You know, it's quite possible for multiple people to be "wrong" in a given situation. It's possible both the employee and the sysop to be wrong.

I agree, - but morality is sticky and complex.

It was obviously wrong to be the creepy sexist.

In the abstract sense, it is wrong to invade privacy.

But then, if in your invasion of privacy you uncover a wrongdoing, the right thing to do is report it.

It would be wrong to read the CFO's email inbox, and probably illegal. But then if you uncover they are committing fraud, you need to report it to police, as well as confess your own crime.

Unfortunately, there's never easy rules for these things.

I get what you're saying here but:

>In the abstract sense, it is wrong to invade privacy.

You have no real expectation of privacy when using company owned equipment. This was almost certainly spelled out to the employee in question in the acceptable use policy he agreed to upon being hired. Companies have to operate this way so they can investigate computers if compelled to by court or law, and so they can recover important information off computers when the user exits the company.

If he was using a BYOD computer I'd have a different opinion on the matter.

The definition of acceptable use (and expectations of privacy) differs a lot between different countries. For example, in the EU, I believe that any personal email received on a work account is actually considered "beyond reach" of your employer.

I don't know, but I imagine that such considerations could easily extend to your password.

Btw, how did the sysop know that what he recovered was the actual password? I mean, it's unlikely, but at least theoretically possible that it was a false positive. The password hashes in those days were pretty weak... Just a thought; I don't think it realistically was a false positive.

That is true, there are stronger privacy protections in the EU in general. I don't consider the actions here morally justifiable, just legally.

As far as it being the actual password, a false positive AND the fact he had been creeping on a coworker at the same time seems extraordinarily unlikely to me.

Agreed about the false positive, btw. It was just a hypothetical, but court cases ("beyond reasonable doubt") have a very high standard of proof.

You make a compelling point. The key is 'acceptable use'.

Acceptable use is cracking passwords in an investigation with just cause.

Acceptable use is a script to automate the checking of weak passwords, and notify users.

Unacceptable use is an admin browsing cracked passwords, without just cause.

I personally think acting on the information obtained afterwards is acceptable, but some would disagree.

Remember even in some courts, evidence obtained by police illegally cannot be submitted for trial.

I maintain these moral problems are hard ones.

You said "... but morality is ..." and just agreed with me, I think?

Ultimately, I think it's a case-by-case on this type of thing.

Btw, I find it very interesting that e.g. most EU courts will consider "tampered-with" evidence, but obviously take into account that it may have been tampered with and so accord it much less weight than "pristine" evidence. Whereas US courts will[0] absolutely throw out anything that's shown to be even mildly "tampered-with". I don't know what the right answer is, but it's an interesting question to ponder.

[0] Maybe this is wrong; I'm not a US-ian, so I may not have perfect insight into the court system :|.

I agreed. I just wanted to take it a stage further and emphasise the definition of 'wrong' is always complex in moral discussions.

Noice :). I apologize for the somewhat aggressive/sarcastic tone at the start of my reply. Reading it back, it sounded so much "more" (in every way) than I intended.

It is possible, but that's not what happened. sysop was in the right here. Stop defending someone's right to be extremely creepy on company equipment over the well-being of the creep's coworkers.

It's one of those "everyone sucks here" situations.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Don't be snarky."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If people could read your thoughts (or private messages) I'm pretty sure they could find at least 5 things to fire you and/or publicly whip you at a pillory in the central square of your city.

So don't be so arrogant about someone being "creepy" when they are not mentioned as doing anything specific in public...

Yes, a person alleged to be a creepy sexist deserves some protection and due process.

> Yes, a person alleged to be a creepy sexist deserves some protection and due process.

I agree with this. Everyone deserves due process.

It sounds in this situation like they got their due process. (HR didn't fire them based on the password report, but rather used diligence and due process to investigate/corroborate and only then terminate them.)

Yep you got it right.