Aloha Ski,
I've got to say, I was really disappointed in the message put out by the
board. It managed to say basically nothing in a lot of words. I know
this is a complicated situation and one LOPSA should be careful not to
fall on any particular line for, but the statement is far more damaging
than valuable. It is my opinion that LOPSA should release a strong
statement condemning the actions from a professional perspective.
"System Administrators must make a wide variety of judgment calls that
depend greatly upon the nature of their position. Those judgment calls
are dependent upon the seriousness of the situation and help inform how
the illegal or unethical activity is reported. Some of the reporting
considerations include whether there is an available internal reporting
structure, a requirement to use the internal procedures, or if a higher
legal authority is deemed necessary due to the nature of the report. To
again compare to both the military and clergy situations, they must be
prepared for serious investigation and personal consequences based upon
their actions and strive to not follow something wrong with a wrong of
their own."
That provides absolutely no position from LOPSA as a professional
organisation, yet the position should be abundantly clear. He had a
strong /professional/**obligation not to leak data. SysAdmins generally
have all the keys, all the access to absolutely everything in the
company. It's hard to do our job without it (unless the organisation is
of sufficient size). With that comes a lot of /professional/
responsibility. We have to be trustworthy, or at best we're doomed to
be inefficient and unproductive.
LOPSA really should have come out with a clear and strong message on
that score, instead you've released something potentially damaging in an
attempt to sit on the fence. If LOPSA as an organisation cannot make a
strong statement on something so blatantly /professionally/ wrong, what
else are you going to fail to make a statement for? It makes me wonder
what other unprofessional conduct you are going to tacitly support?
Is this the kind of behaviour I want to be financially supporting with
my membership? Right now I don't think it is. My renewal has just gone
through, and I'm not going to outright cancel it but I will be seriously
reconsidering this over the next year.
Whether or not Snowden has a moral or ethical responsibility as a
citizen of the United States to divulge the information, that's a whole
other rather complex discussion, and absolutely one that LOPSA should be
steering clear of. It could have made it abundantly clear in its
statement that it was doing so, and why it's not it's place to judge on
that.
For what it's worth I'm inclined to think he should have leaked it, and
that he arguably had a /personal, and ethical /responsibility to do so.
That's a /personal /obligation though/,/ not /professional/ obligation.
Paul
p.s.
It's also factually incorrect.
"Edward Snowden, who worked in the field of system administration,
claims to be a person who passed classified documents to reporters about
US surveillance programs."
It's a simple fact, not a vague claim. The Guardian and its journalists
have been in contact with him for several months and have been leaking
the information starting last week. They were the ones that then
revealed his identity at his request on Sunday, and released the video
interview. It's not a case of him standing up and saying "Oh oh look at
me, I did it", it's the organisation /he gave the information to/ that
did it.
On 6/11/2013 7:29 AM, Ski Kacoroski wrote:
Derek,
Thanks very much for starting the discussion thread on this topic.
The board has been in active discussions about it also and has posted
a statement at:
https://lopsa.org/content/lopsa-statement-regarding-system-administrator-eric-snowden
We look forward to your comments.
cheers,
ski
On 06/11/2013 09:37 AM, Derek Balling wrote:
On Jun 11, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Daniel Gilmartin
<[email protected]> wrote:
I think part of the trust of the public for
systems and network people is that while we are 'good' we are also
neutral, we don't take sides - we make things work and this changes
that notion.
If you're working for one of the sides you ARE taking sides.
D
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