As I see it, the problem is that we have come to expect too much privacy. I'd like to know when, at any time in human history, that we could expect to not be watched when doing anything in a public place? We are a tribal species. We have always and will always interfere in each other's business.
What reasonable expectation of privacy does anyone have on any public street? I'd say none, and anyone who has ever been rousted from a Lover's Lane by a cop can only agree with me. Since our invention of language, human beings have acted under the supposition that anything they do in public might be watched. And talked about.
So many people confuse privacy with anonymity. They think that just because a cop doesn't often look at them, he should never look at them.
And an email message cannot be compared to a letter. It is best compared to a postcard. Like a postcard, an email has no envelope -- it's contents are readily visible to anyone who looks. Sure, you're going to be pissed when you see your letter carrier reading the postcard that your brother sent you from the Bahamas before he puts it in your mailbox. But you had no real expectation of privacy. The text of the letter is right out there for God and everybody to see.
In any regard your letter, too, has no real expectation of privacy. At least in the United States, a postmaster or postal inspector has the right and obligation to examine any piece of mail that passes through his post office. And anything he finds can be used against you in a court of law.
Now, I'm not saying that, for example, what the FBI is trying to do with Carnivore is right, nor am I saying it's wrong. I'm just saying that the assumption of universal privacy as axiomatic is incorrect. Privacy is not an intrinsic property of being human -- it is, rather, something that you must earn and work at to keep.
Network limits and surveillance in the workplace? Who pays for the internet connection? Who pays you for the hours you are there, with your tacit permission that within reason they can tell you what to do? Who decides what is and is not productive use of time you are selling to the company?
Working at a company is a simple transaction: you are trading your time for something else of value, usually money. If you want to sell your time to the company, the company must agree that you have made productive use of it. If the company does not think that you have done with your time is valuable, it will not pay for it.
And KARLB, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Your company doesn't have to let you access the internet at all.
If you think that visiting linux.org is a valuable use of time you are selling to your company, debate the issue with those in your company that disagree. (And I said "debate", not "argue". There is a difference) Find enough evidence that the information provided there is useful to the company, and I'll wager a small amount of money that they'll let you have access to it again. ______________________________________________________________________
Don't say thanks. Just award stars.
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. You seem to think I'm arguing that humans have a right to privacy. I'm just saying that, social animals or not, the vast majority of us do desire some degree of privacy in our lives.