Re: [ProgSoc] RE: forcing my friend to hand over his _personal_ laptop

[Terry Mahony <tjm@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

> A friend of mine is studying a the Uni of Tasmania. Some of you may 
> have heard
> of recent moves by Sony and a few other labels to examine the contents 
> systems
> at USyd, UMelb and UTas. The Uni down there has just about capitulated 
> to the
> labels, and is forcing my friend to hand over his _personal_ laptop for
> inspection before they will allow him any access to the network, or 
> even bring
> his computer to uni.
>
> Now, technical stupidity aside, is anybody familiar with any similar 
> situations
> to this and what happened?
>
> It is more a matter of principle in terms of personal data being 
> stored on a
> personal computer; regardless of whether mp3s are there or not.

Wow, that's incredible. I can't believe people actually put up with 
this? My laptop
would leave my hands only over my dead body. Nobody touches my laptop 
unless
I'm around and supervising - unless I trust the person. I hate to think 
how I'd react in
this situation... most likely with several hand gestures, I think.

Even if they were to inspect my laptop, under my supervision (and via 
me, no less),
isn't it quite futile? If I knew of such policies, which I now do, I'd 
store anything
"contraband" in an encrypted disk image inside a pkg or something.

Whatever happened to privacy? Must've just been a fad...

I see so little point in this... what's to stop a person from putting 
things like kazaa
on the system AFTER inspection? What's wrong with having kazaa at all, 
really?
Hell, what if it was being used to find PDFs, or for research purposes?

I'm just incredulous. If my uni (UNSW) ever institutes such a policy, 
well... they're
asking for trouble. :|

*sigh*

-Terry


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