On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:05:37PM -0500, John Young wrote:
The lilly-livered sys admins who betray people's trust in their systems are a plague on the Internet, all braying about the need to secure their systems from bad users, and all of them -- along with their bosses and investors who are rushing to kiss the authorities asses even when the authorities know what the cheaters fear -- need to be exposed and pilloried.
Good comments, John. My 2 cents is that sysadmins' conservative organizations often force (or try to force) lilly-livered behavior. I've personal and 2nd hand stories about the legal counsel or upper management having a policy of blind cooperation with any law enforcement, sans warrant, for any request. Sometimes the sysadmin might choose to buck authority, but s/he does so at peril of losing cooperation or support from the higher-ups. So, regardless of whether the sysadmins are really lilly-livered, they might need to behave that way due to management or legal counsel who favors saving various legal expenses or hassles over taking the moral high road. Bottom line, as usual, is to trust no-one, including ISPs or sysadmins that have a strong privacy ethic. -- Greg