Re: Imminent Death of Usenet Predicted

[dmandl@panix.com (David Mandl)]

At 8:02 PM 2/2/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
>*Universities, corporations, and even ISPs are explicitly adopting policies
>that allow them to inspect e-mail at will. (If the arrangement is made in
>advance, it may not violate the ECPA to do this...and I'm not saying there
>aren't some good reasons why these entities would want the right to inspect
>e-mail (their liability being a good example), just noting the growing
>situation.

On that note...

A good friend of mine was fired (forced to resign) from her Wall Street
programming job recently.  The reason: her employer "just happened" to
stumble onto a message she'd posted to a mailing list a year ago, in which
she'd said some "very unflattering" things about the company.  The message
in question was posted from her personal email account (so it in no way
violated the company's rather strict internet use policy) and was the only
such message she'd ever posted.

However, one other piece of email was cited, this one also containing an
unflattering reference to the company but never mentioning them by name.
The obvious conclusion is that they hadn't merely come across this stuff in
an innocent Alta Vista search for "Company Name," but rather had searched
for my friend's name specifically.

My friend is looking into various legal options, so she's asked me not to
say any more for now.  But I consider this a very serious development and a
frightening precedent.  The company in question, incidentally, also does
routine scans of email and archives all incoming and outgoing mail.

As I and others have been saying for a while: what's happening on the net
is another "enclosures" movement.  Yes, I know that on this list that's a
politically incorrect view.  Deal with it.

   --Dave.

--
Dave Mandl
dmandl@panix.com
http://www.wfmu.org/~davem