[ale] [WAY OT] Ethics Question

[James P. Kinney III]

Let me respond to that with a series of questions.

If you found a body on your property would you notify the authorities?
If you found tracks in the logs that suggest that a system you manage
was being used to extort money from people, or break into sensitive,
nuclear weapons installations, or being used to perform a DDOS, would
you notify authorities?

I think we have a responsibility to be active in the community. In my
mind, that includes turning in evidence that points to teacher abuse of
a minor no matter how it was found. That is often enough to get a
subpoena to collect the evidence for use in court.

I also acknowledge this vigilance is a slippery slope towards a police
state. 

On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 10:30, Jonathan Glass wrote:
> On another mailing list, I received an article.  The subject of the article was
> asking about the ethical implications of finding incriminating email from a
> teacher to a student on a High School mail server.  Should the tech turn the
> data over the authorities or keep quiet.  Apparently the Superintendent and the
> Principal want the tech to leave it alone.
> 
> My question to the group:
> Should the author of the article be responsible for sending this information the
> FBI/local police, whether or not the subject of the article decides to act?  
> 
> My opinion: 
> Since this article is talking about child abuse by teachers, and since the
> school officials are covering up, I believe the author has a moral obligation to
> contact the authorities.  I'm so irritated that the author and subject have
> apparently done nothing that I'm thinking about forwarding the article on to the
> local FBI, even though I'm not sure if something like that is in their
> jurisdiction.  
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Jonathan Glass
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
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