[svlug] Hard drive destruction

[Luke S. Crawford]

On 09/10/2015 11:00 PM, Michael Robinson wrote:
>
> As far as the concept that sysadmins have to protect privacy at all
> costs or else they aren't good sysadmins, that should be weighed
> against the needs of the company and the needs of the larger society.
> Internet addictions can hurt society at large and shouldn't be taken
> lightly. With the Internet, there is a high likelihood of multiple
> players being involved in any activity whether it be good for society
> or harmful to it.  Privacy is not an absolute right insofar as it can
> be a means to cover up illegal or otherwise inappropriate activities.

To be clear, we're not talking about times when you *know* there's 
something fishy going on.   We're talking about the ethics of what you 
do with data you know nothing about that the customer doesn't expect you 
to keep.

(the drives in question, usually, have failed out of a running RAID in 
the unscheduled manner that drives normally fail out of RAIDs, so the 
customers didn't have a chance to remove data.)

Do you think it's ethical to rummage through customer data, looking for 
evidence they are doing something wrong, or evidence that they have an 
"addiction" and "need help"?