🚀 go-pugleaf

Quoted from <1060@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> ["Re: Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing"], by mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (System Mangler)...
+---------------
| In article <810@aimmi.UUCP>, gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
| > I'd be curious to see how many people see computer file space as personal
| > space into which no-one should intrude, regardless of access permissions.
| 
| The policy on our student machine is:
|     "Do not read other people's files without explicit permission."
| 
| where "explicit" means "they specifically told you that you could look".
+---------------

I see a computer file system as no different from a regular file cabinet which
has a potential for access by "ordinary people".  If a file isn't marked as
private, or a file drawer is locked (equivalent: file system access permission
denies access to the user/group/account/etc.), people shouldn't look.  But if
a file (file folder) isn't protected or marked as private, there's no
reason for someone NOT to look at it.  This is true for a file cabinet OR a
file system.  Caveat filer.

My personal practice is that I lock files I don't want people snooping in or
around, and leave files readable by others if I want them to look.  I also
have a directory ".transfer" in my home directory which is writeable by all,
so a user can send me files.  (I have csh aliases "lock" and "unlock", plus
a program to examine files in a particular directory -- a shell script "scan"
which uses the "file" command to figure out whether a file is ASCII, binary,
a subdirectory, etc. and uses the appropriate command to look at it (more,
strings, resursive "scan", etc.).)

However, the other view is permissible by this as well:  the customer file
cabinet at TDI is unlocked, but I have no business snooping in it.  This is
a matter of policy (office file policy/computer file policy).  In the end, it
comes down to a management decision.  My file policy on ncoast is consistent
with ncoast's policy as a public-access system; at TDI, it is necessarily
different and more in step with TDI office policy.

++Brandon
-- 
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