kyoto@pawl.rpi.edu (Jesse N. Schell) (11/14/90)
The Prodigy dilemma is a fascinating one, which brings up many
questions. Should the owners of a BBS be allowed to read your mail?
The only answer I can see to this is that the owners of the BBS should
make their policy clear...If they are going to read your messages, you
should know about it. I can see one day soon, however, people are going to
want a BBS where the owners guarantee that they will not read private
messages. This would be difficult to implement, but not impossible...
Is the US government going to have a US mail Email network in the
future? Will we trust them with it? How will we know if the FBI is reading
our mail? I don't think it could work... I mean, they can still tap our
phones and open our mail if they want, but it is so much easier to
intercept an electronic message...
I think that prodigy can do anything it wants to, but if it had made
its policies about the disputed topics more well known, there would be
less of an argument now. What do others think? What is the future of
privacy in relation to Email and BBS's?
Are you tired of annoying junk mail? Consider this:
1) By law, if you receive obscene mail, you can return it to the
post office, who must lodge a formal complaint with whoever sent the
offending mail.
2) The US Mail's definition of "obscene" is "anything that a person
thinks is obscene".
Putting 1 and 2 together, an ingeneous solution to the problem of
incessant junk mail appears....return any or all junk mail to the post
office, claiming that it is obscene! This strategy may confuse some
people, but it will prbably get you off of a bunch of mailing lists!bzs@WORLD.STD.COM (Barry Shein) (11/14/90)
In all fairness, the examples given seemed to involve Prodigy filtering messages destined to public boards, not private e-mail. If private e-mail was being looked at I would be interested in hearing about that. I agree with you that policies should be stated clearly if any filtering is to occur. But certainly in the case of messages destined for public areas the sense of privacy invasion is dulled somewhat, even if one disagrees for other reasons. For example, I have moderated (read before release) all messages going through INFO-FUTURES. Everyone knew I was doing this (this was a long time ago, when INFO-FUTURES came out as a digest.) I don't remember ever eliding a message, but certainly it would be my right (let's put it another way, it would be my "job"), for example if something seemed purely inflammatory and/or irrelevant to the list's purpose. > Is the US government going to have a US mail Email network in the >future? Will we trust them with it? Um, they do already, it's called NSFnet. >How will we know if the FBI is reading >our mail? I don't think it could work... I mean, they can still tap our >phones and open our mail if they want, but it is so much easier to >intercept an electronic message... The issue of encryption arises. Note that encryption on public airwaves (e.g. Ham) is a violation of license! As far as I know use of a scrambler on telephone calls is legal and doesn't raise eyebrows (I guess it's somewhat common in corporate communications.) > I think that prodigy can do anything it wants to, but if it had made >its policies about the disputed topics more well known, there would be >less of an argument now. What do others think? What is the future of >privacy in relation to Email and BBS's? No, no one can do anything they want to. See, for example, the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act. And, on a more practical level, as with anything else, once they take your money or otherwise enter into some sort of contract certain rules must apply. If, for example, an e-mail provider led you to believe that the service you were paying for included reasonable privacy then violating that would be a violation of contract, and possibly fraud, etc. -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
mark@intek01.uucp (Mark McWiggins) (11/22/90)
bzs@WORLD.STD.COM (Barry Shein) writes: >In all fairness, the examples given seemed to involve Prodigy >filtering messages destined to public boards, not private e-mail. >If private e-mail was being looked at I would be interested in >hearing about that. I was told by a knowledgeable user that Prodigy moderaters DO look at/censor e-mail. I don't know if this is true. -- Mark McWiggins Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek) +1 206 455 9935 DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong ... 1400 112th Ave SE #202 Bellevue WA 98004 mark@intek.com Ask me about C++!