in their
personal directories, even though the LAN was set up so that the programs
would "see" the ones in a public directory as being in any directory).
So I'd put out the usual notice that I'd be going thru and nuking the
files. Then a day or so later (except in *real* space crunches) I'd
run a script to kill the "obvious" stuff. Then I had to page thru all
the directories to find the stuff the script wasn't smart enough to
handle safely.

So I saw a *lot* of files that were "suspicious". I left them alone, mostly.
It wasn't my business if someone had his resume (named "resume" :-) in his 
directory. I did send notes to folks about some things. Like games and
GIF files. But that was mostly a "Please move it, we need the space"
message.

And I've had to "snoop" because someone had files locked open that
interfered with a backup or with a system shutdown. 

-- 
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)