Conference 7.286::digital

    A lot of this, perhaps all of it, applies to Notes as well. Notes
    get forwarded all over. One never knows who will see what you write.
    
    			Alfred

  >Rich concludes, "The old advice is still the best.  If you write an angry 
  >letter, don't send it.  Wait 24 hours, then read the letter again.  ...
    
    Maybe not 24 hours, but if you want to be able to reach into the MAIL
    pouch and retrieve that "Take this job and shove it" memo, do this:
    
    	In MAIL		Mail> SET DEFAULT TRANSPORT NM%
    
    	In LOGIN.COM	$ nm$after == "0 0:15:00"
    
    Then, whenever you send VAXmail, it will go into an NMail queue and
    wait for 15 minutes before sending.  You can adjust this delay to
    whatever time you want, but I find that the 15 minute delay has often
    saved me from sending a MAIL message with a typo that I didn't spot
    until after hitting <Ctrl\Z>.  If you need to retrieve the MAIL message
    from the queue, do this:
    
    	$ NMAIL SHOW QUEUE
    
    to get the number of the entry, then
    
    	$ NMAIL CANCEL nnn /RETURN
    
    using the entry number in place of "nnn".  The system will send the
    MAIL message back to you so that you can correct it and then resend it.
    
    Oh, and if you are in MAIL and want to override the 15 minute delay
    that you've built into your NMail queue, just do this:
    
    	Mail> SEND {or reply, forward, etc.} /NOTRANSPORT
    

    It is interesting to note that the lawyer considered the problem to be
    that somebody wrote "we couldn't keep our bleeping promises for more
    than five minutes" rather than considering the problem to be that we
    couldn't keep our bleeping promises for more than five minutes.
    
    
    				-- edp

	RE: .3 It depends on you're point of view. The lawyer is trying to
	protect Digital when it gets into trouble. The memo makes that harder.
	I don't think the lawyer would argue that not keeping promises wasn't
	a problem. It's just a different problem from the one he's addressing
	in this particular article.

	For example, VMS having bugs in it is a problem for Digital. However,
	since my job is finding bugs in VMS not being able to find bugs would
	be a problem for me. :-) The lawyers job isn't to make Digital keep
	promises it's to minimize the cost when someone else screws up. So
	the company having problems is a plus for him. But memos that make
	his job harder are a minus.

			Alfred

    
    	Oh, how many times I've wished that I had an UNMAIL command!
    
    	John

    re: -1
    
    		DELETE/SENT  ?
    
    	:-)
    	/john

More lawyering nonsense.

I agree with "mail in haste, repent at leisure", but if I
use MAIL as speech rather than writing, then MAIL **is** speech
rather than writing, and that's all there is to it.   Attempting
to legislate the way people view tools is ridiculous.   People
use tools in ways they find them to be useful, not in
ways that other people (be they lawyers or software engineers)
tell them to use them.

Yes, I understand that the lawyers are only doing the job that
DEC pays them to do (and from that point of view one presumes
they are doing it well) but that doesn't make me think that
it's anything other than a colossal amount of <bleep>.

RE: using Nmail to provide think-time for MAIL

A future version of Nmail will implement the 'blackmail' option,
wherein all your messages are analysed for potential embarrassment
level; when appropriate, a copy will be hidden away in a secret
place...

I arrived into a management position with Digital in 1989.  At the time, there
were several situations going on that might have ended up requiring legal to be
involved.  My consultant in personnel advised me to copy them on every topic when
I thought the communication was inflamitory.  

In discussing this procedure with a different personnel consultant 18 months
later, their comment was "I would not forward, or mail ANYTHING that I was not
willing to see appear on a bulliten board!  So how should management communicate
with personnel?  Print things off to hard copy and delete the incomming mail
messages?   I do know this, I got very different messages from the various people
involved.  

----------

From a practical point of view, this company has hundreds if not thousands of
people on assignment away from a location where their supervisor is located.
I found myself involved in such a situation, and was having difficulty getting
reimbursed for travel & expense.   After the 8th or 9th "polite" correspondance
to those who can effect change, and much verbal discussion that did allow some
venting of frustration, it did become difficult to keep the EMAIL sanitary.
By the way, the direct deposit system now adopted to replace tavel letter was
the eventual solution to getting regularly timed reimbursement, but that is for
another note topic.  

If I type in a message and wait 24 hours...

It ends up on a backup tape...

Isn't this open to discovery just as if I sent it?

If this is true, I guess the advice should be that you
must write out everything you want to say, wait 24 hours,
then re-type it to send it...

Now that's productivity!!!!!

This sounds like a lawyer with nothing better to do.

If the law department is serious about this, I would like them to
do a study and present the following:

1)  How much "non-inflamatory" mail would be stifled by fear about
	whether or not someone might sue us some day?
2)  How would this effect the profitability of the corporation vs.
	the litigation and lost profit due to lawsuits that we
	lose?
3)  Define the proper channel that will get results.  I have written
	"heated" memos in the past.  I don't like it but I get more
	action when I do.  I'd like to use a more "gentle" process
	but as far as I know, one doesn't exist.

If such a policy is cost effective, implement it, I'm sure that it
would not be.  I don't care how embarrassing this might be for 
some lawyer in some courtroom, some day.  I think we let the legal
tail (and finance and policy and procedure) tail wag the Supply
Chain (product creation, selling, delivery) dog far too often.

Ken Slattery

    .2

    isn't Nmail just great! i think who ever created Nmail is a genius!

    i also agree with .0 it is very important to think before you write and
    send your mail. actually thinking in general is good for you, i
    personally try to do it every day at least 5 times or more.

    by the way, i hear that one cant make a binding contract via email
    it has to be written on paper.  for example, if one is getting a job offer
    in email, it wont count until you get the paper offer in the normal
    mail.  

    \bye
    \nasser

    Note .0 warns about E-Mail.  

    Note .1 extends this warning to NOTES.

    It seems to me that this warning could also be extended to
    Voice-mail. Voice-mail has many of the same characteristics of
    E-mail (the storage, copy, replay, archiving, broadcasting ... ).
    Much to your own dismay, you may 'hear' your Voice-mail in court
    someday.

    But why stop here. The next logical extension is Video, (e.g.
    DECphoto, ... ).  Be careful how you use that middle finger.

    Why leave the other senses out?  How about DECsmell ( future
    product of the skunks works)?  It may come come with 'Nastygrams' 
    prevention warning '... do not eat beans before use ... '.  This
    will get the attention of the jury when it is played over and
    over again in court.

    Any suggestions on the proper way to "unload frustration"?

    Or is "loading" frustration in the first place the real problem?

    I love it.  Advice from a lawyer on how we shouldn't leave a trail ...
    
    I know, I know.  It's a given that we shouldn't have to be told that
    we should do the right thing.  And, I agree that it's best to cool down
    and think before sending it off.  But, I figure if it's still worth 
    saying after the cool down, it's worth writing down and recording.  
    Verbal agreements don't amount to much nowadays.  Besides, it's a lot
    easier to be honest than to have to separately track what you say versus 
    what you write.
    
    Steve

    I've seen this material before, in a presentation titled "Things that
    Cost a Million Bucks".  Believe it or not, the quotes were from actual
    court cases where someone has sued Digital.
    
    For unloading frustration, the lawyer that presented said, "If you have
    to send mail to someone, please send it to ME!" (paraphrased)
    
    Mark

jez...fear and loathing in corporate america...

if I didn't have a family to support I think I would go
cook rice for Somali people or teach courses to 
english speaking peoples
Course Title":
 "How to understand American Values" 
	subtitled..."Trick Question..."

Sample Question from On-line tutorial: 
	What is the real meaning of term "staffing-up"?
 

    These types of issues are springing up all along the Electronic
    Frontier.  The fact that your electronic messages, written, verbal,
    and visual can be used against you in court is a new twist on a
    very old concept.
    
    It's called accountability.  In the far bygone days, a person's word
    and their reputation were important evidence in the courts, because
    in many cases, that's all the evidence there was to judge.  Somewhere
    along the line, we adopted some looser ethics.  If it wasn't written
    down in triplicate, or if it wasn't witnessed by hundreds of people,
    or if you weren't caught red-handed, then "You can't Prove It" was
    the banner cry, and people didn't feel accountable for their actions.
    
    The business we conduct (and the *way* we conduct it) affects the lives
    of millions of people one way or another.  Why should we not be held
    accountable for what we say, whether it's in oral or written form?
    
    Geoff Unland in Austin

How about a switch in nmail that causes it to delete _ALL_ mail being sent
and to just pretend to send it?

Yes, the creator of nmail is a true genius - even if they won't let him sit
on the 2nd floor with all the rest of the Eng. Consultants.

;-)   ;-)

Dave W.

re: .17

There's no way of guaranteeing the integrity of a Mail message though.  You
could send me one that says "nice day" and i could Patch the file to have it
say "you're a butthead" and take you to Personnel if i wanted.  It's hard to
see how that could stand up in court--the evidence is so easily tampered with.

								paul

    re. -1
    
    Heck, a user with privs could send mail with your username and then
    take you to personnel(er, human resources).
    
    bk

    To the guy who said to send it to him if someone wants to gripe could
    be a setup.
    
    
    

The thing that bothers me about this topic, the more I think about it
is that, if I'm hearing things correctly:                                 

We are being encouraged to avoid committing comments which could potentially,
maybe someday be used against Digital in court.

One example of such would be a message like "Product XYZ is a pile of crap and
needs redesign", or "Product QRS is really not suited for AAA-type of
customer's problems".

Now, suppose that you hypothetically, saw something about to ship which in your
professional opinion, fit into one of the above categories, i.e. really
inappropriate (although profitable!) solution or quality problems.

How do you attempt to head off the situation without becoming a potential
liability in the event you are unsuccessful?  Assume that you may be > 1000
miles away from some key player(s).  Use only telephone? not likely to be
successful.

So what would you do?

Kevin

Sorry, that should be ..."committing comments... to electronic media"
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

. Don't think it.
  If you think it, don't say it.
    If you say it, don't write it.
      If you write it, don't send it.
        If you send it, deny it.

	Just something I remember from many years ago.  I forget its
	source, if I ever knew it.

	    Mike

    Maybe we should give up communication and go back to the gun.

 
  Two reasons for the base note spring to mind from reading through the replies:

    i) the "lawyer employment continuation" scheme :-)

.0> "Expect that your mail will be forwarded, no matter how confidential you
.0> think it is.  Expect that it will see the light of day at a customer or
.0> supplier site."

  This conveniently leads onto a breach of confidentiality counter-suit.

.19> There's no way of guaranteeing the integrity of a Mail message though. 
.19> ... It's hard to see how that could stand up in court--the evidence is so
.19> easily tampered with.
  &
.20> Heck, a user with privs could send mail with your username and then
.20> take you to personnel(er, human resources).

  This leads to a nice bit of client-chargeable time trying to prove/disprove
  these submissions as usable evidence [not to mention the impact on normal
  operations when trying to a) get the evidence & b) qualify it].

  Wonder if we need to increase the quality of our legal department if they
  are getting too worried about their inability to handle such things ?

  ... but to be serious now ...

   ii) the "let's not admit that we have problems" brush-off :

.3> It is interesting to note that the lawyer considered the problem to be
.3> that somebody wrote "we couldn't keep our bleeping promises for more
.3> than five minutes" rather than considering the problem to be that we
.3> couldn't keep our bleeping promises for more than five minutes.
    
.22> One example of such would be a message like "Product XYZ is a pile of crap 
.22> and needs redesign", ...

  If the company didn't have such problems in the first place, there would be
  no need for potentially inflammatory memos and thus no opportunity for the
  legal machine to swing into inaction.  If the internal mails didn't comment
  on problems then there would still be two possibilities : either the customer
  would get fed up and stop buying our products [and we go bust slowly] or the
  customer would get severely fed up, stop buying our products and sue us [and
  we go bust slightly sooner].  If the internal mails are received and acted
  upon, the products would be fixed (or not break in the first place) so the
  customer wouldn't get fed up ... this is the crux of the matter as if we can
  keep the customer happy with us, it doesn't matter how much rude, sarcastic,
  critical mail circulates internally AS THERE IS NO NEED FOR THE OUTSIDE WORLD
  TO BECOME AWARE OF IT.

  Now, _I_ realise that this could result in the TFSO'ing of some of our legal
  sparrows - and possibly some of the other 'impediments' that result in so
  much customer dissatisfaction in the first place - so I'm quite certain that
  others realise the same ... "Quick guys, look busy ... send out a memo or
  something ... drum up some business ...".  Still, it would be nice to fix the
  problem rather than just covering up a symptom or two : "Yes I know we're
  digging a lot of tunnels under the wall but you simply can't go round telling
  people about the cracks that are appearing - it might suggest to the court
  that we knew what was going on and it's much easier to plead ignorance".

.17> -< We are accountable for what we say, whether it's written or not >-

  Would that this was the case : if it was, I think we wouldn't be in quite
  as much of a problem as we are.

  Frank

    Re .19:
    
    > There's no way of guaranteeing the integrity of a Mail message though.
    
    Yes, there is.  Digital signatures are available through public-key
    trap-door encryption.  Several months ago, there was an article in
    _Scientific American_ that went even further.  Using modern
    cryptography and smart cards, it is possible to use electronically
    stored numbers as money.  You could download "money" from your bank to
    your smart card, be able to recover it if you your card were lost or
    stolen, and spend it with a merchant.  The merchant could deposit it
    with a bank.  Proper implementation prevents a person from spending the
    same numbers twice yet prevents the merchant from knowing your
    identity.  Even the bank that gave you the money and received it back
    from the merchant cannot tell that you spent the money at the merchant
    (because they can prove the numbers they got from the merchant were
    "signed" by the bank, but your smart card has transformed the numbers
    without altering the signature so that the bank cannot tell that
    _these_ numbers they are getting from the merchant are the same ones
    they gave you).
    
    
    				-- edp

    
    	Re: .19
    
    > There's no way of guaranteeing the integrity of a Mail message though.
    
    	Let me ditto the reply in .27 to say that digital signature
    technology is available that allows the author of a message and its
    contents to be proven.  Its just a matter of getting the technology and
    using it.
    
    	Re: .all of the above
    
    	I sincerely hope that for all of the anti-lawyer, anti-court,
    "they shouldn't be able to get our mail messages" statements in this
    string of replies, that everyone keeps in mind that what the base note
    is warning about is what _IS_ in terms of our legal system.  We can
    debate what "should be", but the "what is" is critical.  It is not
    a caution that should be brushed aside just because it violates some
    notion of the way that Digital employees tend to do their business.
    
    							-craig

     little nit, just to  sidetrack  this note a little bit:  I have been
     reading through a batch extractor  this  conference  in the mirrored
     one in MORTAL (but it seems  that  access  to  HUMANE is pretty good
     now, so maybe I'll switch back), and  I  couldn't  figured  out what
     everyone was writing about.  In that copy  note  2422's  title reads
     something like:
    
                RUMOR, THE MILL MAY BE SOLD
                
    A reply does mentioned that it was a duplicated topic  and moved, but
    somewhere the copy didn't deleted those notes and only added the  20+
    replies to it, not the base note.
    
    /OLD
    
    

    
    So we are selling the rumor mill, eh?  Good. ;')
    
    
    Mike

re: .27,.28

I'm not saying that a Mail system couldn't be constructed that would
get around this problem, just that the current Mail that our lawyer
friend is warning us about is not so protected.  And as someone else
mentioned, there's also node spoofing and account spoofing for the
suitably privileged.
							paul

I think a major part of the problem is that America is probably the only
place in the world where if someone acuses/sues you for something, it will
cost you big bucks to get  out of it EVEN if you are not guilty. AND the
cost of defending yourself is enough to knock you over.


The legal system should be such that if you take someone to court, and you are
proved wrong, it should cost YOU and only YOU. Innocient until proven guilty?
How about cost-free until proven guilty? It scares me to death that some
bozo can pretty much ruin my life by suing me for something stupid (even
something made-up) because it COSTS me to defend myself.

You should be required to prove guilt, not the other way around!

    The lawyers ought to explain to the judge and jury the reality
    of email, not their fantasy of it.  Of course, newspapers do
    it too.

    I'll bet this string would give 'em lots to work with.  "DEC
    Employees In Revolt Against Legal Advice:  Write 33 Angry Letters"

    Why would they want to do that? As things stand now, they have the
    option when sueing to acquire and use them against the defendant. So
    whereas being a defendant you would want the 'reality', as the
    complaintant, you want to be able to take advantage of the 'fantasy'.
    
    I'm sure Digital's Law department, when persuing a case, are not
    adverse to (and probably want to) using discovered email messages...
    A lawyer that doesn't use every legal option at his disposal to win 
    a case isn't a lawyer that _I_ would want working for me.
    
    So if a change is to occur, it won't be 'educating' the lawyers, but
    the judges, that will make it happen.
    
    Dave

    
    Re: .33
    
    > The lawyers ought to explain to the judge and jury the reality
    > of email, not their fantasy of it.  Of course, newspapers do
    > it too.
    
    They aren't the ones with the "fantasy".  The ones wailing about
    "how it should be instead of how it is" are the ones in fantasy
    land.
    
    Like it or not if it's in print, you can be held accountable.
    
    Steve
    

  As .1 and several others have said, the problem with electronic mail is that
it creates a permanent record, even if the sender and recipients delete their
copies. 
  Until I read this posting, I hadn't thought of the possibility of a lawyer
going on a "fishing expedition" thru our systems' backup tapes looking for
mail messages and other material to use against us. But I shouldn't be sur-
prised. After all, I have heard of several cases where prosecutors and others
went on a "fishing expedition" through a mental health professional's "confi-
dential" files.
  We need to continue backing up our systems on tape. And we need to include
mail messages in the backups. For example, if a disk crashes while you have
several unread messages, you would like to be able to read those messages
after the system is restored. 
  There is more to this than simply not blowing your stack in mail messages.
The real issue is that we have become dependent on electronic mail as an al-
ternative to using the phone, and the Law Dept. is saying we shouldn't. If
we must carefully review every mail message sent not only for foul language
but also for hidden legal terms and the like, it will seriously impair our
productivity.
  Someone mentioned Voicemail. I had always assumed that once you delete a
voicemail message, it's gone. I would be quite concerned if I thought all
these messages were being archived somewhere.

    
    Prediction :  even those who agree with this lawyer will not
    be able to comply.  This is not unique to DEC.  Human beings
    in anger will not be bound by this sort of thing, even if
    they take time to think of it, which they won't.
    
    No doubt this will hurt us in some court someday, but it was
    inevitable in the evolution of our species.  He is mostly
    wasting his (electronic) breath.
    

re: .36

>  Until I read this posting, I hadn't thought of the possibility of a lawyer
>going on a "fishing expedition" thru our systems' backup tapes looking for
>mail messages and other material to use against us. But I shouldn't be sur-
>prised. 

Do "PROFS message" and "Ollie North" ring a bell?

    
    This whole string not unique to DEC or email ... but probably unique to
    the USA.
    
    A large international transport company I used to work for have
    significant USA interests & activity. A former employee has kept all
    his hand-written notes of activities he undertook in the past -- a 
    very conscientious & hard-working guy. 
    
    Unfortunately, there is a legal dispute about trade practices, & all
    his ageing personal diaries & notes are eligible, & already have
    non-destruct orders served on them. Possibly very uncomfortable.
    
    Would I want what I wrote to myself about a whole pile of stuff a
    few years back read out in court? Could it possibly be detrimental to
    my then-employer? 
    
    Too right -- where else do I cleanse my soul, & save the rashness of 
    committing reactions to electronic print!!! 
    
    Colin

Speaking of Ollie....

I can see a big revenue producer come from this....
DECshread: An electronic mail shreader. I'm sure we
could sell bunches of copies to the govt. and major
corps. ;^)

> DECshread: An electronic mail shreader.
    
    How about DECjam:  automatically creates and sends bogus mail messages
    to random recipients, using terms such as "breach of contract"
    regarding nonexistent but entirely plausible sounding contracts?
    
    Or is that not Litiguously Correct (LC)?
    
      John

    This is an interesting topic.  I have gotten myself into major hot
    water with mail messages, and notes too.  Being RIGHT or being HONEST
    do not matter.  On the other hand I have solved the problem with hard
    copy stuff.  I carefully destroy all of my notes and papers when I
    leave a project, shredding and burning the really good stuff.  That way
    I avoid any confidentiality and/of conflict of interest problems.
    
    Because "Do the right thing" is no longer the right thing to do in DEC,
    "Cover Your Own Posterior" is.
    
    Judy (the colorful and often centured)
    

    You know, the idea of an electronic mail shredder could actually be a
    pretty good idea.  Basically, we're talking about a software system
    that would guarantee that any files it was told to delete will be
    deleted such that they cannot be recovered.  This means that it would
    also have tracked the appropriate files so that they could be
    permanently deleted from archived media as well. Hey, this COULD BE A
    PRODUCT!  And, no, I'm not kidding.
    
    Next question is whether or not it would be legal.  The answer is that
    a company is within its rights to destroy information on computers with
    the same limits it would have to destroy information on other medeia
    such as paper.  This program could be used to generate a written report
    that would confirm that the information does not exist on any known
    systems are archived media.  Any lawyer couldn't touch the company so
    long as there was no court order or some such before the information
    was deleted.
    
    Steve

    re: .-1
    
    >    Next question is whether or not it would be legal.  The answer is that
    >    a company is within its rights to destroy information on computers with
    >    the same limits it would have to destroy information on other medeia
    >    such as paper.  This program could be used to generate a written report
    >    that would confirm that the information does not exist on any known
    >    systems are archived media.  Any lawyer couldn't touch the company so
    >    long as there was no court order or some such before the information
    >    was deleted.
    
    Can't even create a written report - the legal ones would get you on
    that basis alone - you would be acknowledging that something did exist
    and that since you have destroyed it,  it must have been because of the
    legal implications itself - i.e. they were right to get at you in the
    first place!  The only thing that you should know is that when you
    search for information,  you cannot find any.  There should not be a
    record that you have actually being going around on a seek and destroy
    mission for a particular piece of information!
    
    As an aside (let's say rathole) - don't you think you are creating the
    problem in the first place?  There is an encouragement in some of the
    previous notes to see everyone as the "enemy" who must be guarded
    against and attacked where ever possible.  You complain about the legal
    people yet you nurture and foster them,  encouraging them to take this
    line of action.  There are other ways of going about it to get the
    right results!  Other societies can manage it in a good enough way.

 Re: 43 and several previous -

> You know, the idea of an electronic mail shredder could actually be a
> pretty good idea.  

Rumor has it that Field Service / Customer Service / Multivendor Customer
Service has known about the existance of just such a device for some time - 
code name is RA8x!  :)

    Some years ago I worked for ICL (Britain's only major computer company,
    now Japanese owned, but that's another story), working on an operating
    system called George 3.
    
    In those days, disk storage was very expensive. So George had an
    automatic system to move less frequently used files to backup tapes
    (the "dumper"). A reference to the file, and the tape it was on, was
    kept on-line. When the user referenced the file, the operator (remember
    those? ;-)) was automatically asked to load the appropriate tape.
    
    When a user deleted a file, the system remembered that it was deleted,
    and so the tape copy was now redundant. Every now and again, the
    operators would run a batch job called the Dump Tape Processor, which
    would read all (or a subset of) the dump tapes and consolidate the
    files onto a new smaller set of tapes. Any files which had been
    superceeded or deleted were not transferred. The old tapes would be
    returned to the scratch tape pool, and would eventually be re-used.
    
    So, eventually, deleted files really did disappear for good. Without
    any overt action a lawyer could pick anyone up on!
    
    D.

    re: .44
    
    I didn't make myself very clear about what would be in the report and I
    apologize.  What I think the report would be is along the lines of a
    summary that indicates, for example, that no mail messages originating
    from employee X are found anywhere on the system or in media.  There
    would therefore be no aknowledgement that such mail messages even
    existed.  Meanwhile, the same or similar program would have the ability
    to do search and destroy for mail messages from employee X.  I did NOT
    have in mind that the report generated in response to a court summons
    would indicate that such mail messages had ever existed on the system.
    That would indeed be foolish, though possible.
    
    The product itself would treat the entire computer system as one big
    database and would respond to queries and do searches on all known
    media associated with the computer systems in question.  Ironically,
    such a tool would be capable of serving both lawyers and insiders since
    a primary feature would be that of being able to do an extensive search
    through a system.  But, from a legal point of view, I imagine that
    prior to being served with a warrant, a company would be free to use it
    to do electronic shredding.
    
    Steve

    I haven't read all the notes but I haven't seen answer to the question
    of what course of action one would take if they recieve a nastygram 
    with characterizations, defamatory and threatening statements. I also
    would like to know what action personal(sp) would take if it was a 
    management type who sent the mail message.

    Re: 47 and DECshred - Unfortunately, the ability to extract mail (and
    notes) to files greatly limits the effectiveness of the application -
    searching the directory of each mail message recipient for file copies
    of the message could create both security and "Oops, deleted the wrong
    thing" problems.

RE DECshread

  While the various DECshread ideas may have practical use somewhere, I don't
believe that they address the problem being discussed by this note. 

  The problem is that if you put a defamatory note into a notes file or if you
send it to someone, they have a copy which they can then send on to somewhere
else. Your DECshread utility may destroy the original, but it's not likely to
get the one being used to instigate the litigation. 

RE the Legal System

  I agree that many countries don't have a legal system like ours. In Iraq,
for example, if you say something to irritate someone connected to the powers
that be, the government rolls a tank up in front of your house and fires a
live round into your living room. Now I realize that litigation and discovery
can be a pain, but I'll take our system over theirs any day.

RE Innocent until proven guilty

  This expression applies to criminal law, not civil law. It is still the case
under civil law that a plaintiff has the burden of proof over a defendant, but
the standard of proof is not nearly as tough. To get a plaintiff verdict, you
don't have to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt", rather you just need "the
preponderance of evidence" or the equivalent. This standard varies somewhat from
state to state. 

RE paying to defend yourself

  In fact, if someone files a nuisance suit against you, often they do have
to pay the court costs. Again, the problem here is that often "Nastygrams"
go far enough to establish a case for defamation. Under common law, there are 4
elements needed to establish a "prima fascia" case for defamation:

  1 Someone makes a defamatory remark
  2 The remark is published (a 3rd party sees it)
  3 The remark is made deliberately or through negligence
  4 The defendant comes to some harm (ie loses money) as a result of the
    remark.

  If someone fails to convince a judge that these 4 points have been made, then
they have failed to make a "prima fascia" case for defamation. In many
jurisdictions, they will have to pay for court costs. 

  What this note is about, however, is nastygrams in which a judge may well be
convinced that these 4 points have been met. In that case if you have to
defend yourself it is not an example of a failure of the legal system, rather
it is an example of what the legal system is suppose to do.

  Bottom line, think before you type,
  George

    prima fascia?  is that a high-quality front panel on a CPU?
    

    Yes, but the first word's usually spelled with a 1 instead of an i. :-)
    

    I'm wondering just how long it would take to "discover" all files on
    all nodes in EASYnet. I suspect that the likelyhood of a legal type in
    the US looking at files on a PC in the DEC office in Dragalogalong, 
    Australia would be aproaching SFA. 
    
    However, I'm sure that for a fat fee they'd give it a go :-)
    

Re: .43 and others concerning electronic shredders.

Would someone please explain the difference between this and the SHD 
(Shred document) and SHF (Shred folder) options we currently have on 
ALL-IN-1?

Thanks - Cathy

    My Problem with Electronic Evidence is that it can be fabricated
    so very easily.  I can type out my own mail messages to myself from 
    you.  Just food for thought!
    
    - Mike 

RE     <<< Note 2422.53 by SNOC01::NICHOLLS "Problem? ring 1-800-382-5968" >>>

>    I'm wondering just how long it would take to "discover" all files on
>    all nodes in EASYnet. I suspect that the likelyhood of a legal type in
>    the US looking at files on a PC in the DEC office in Dragalogalong, 
>    Australia would be aproaching SFA. 

  That's not the problem. The term "discovery" refers to a legal practice
in which a party in a legal action files a legal motion to be provided with
documents or other types of evidence.

  For example, if I sent you a nastygarm or said something defamatory about
you in a notes file, you could take me to court. Once you filed your complaint
you could then file motions to be provided with evidence. That practice is
called "discovery". If the judge felt it were justified, he would order me
or Digital to turn over the evidence.

  If there were a notes file containing the offending letter, he could demand
that it, or backups, be turned over for evidence. He could order that shadow
notes files be handed over to prove that the letter was not fabricated. 

  George

RE                     <<< Note 2422.55 by SUBWAY::CATANIA >>>
>                          -< Electronic Fabrication! >-
>
>    My Problem with Electronic Evidence is that it can be fabricated
>    so very easily.  I can type out my own mail messages to myself from 
>    you.  Just food for thought!
    
  In fact, the area of electronic mail is very new to the legal community.
When my girl friend Patty was at B.C. Law she worked one summer as a law 
clerk for Digital and was asked to research the area. There was almost no
case law on the subject. It's a very new area to the courts which means
that a case could go any way.

  However there is plenty of case law on defamation of character. Remember
the 4 points for a prima fascia case:

  1. A defamatory remark
  2. Made deliberately or through negligence
  3. The remark was published
  4. It caused the defendant harm

  It would be up to the plaintiff to prove that the remark was made. This can
be done by having the 3rd party, implied by point 3, come and testify that he
saw the note. 

  Chances are that if you fabricated the note, it would be hard to prove the
4 points. And if you lied in court, you could be charged with perjury which
is a criminal offense.

  By the way, "prima fascia" (or how ever it's spelled) is a legal term meaning
something like "when you 1st look at the case". If you file a complaint, you
have to convince the judge that your case is not frivolous and that you have
satisfied the rules for having a "prima fascia" case in what ever area of law
your case falls.

  Contrary to what many have said, if a plaintiff does not have a "prima fascia"
case, the defendant can file a "summary judgment" asking that the case be
dismissed. That type of thing can be very embarrassing to the plaintiff's lawyer
and some times expensive. Lawyers have been ordered to pay court costs for
filing frivolous cases. As a result, most lawyers are reluctant to file a
frivolous case. 

  George 

It's "prima facie".

	And you are sure its a legal term and not the color of
	our new logo?

				Tom_K

Well, I can see from previous replies most didn't understand what
I was proposing for project DECshread. DECshread isn't merely
a utility....its an architecture! Like everything else it
must be an architecture...DNA, DSA, CDA, etc. So in this case we'd
have a new architecture called OSA (object shreading architecture).
To use the shreading service all components would be forced to
register as OSA clients. OSA in turn would keep track of the location
and movement of vitually all data objects within a net. When asked to
shread a certain data object OSA would first shread all local copies.
It would then proceed to quiry the first available document location
server for instances of remote objects. If found a shread request(s)
would be communicated to the nearest shreader for the remote instances.
Note that shreading is performed on objects. Object are defined as
any entity from a LAN to a bit and anything in between. So for the
paranoid an entire LAN could be shreaded one bit at a time and for those
short on time it could be shreaded in one gulp...a design which takes
the seriousness of being caught into account.

I also propose, for quality sake, that a test component, DECfish, be 
developed at the same time. DECfish would be sent on fishing expeditions
where it would attempt to locate readable copies of shreaded objects.

So there you have it. I hope this clears up any confusion. If not then
I'll entertain individual questions.

re .60,

Are you the Product Manager for DECshread?  And are you opening Phase 0?

Paul

    DECshread fulfils at least one requirement to
    become an international standard - it's spelled incorrectly.

.-2
No, I'm not the product manager just fishing for talent. :^)

.-1
My goodness, thank you for point out my speeling error! Right,
the correct speeling of the name should be DECshred NOT DECshread.

  DECshred sounds like a nice utility and I'm sure it would have some useful
application, but I see some problems with respect to this issue.

  What you are talking about is putting all copies of all documents, even the
simplest "wana-goto-lunch" type letters into a network wide database with a
fully set of indices. This immediately gets you into traditional database
problem areas. 

  Remember, DECnet is not a tightly controlled network. It doesn't even have a
central name server, rather it relies on each node having it's own copy of the
network database. And that problem is simple compared to a full blown fully
indexed network database. Imagine world wide crash recovery of a multi-node
partitioned and replicated giga-byte database. That's ahead of the state of the
art of database design. 

  And even if you had this system, it wouldn't solve the nastygram problem
because some people print out their mail. If I put a defamatory nastygram to
you into a notes file and your boss prints it out and fires you because of what
I said, you could take me to court and during discovery you could demand that
your boss turn over his copy of my note. 

  Finally, even if you did get this system up and running, once someone filed
suit and filed a motion for discovery, you would not be allowed to delete the
material. If you did destroy evidence of that sort, you would be in contempt of
court. Even your boss in the example above would be flirting with a contempt
charge if he destroyed his paper copy of my note. 

  Once again, the bottom line is, don't send any hate mail unless you feel you
can defend it in court. If you are angry, cool off before sending out any hate
mail. 

  George 

>Remember, DECnet is not a tightly controlled network. It doesn't even have a
>central name server, 
    
    Wow, don't you have an unpleasant surprise coming!
    

I'm sitting here with my DECpc 325p notebook running OS/2 and it comes up with 
a little icon called Shredder. Looks like some advanced operating system 
architectures have already thought of this... :-)

Regards,

Jim

PhaseV isn't that bad (at least on ULTRIX or OSF/1 :-)...  Actually the setup
for DECnet-OSI on ULTRIX is no more complex then the Phase IV case...

    re: PhaseV. 
    
    for 99% of our customers PhaseV is no big deal. for the other 1% it is
    serious stuff. getting a functional DNS distributed and optimized with
    objects numbering in the 7 digits is really trickey. as is "properly"
    implementing the new routing algorithm in such an environment.

RE .66 

>>> Looks like some advanced operating system architectures have already 
>>> thought of this... :-)

The VMS $DELETE command is implemented such that it only removes directory 
entries for the file.  The information in the disk blocks remains intact until
the blocks are allocated and used by another file.  The UNIX rm command and
MS-DOS DELETE comamand are implemented in a similar fashion.  This makes it
possible to recover a deleted file, if the disk block have not be over-written.
MS-DOS even has an UNDELETE command to recover a file, while similar hacks have
been implemented for VMS and probably UNIX.

VMS also implement the $DELETE/ERASE command which not only removes the directory
entries, but writes an erase pattern over the deallocated disk blocks.  This 
operation can also be implemented automatically via $SET VOLUME/ERASE.  I don't
known if this fuctionality was ever implemented on MS-DOS or UNIX platform.  I
would guess the the OS/2 shredder perform a similar function.

It would be impossible to develop a perfect product that would "search and
destroy" absolutely all copies of a file.  I believe that the original suggestion
for DECshred was only in jest.  Doesn't anybody have a sense of humor?


							-Paul

    Might be worth pointing out that Digital may be under obligation to
    make a reasonable effort to find any "nastigrams."  It cannot be
    expected that Digital do more than this in response to a court summons,
    IMO.  This just have to prove that a reasonable effort was made to find
    evidence and that the search resulted in no such documents.  Built into
    DECshred, this search can be well-documented and furnished to the
    court.  The same software could have been used legitimately to do the 
    search and destroy long before there was any request from a court.
    Beyond that, from what I understand, the court would have had to have 
    been informed of exact document locations that might have been missed
    by DECshred.  These areas might then be subject to other actions, but
    the areas that had been searched by DECshred would now have been
    protected without having to needlessly surrender lots of sensitive and 
    unrelevant information to the courts.
    
    On the other hand, another way to protect Digital's internal secrets is
    to pad them with lots and lots of filler.  If lawyers want all the
    notes, let 'em have it in hardcopy.  After the 3rd or 4th semi pulls up
    to their loading docks and makes a delivery they might get the message ...
    Half ;^)
    
    Steve

    re: 2422.71

    Let me get this right...

    You're outlining an illegal method for Digital to evade a court-ordered
    discovery or deposition...

re: .72

Not likely.  I doubt the plaintiff would want the defendant deciding what was
and wasn't relevent to the case, so the defendant could be 'playing it safe'
by giving the plaintiff anything that was remotely connected with the suit.
Unless the court ordered it be delivered in some sort of machine readable form,
hardcopy would seem to be the appropriate way as it would be much more
difficult to undetectably alter the hardcopy than it would magnetic media.

Bob

    re: .72 
    
    Near as I can tell there is nothing that is illegal or unethical about
    what I propose.  If you're referring to dumping a bunch of hardcopy on
    someone that asks for it, this seems to me to be an entirely reasonable 
    response to anyone who uses a court order to gather all available 
    information and who does not trust anyone to process it for them.
    
    Steve

I believe that approach ("overwhelm them with documents") was
previously known as the IBM defence.   I don't believe it
was found to be illegal, either.

re: .75

I call it "DID" - Drown'em In Data :-)

    
    Yea, just don't removed any of the distribution lists from the 
    memo's.  That should be worth 2 or 3 semi's alone. :-)
    

  Sure you could send them tons of data. That's nothing new. In fact, there
are large law firms who use this tactic all the time when dealing with small
law firms and while it slows things down, in the end it never works due to
what is known as the "2L Law Clerk".

  The "2L Law Clerk" is a subspecies of the "2L Law Student", a rather drawn
looking creature that dwells in damp wet places such as Law School cafeterias
or pubs that surround many Law School campuses.

  Unlike the "1L Law Student" which is a hyperactive creature that spends 24
hours a day in the Law School Library then flies across the international date
line to get in another 6 hours of frantic studying in the same day, or the
"3L Law Student" who burns only grain alcohol and for whom "Law Review" means
the spring play, the "2L Law Student" is a diligent paper chewer who still
has the drive of a 1L but has realized that spending some of that time doing
slave work for a law firm results in money to pay the rent.

  A cage full of these creatures could easily digest your dump truck full of
paper in record time, sorting out the fluff, and boiling it down to only
the pertinent facts while feeding on a hamburger and a packet of fries.

  Sorry, nice idea but I'm afraid you will have to try again,

  George (who's seen the metamorphosis from 1L-3L-BarExam-Lawyer 1st hand)