A message from Lenny sent to me several years ago. Both he and I had completely forgotten about this one.

     X-UIDL: 819953774.033
     From: Leonard N. Foner 
     Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 16:21:30 -0500
     To: rhodes@media.mit.edu
     Subject: Gee, does _this_ sound familiar?
     Cc: foner@media.mit.edu

     I just happened to trip over this in a relatively ancient Risks digest.  It
     sounds _exactly_ like what's happening in Congress today.

     - - - Begin forwarded message - - -

     Date: 	Mon, 3 Jun 1991 12:07:33 xxx
     From: [anonymous]
     Subject: Privacy and Network Monitoring

     By some odd coincidence, the recent privacy thread in Risks comes along right
     on the heels of an ugly incident at the company I work for.  We have a very
     large internal network along with a system of newsgroups on a wide variety of
     topics.  One of these is called "grumps" which is designed essentially for the
     venting of curmudgeonly humor.  It is generally considered to be the electronic
     equivalent of the occasional water-cooler gripe session.  Although humorous in
     intent, sometimes issues important to the running of the company surface there.
     I posted a satirical message last month, taking the company to task for some
     bit of silly official pomposity, and thought nothing more of it.

     Imagine my surprise when two weeks later, my manager's boss called me into his
     office, with a copy of that message on his desk.  He informed me that I should
     think carefully about sending out this sort of thing and that it reflected
     poorly on me and could jeopardize my professional advancement.  Upon
     investigation, I discovered that our personnel department has very quietly
     taken on the job of surreptitiously monitoring traffic on certain internal
     "recreational" distribution lists.  When something "offensive" is detected, it
     gets back, via the personnel system, to the offender's management.

     I had a long talk with our VP of personnel who explained that they weren't
     "spying", they were just trying to keep "offensive" mail off the net.  Of
     course, *they* decide what is offensive or not.  There is a risk here, one
     which I don't recall having seen mentioned here before, and it is that
     personnel/management people operate under a very different set of values than
     the people in the technical community with whom I normally share such postings.
     For example, this VP pointed with pride to the fact that she doesn't have a
     computer in her office.  The manager I talked to insisted that posting to a dl
     is a public act, whereas I view it as private in the same way as a conversation
     around the lunch table in a group of friends.  These people have now set
     themselves up as social arbiters of a system which they themselves never use.

     After thinking about this incident, I implemented an anonymous mail forwarding
     system, which would allow people to express their opinions openly without fear
     of retribution on unspecified charges.  Not surprisingly, word of this got
     around too.  This system proved to be intolerable to Personnel.  They could not
     stand the idea that anyone could say what they liked and couldn't be traced,
     despite the fact that the company itself operates a "Comment" system, which is
     designed to allow people to send anonymous comments to management.  I was
     politely asked to stop my forwarding service.  After thinking it over, I
     agreed, and I now regret that decision.  The net result has been greatly
     decreased traffic on the grumps dl, and a major loss of faith on my part in the
     goodwill of the management of our company toward the people who work here.

     - - - End forwarded message - - -