On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 09:26:07AM -0700, Alberto Treviño wrote: > > 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.
There are and should be limits over what rules someone is allowed to impose. There are thousands of examples. I can't murder someone in my home, I can't sell drugs in my home, I can't hold someone captive in my home, I can't steal from someone in my home, and I can't defraud someone in my home. So it's not at all accurate to say that "Every individual and entity is free to set their own rules over their own dominions." Just because someone owns a network doesn't mean they should be able to do whatever they want to with it. I don't have a full understanding of telecommunications laws, but I do know that there are limits to what businesses can do. Note the following: http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm Particularly note the question, "Can my employer listen to my phone calls at work?" The answer explains that business calls may be recorded for quality control purposes, but that personal phone calls must not be monitored: "Under federal case law, when an employer realizes the call is personal, he or she must immediately stop monitoring the call. (Watkins v. L.M. Berry & Co., 704 F.2d 577, 583 (11th Cir. 1983)) However, when employees are told not to make personal calls from specified business phones, the employee then takes the risk that calls on those phones may be monitored." Of course, this refers specifically to phone calls rather than to email, but I feel justified in believing that the same principle holds. Privacy laws for email may lag behind those for phone communications, but we should still be able to talk about right and wrong without assuming that an organization should be able to do anything it wants without restrictions. -- Andrew McNabb http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/ PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55 8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868 -------------------- 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
