If People Were Honest

[John Gilmore]

A few days ago I had a personal illustration of how even honest people
need privacy.

The Board of Directors of EFF had met to make some decisions.  Some of
these involved firing employees, closing offices, etc.  (See
comp.org.eff.news and .talk for all the details).  It took a few days
to finalize everything, though.  During that time, we needed privacy
in order to not hurt people (they might hear a false rumor that was
the result of an intermediate stage in the decision; they might hear
from some source other than us that they were losing their jobs, etc).

We seriously had to consider whether to use email to work out the
final details, since the system administrators had not yet been told.
Cellular phones were right out.

As it worked out, it was fine.  The announcement was posted to the net
slightly after the meeting in which we told all the employees what was
happening.  I won't say nobody was hurt -- we all were -- but we were
all a lot less hurt than if the staff had "accidentally" found out,
before anyone responsible for the decision had told them personally.

	John