Acknowledge consent before login

Nifty Fedora Mitch niftyfedora at niftyegg.com
Fri Jul 18 21:29:32 UTC 2008


On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 08:17:58AM +0000, g wrote:
> 
> Aldo Foot wrote:
>> It's a legal requirement in some places to display some text
>> advising the user that their keystrokes may be monitored and
>
> i agree with these and even tho op may not be needing this agreement for
> 'military' use, he may want it for his own employees.

Years ago I was asked to remove the word "Welcome" from any login
prompt on critical systems.   The legal advice then was that "Welcome"
was an invitation that removed the rights of the company to prosecute
an intruder.  Then there was some noise about "Authorized Users
Only" when there was a lack of information 'who does the authorization'
and how authorized users are notified about their authorization and deauthorization.
This was about the same time that "Beware Dog" signs came down beause 
one legal case construed the sign as evidence that the owner knew
he had a bad dog and cause a liability action to be ruled against
a home owner.   My sign now says "Do not feed the dog" (1).

In recent times privacy issues have become important for both company data
and employee personal information.  In the modern work place employees
have payroll, financial and personal health information emailed to
their company email accounts and filling up browser caches and backups.
It is unclear if this "personal" information is covered by company
privacy rules.  Also at the date of hire many employees sign documents --
but after a handful of years those documents go stale in subtle legal
ways and need to be refreshed in an auditable way.

Historically time share systems had a message system where at
login you were presented with status and annoncements.

As best I can tell day to day military security is much less strict
and incures smaller penalty than the current DRM and software package
(did we pay for xyz package) use and audit requirements.

Then there is the naughty stuff witch hunting that
looks for images, naughty words,  harassement in the 
work place etc.... that might be present on a system.

<rant>
All of this "stuff" may require some notification to "RELEASE THE
COMPANY FROM LIABILITY" and place unchallenged, unaudited responsibility,
norecourse and liability on the employee.
</rant>

Anyhow there are good, bad, and silly reasons for this.
Linux/GNU; Fedora etc. should facilitate this for the good
resons and users should "slash dot" or "Dilbert" the silly and bad ones.

(1) "do not feed the dog" might be expanded to
    "do not feed my dog your arm, leg, or other body parts"
    but it is not....


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	Looking for a place to hang my hat.




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