From: raob@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (richard oxbrow)
Subject: Re: Lack of ethics on behalf of the RMIT Computer Centre Staff.
Organization: Electrical and Electronic - University of Melbourne 
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 06:46:15 GMT

In article <s913631.702662197@minyos> s913631@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Darren Reed) writes:
>If you log into minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au via any of the ccannexes from
>VICNET, esp. via the modems, you should be aware that a certain member
>of the computer centre staff has a nasty habit of logging individual
>sessions.
>
>If you value the integrity of your logins to minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
>(perhaps any other RMIT computer you access via ccannex) then I
>would suggest *NOT* using the annexes. CDCNET maybe a better option
>but they probably have some way of logging sessions from there too.
>
>How do I know this happened ? The staff member in question both
>admitted to doing it and showed me his saved log of a session
>whilst I was on minyos. Apparently this isn't the first time this
>has happened. After talking to another member of staff there, it
>seems they will justify any such activity if they suspect their
>suspicions turn out to be wrong ? Do we have to live in constant
>fear of the staff there logging our sessions ? This seems quite
>unreasonable to me. Should they be allowed to log our sessions for
>'suspected' breach of rules ? Is our privacy allowed to be invaded
>in this manner ?
>
>Is any information they may glean from such dubious activities
>admissible as evidence in some disciplinary hearing, or has it been
>obtained illegally? Are the Computer Centre staff allowed to keep
>their own copies of the logs for their own purposes?
>
>I was unable to get a comment on whether these activities would be
>supported even if the staff were committing criminal activities.
>There was no indication that these activities would stop but would
>continue as long as they suspect improper use.
>
>After talking with fellow students, it appears that this 'logging'
>isnt the only breach of ethics that has occurred. Various students
>have also had telnet sessions to other hosts 'interfered' with by
>some administrator who has entered commands such as
>
>grep `whoami` /etc/passwd
>
>These commands have been entered 'for' the student (inserted
>into the input stream by the admin).
>
>Doesn't this constitute some sort of forgery or breach
>of security, esp. since the interfering administrator did not
>have an account of any sort on the remote machine in question.
>This makes one wonder about the security of accounts on remote
>machines if they are going to do things like this.
>
>What of yallara.cs.rmit.oz.au ? Well, let's hope the system
>administrators in the computer science department have a better
>code of ethics.  However, after the episode last year when it was
>discovered a certain member of staff had the right priveledges to 
>read all mail on yallara, it sort of makes you wonder...
>
>No names have been mentioned to protect the indiviual(s) responsible.
>
>Cheers,
>Darren
>
>p.s. Cancelling this news article will not improve things -
>     censorship is just as unethical and all students deserve
>     to know the risks they run when using the Computer Centre
>     equipment.

This might explain some of the  mysterious password changes that occured
on a certain un-named computer in an un-named business faculty at RMIT.
This is even more mysterious in that the said passwords changed on user
accounts that had restricted shells with no access to the passwd program.

Of course there could be another explanation.....

	richard/..
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