There are some truths in there, but he's committing the exact same sin he's criticising the manager for: He couldn't care less what they do, except to conclude that it's worthless.
He doesn't want to be called the IT-guy, but managers are invariably fools for asking for help that falls slightly out of the job description.
He is justifying reading blogs about cats because he was up until 1 am, but the managers secret about spending half the day watching ESPN "is safe with him". Seriously? Like a manager never had to work late?
Actually, most of us have not memorized the solution to every problem. We are simply more able and willing to apply logic to situations involving computer problems.
Don't worry, your secret addiction to 1960s era russian dancing dolls is safe with us!
This line pissed me off. I don't trust the feds to safely handle private communications, and they have textbook-sized regulations. The IT guys? They're literally joking about it.
Hah-hah! I see what you're browsing too. Don't worry! I won't tell! Hee hee!
You have to reasonably expect any work communications to be open to monitoring, be it accidental, intentional, or ancillary. The "IT guy" could be monitoring the DNS cache logs for the purpose of debugging, and if your request for www.russiandancingdolls.com comes along, he'll see it, and if he has any sense of decorum, ignore it.
Given that, if you have something to hide, don't do it at work. It's no use being pissed off about it -- it comes with the territory of shared infrastructure.
I agree. If you have a privileged position, it is your responsibility to ignore anything personal you come across -- insofar long as it's not illegal or forbidden by established company policy.
I wouldn't hesitate to reprimand and/or fire a system administrator that repeated (much less joked about) any personal information they came across in the course of their duties.
On the other hand, as an employee, I think it's also your responsibility to assume that any of your communications may be monitored by someone less polite than you would prefer, and to act accordingly.
uhh...the point is that whoever is running your network is going to come across your browsing history at some point and that they dont care. i run a squid box with dansguardian for content filtering and, sometimes, it blocks things it shouldnt (if it were my choice, nothing would be blocked). as part of diagnosing what is wrong, i have to look through the logs...which contain ip address. im not snooping, im just trying to fix it for you.
That's what IT people say when they're asked about it. When they're joking with friends or in anonymous BOFH posts, that's clearly not what they're doing.
I'm not saying IT people shouldn't have access to logs. I am however saying that maybe this isn't a great thing to joke about.
Just to be clear, I am an admin and have never, ever disclosed any information I have come accross in log files to anyone other than the person in question's boss (and this is only with a written request approved by my boss). To be honest, I couldn't tell you the browsing habits of any of my users beyond hostnames and bandwidth logs from our firewAll. I suspect most admins Are the same way (at least I hope).
He doesn't want to be called the IT-guy, but managers are invariably fools for asking for help that falls slightly out of the job description.
He is justifying reading blogs about cats because he was up until 1 am, but the managers secret about spending half the day watching ESPN "is safe with him". Seriously? Like a manager never had to work late?