[11703] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
"Every move you make...I'll be watching you..."
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul W. Robinson)
Thu Apr 14 18:08:54 1994
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 02:43:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Paul W. Robinson" <PAULW@tdr.com>
Reply-To: "Paul W. Robinson" <PAULW@tdr.com>
To: Everyone Else Lurking on Com-Priv <com-priv@psi.com>,
Comp Privacy <COMP-PRIVACY@uwm.edu>,
Ethics in Computing <ETHICS-L@vm.gmd.de>,
Risks in computing <RISKS@csl.sri.com>
>From: "Paul W. Robinson" <PAULW@TDR.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
-----
Here's something which might be of interest to you. A large Educational
Instuitution's computer is watching everything sent in newsgroups and
possibly in some mailing lists. I am using a modified address of
PAULW@TDR.COM instead of PAUL because that computer has already sent me a
message to PAUL@TDR.COM. I want to try to see what it does this time.
In one list I mentioned that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(you know what the 3 letter abbreviation is) has a system that collects
E-Mail addresses of people who post to newsgroups. That site used to be
called "pit-manager".
I am writing this message in this way to see what happens. Apparently,
any time one of the Institute's computers sees a reference to
"pit-manager" it mails a message to the sender telling them that the site
was changed to the address "rtfm".
I am not referencing the internet address that ends in .EDU here for that
educational Institution because I want to see if the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's computer is checking based upon someone using
the name "pit-manager" or is it because of reference to the Institute's
domain name with that term used within the message?
I don't know if a program that is sending out messages based on it
scanning the contents of messages that it saw is a good idea. Consider a
program that checked for spelling errors and criticized people who
misspelled words by telling them of all the words they misspelled.
(Considering how bad some people's writing is, that might not be a bad
idea.)
This sort of practice could be prostituted into to all sorts of
interesting political correctness tactics by having automated programs
that watch for comments someone doesn't like and mailing the writer
complaints.
---
Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM
Voted "Largest Polluter of the (IETF) list" by Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
-----
The following Automatic Fortune Cookie was selected only for this message:
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
