On Wednesday 24 February 2010 11:27:52 pm Andrew McNabb wrote: > Whether or not it's currently legal, this behavior _should_ be illegal. > I'm not too surprised that Germany would deal with this better than the > US does; they tend to have much better privacy laws in general.
Boy, how I love my forensics class! Let's take another example from my class. This is the scenario: you get into a car, the keys are in the ignition, you turn on the car and drive away. Is this illegal? The answer: it depends on context. 1. If the car is yours, then you have not committed anything illegal. 2. If the car is not yours but it belongs to a friend and you are returning it, it may be questionable. 3. If the car is not yours and doesn't belong to anyone you know, this is theft and it is illegal. Let's take this incident of email snooping: is it illegal? It depends on the context. In the context of securing the BYU network? It is not both on the moral and legal views. Now, there is something else you need to know: not all laws are created equal. It is a violation of BYU policy to smoke on campus. BYU can ban you from campus and expel you for smoking. Does that mean it is a federal crime to smoke? Absolutely not. Every individual and entity is free to set their own rules over their own dominions. That's why you can refuse to let someone into your home. BYU has the same rights. If someone who you didn't know knocked on your door and asked to use your Internet connection, would you give them free reign? Most likely no. Would you monitor them? Most likely, yes. Don't we do this even with our children? So why should it be OK for you to snoop on your family, and why should it be wrong for your employer/school to snoop on its employees/patrons? This is really starting to sound like a double-standard: I can impose anything on you, but you can't impose anything on me. Now, as to what government can do? That's another story. There are explicit laws about what government can and cannot do, but they only apply to government. -- Alberto Treviño BYU Testing Center Brigham Young University -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
