They would seem to allow the kind of behaviour that has often
been criticised of other UTS admins by our own admins.
Administators aren't supposed to be thought police they are
supposed to be ensuring the fair operations of the
equipment.
Sometimes these things may intersect, but I would contend that
normally they are quite different.
For instance, has Progsoc clarified legally what the
responsibilties of the the Society are in dealing with Pirated
Software for instance? Has someone even called the Business
Software Association or whatever it is?
I would have thought that management of anonymous ftp and the
normal auditing for account sharing and excessive disk use
would take care of this.
If there is to be an investigative role to our System
Administrators it needs to be heavily codified with process,
otherwise there is great potential for problem with legal
and even just university review.
Something more along the lines, of
If an abuse of the system is suspected the following is to be
undertaken:
(1) All access to the computer system of the suspected offender
is removed. This would include removing the ability to log
in, killing all processes, removing access to any files.
(2) An archival backup of home directory, work directories etc
is made. This backup needs to be stored securely.
(3) The person is notified that there has been a problem involving
their use of the computer system. An appointment is made to
go over things with the person.
(4) A representative of the executive presents the user with the
problem the Administrator has had with their behaviour and their
response is taken. If there is to be any going through of user
files this should be done now, in the users presence.
(5) Whatever executive defined process is undertaken to determine
if the complaint is upheld and if so what action is to be taken.
This is just an incomplete example, but I would like thoughts from
people on why this approach isn't being / hasn't been taken.
If our users can't be an example of how people should use computer
systems why can't our Administration be something that we can hold
up to the rest of UTS on how things should be done?
glenn.