[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[Stephen Zepp]

I had to jump in here a sec:

1) I imagine that he's talking about having trusted admins with access to=
 this information _only_.

2) Japan is huge on "monitoring" their workers, and for the most part it =
leads to
	a) incredible management of workers
	b) very stressed out workers

3) Your comment about the FBI is a two-edged sword.  The FBI ( along with=
 a few other agencies ) is responsible for
counter-industrial espionage, in addition to counter-intelligence within =
the borders of the US.  The "clipper" chip, and
other concepts are very misunderstood by the public:  Primarily, the _con=
cept_ ( there are a lot of ideas for
implementation ) is not to be able to monitor _anything_.  Just like lega=
l wiretapping, reasonable cause will be
required, and a warrant issued to obtain the encryption keys ( in most pr=
oposals held by the Department of Standards, or
some such, in any case a completely non-justice oriented gov't. departmen=
t ).  They're not gonna ever get free reign, at
least not legally.




Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
>=20
> Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> wrote:
> >At 12:56 PM 12/19/97 PST8PDT, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
> >>>Finally, the job of administration will be greatly eased by knowing
> >>>exactly what happened in any given incident.  No more claims of 'But=
 _I'm_
> >>>the one who finished the quest first.  Boffo just spam-killed my lin=
k,
> >>>took the prize while I was reconnecting, and claimed to have won...'=
  A
> >>>simple, 'Well, lemme chack the logs...' will make even the most dari=
ng
> >>>trickster come clean if they know that you _do_ have the logs to bac=
k it
> >>>up.
> >>
> >>This is awful...  To me this is a movement towards virtual fascism.
> >
> >I don't see the problem here Ola -- and I certainly don't see any fasc=
ist
> >tendencies (admittedly, I haven't been following the discussion closel=
y).
> >If you tell people up front that you will be logging everything that i=
s
> >said, but that these logs will be kept confidential, what's the proble=
m?
>=20
> The first problem is that he won't tell them directly. The second
> problem is that it isn't treated fully confidential (need to know is
> an important principle). The third problem is that he is logging more
> than can be defended from an administration POV. The fourth problem is
> that this is a supervision system where those with total power gain
> total control, which in turn has a bad impact on any society.  The
> fifth problem is that most users don't expect exessive logging, and
> that they think that this isn't common.
>=20
> >I'm not interested in going over logs of others' private conversations=
 or
> >cybersex, but I cannot tell you how valuable a complete log of any
> >contentious or harassing conversation would be.
>=20
> I think the proper way to handle this problem is to allow the
> _offended_ person to turn on logging of incoming harrasment.  A slip
> is ok, persistant repeated harrasment isn't.
>=20
> Anyway, I don't see why more than 1 and only 1 person should have
> access to logs.  All systems have wizard "assholes" (from a user POV).
>=20
> >accounts of the same incident.  If you cannot tell what really happene=
d, it
> >becomes much more difficult to deal with potentially explosive situati=
ons
> >(and IME, there is no one quite so ready to be a vocal martyr than som=
eone
> >who had in fact done something dishonest like edit a copied log).
>=20
> Eh, I believe in the right of each individual person to protect
> themselves, but I don't believe in exessive supervision by the
> "ultimate" government.  Especially as any abuse (by admins) is
> difficult to trace.  Users should be able to feel the freedom of
> thought, the exchange of thoughts (inclusive ways to exploit the
> system!!) without having some fascist police checking up on their past
> in this way.  Besides, logs may lie, you can't log the communication
> that happens in parallell in other media.
>=20
> >Also, I think that just the knowledge that a conversation is being log=
ged
> >will tend to keep harassment from happening without constraining any o=
ther
> >forms of speech.
>=20
> Actually, I don't believe in either assertion.  Logging constrain some
> forms of speech, especially critical comments towards admins... :-(
> It's funny though, that logging and checking up on employees is rather
> common in the US, just as logging and chekcing up on individuals was
> common in old East Germany and Romania! :^) Do I have to mention FBI's
> concerns about not being able to monitor encrypted communication??
>=20
> Ola.