Their current policy as per the message of the day basically says that
they can go look at anything anytime and if they dont think it is course
work punish you as per the universities rules and i presume this goes as
far as exclusion if you do something they consider pretty bad. In my
opinion a policy that says our staff can and will be looking at all your
files is pretty fucked, and this is in fact what has been happening. ACS
staff have been systematically going through ppl's accounts mainly
focusing on pictures, viewing those pictures and depending on what they
arelocking ppl's accounts for it, and from what i have heard they are
basically locking ppl's accounts if the pictures are considered to be
pornography, mainly i suppose because porn would be the content of most
pictures that they find. From the way it is worded their policy extends
to any information on their system, ie including mail, so if an acs staff
member wanted to they could go and read all of your mail to determine if
it is coursework related or not and presumably lock your account if it
isnt.
Question:
> Does ACS have some sort of code of ethics for people
> with superuser access or is that sort of thing covered by an acceptable
> usage policy if there is one as such ?
Official awnser is no ( why am i not surprised).
My opinion of what is going on here is that ACS are way overstepping their
boundaries by actively looking through peoples accounts, looking at
anything they want to and making some sort of value judgement on its
relevence to coursework/research of the owner.
Even in this day and age there is still such a thing as privacy, maybe ACS
need to be educated of this. It is 'their' system and everybody using it
has to abide by 'their' rules, however, that doesnt mean that their rules
arent fucked nor that their is no room for change in them.
Most people you talk to assume that no one can look at their stuff, and
that if someone like an ACS staff member does have access, that they
woulnd't actively monitor what they have. These are most probably the
people that would not be likely to be on this list, or any other for that
matter, just the average poor unsuspecting user who likes porn and thinks
that no one will be able to see it and tat it is safe stored in 'their'
account that no one else can see.
Maybe it is time progsoc started making some official noise about this.
..... in terms of representing the UTS computing community's interests.
Finding out what ITDs policies and practices are and making
sure everyone knows about and is happy about them.
Cam.
PS: thanks to sbg for some bits that he said that i stole
-- Cam Dorrington Treasurer, The Programmers' Society of The University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.Post: Po Box 112, Broadway, N.S.W Email: cam@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au
SOME FEAR If you have No Fear, you obviously aren't going fast enough