Confidentiality of browsing records

[Pat Anderson]

Joe Murphy said:

>stacks. So I guess some of this comes down to whether you define browsing
>history as a public fact or a confidential record.

This seems to me to hit it on the head. I have encountered
just a few too many indiscreet sysops and mailmen to feel
that tracking the netscape history is particularly significant.
I know it is rare, but I have known mailmen who stole the
mail and read it for amusement. I have known sysops who
broke into users e-mail accounts at a whim. I knew one who,
just to prove he could do it, sent a friend of mine an
e-mail message from his own account (meaning sender and
receiver were the same, except he hadn't sent it and it
was signed by the other person). In some offices it is
made very clear that, while they aren't using the information,
the network keeps track of every program you use, how long you
use it, every page you print, what the file was named, etc.
And how long is this info kept? A few days to a week
usually. When I began working at my current job, the
then-director of the library informed all staff that
every month she got a phone listing of every call,
local or other, which was made from a library phone,
and believe me, she looked at it in detail and people
did hear back about justifying calls they had made.
She would even have the secretary phone the numbers
again to see who was on the other end. This is none
of it new. Our police say that if you want browsing
to be confidential, do it at home. If you browse in
a public lab, well, it is a *public* lab, and
confidentiality cannot be assured.

Again, think of the relevance. How often would this
actually be useful in a public lab? In our case,
the perpetrator used the same machine over and over
again, and because we were trying to catch him and
had witnesses, we knew what days and times he was
here and what machine he was using. Without that
kind of detail, the history log is useless for
trying to get information about any given individual.
We don't have individual login IDs, so the computer
doesn't know who's using it. The history is just
a curiosity, nothing more, and as such, I tend to
think of it as public rather than private. Now,
on my assistant's machines, which are on their
desks, the reverse is true. But my staff think this
is such a cool trick, they pull up their own history
files while I am talking with them. Easily amused, I
guess.

Everyone have a good weekend! -- Pat Anderson

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