Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Editorial: Workplace computers aren't personal
There is a compelling need to preserve computer data relating to the Tech massacre. Still, the attorney general could have done it in a less threatening way.
From the RoundTable blog
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We've all done it. Dashed off a personal e-mail on company time. Stored sensitive personnel records on our office hard drive. Carried on an online exchange with a co-worker to navigate through delicate issues.
We'd cringe if any of this data fell into unsympathetic hands, and whose hands could be more unsympathetic than those of lawyers?
So it isn't at all difficult to feel compassion for the Virginia Tech professors and staff who feel as though their privacy has been invaded by the attorney general's demand that their hard drives be copied and the data preserved indefinitely.
At this point, the attorney general doesn't know what information might be vital to continue investigating Seung-Hui Cho's interaction with Tech staff or what might be of value in defending potential lawsuits.
In either case, the information must be preserved even if it is mixed with other data that has no bearing on the massacre. There is no easy way to parse what may be needed. Tech employees naturally would bristle knowing that someone might comb through every byte of data stored on what they have come to think of as their computers.
Many employees take the "personal" in personal computers literally and have an unwarranted expectation of privacy. Some Tech professors accustomed to the academic freedom enjoyed on the campus can't help but feel violated by what they believe is too broad a seizure of their work.
Some have sought a compromise, asking that documents not directly linked to the shooting be free from copying. But who would decide this? And could not some seemingly benign document actually lend insight?
From the attorney general's perspective, it is better to preserve all data, knowing most of it will never be used or even viewed. The commonwealth's lawyers know well that they can't go on fishing expeditions; they know which type of records cannot be made public; they know the complexities associated with ownership of intellectual works.
What they apparently don't know is the fine art of assuring people who, until April 16, had never bumped up against the complicated and insensitive world of investigations and litigation.
The terse threat by Attorney General Bob McDonnell's underling was uncalled for when he suggested that Tech take "appropriate personnel action against the resistant employee" who might fail to willingly cooperate.
Tech's employees have endured losing colleagues, students, their sense of safety and now their privacy. A gentler hand might have softened this latest blow.
