Proper ettiquette for posting messages

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

From: "Tom Mitchell" <mitch48 at sbcglobal.net>
> On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 10:19:01AM -0600, Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
> > > I'd be curious to hear
> > >  what your developers thought about this strict enforcement.  I'm a
> > > software developer, and my pc is my pc.
> >
> > Well, I work for a state law enforcement agency, and my pc is the
state's
> > pc. :)
>
> With internet crime such a big, growing and visible area of law
> enforcement you will need to have a mix of boxes.

True, but that's true of our Computer Crimes Unit, not our internal
developers (including myself). :)

> If I was to send a
> suspected virus or fraud email to an officer (any officer) you cannot
> filter and discard the bad boy bits at the firewall.  That would be
> tampering with evidence.

Actually, if you sent it to us via email, it wouldn't be considered evidence
due to the lack of a verified chain of custody.  You could send it to us for
informative purposes, but one of our agents (I am not a commissioned agent)
would have to impound your box and then make a forensic image for detailed
analysis.

> Your internet 'guys' will need a mix of boxes to safely receive,
> inspect and archive evidence files.  For some productivity reasons you
> will need M$ boxes but for other reasons you will need a MIX of
> inspection, archival and backup resources.

Yep, our CCU folks have that, on a physically separate LAN, in a physically
secured evidence lab.

> Also, outward facing tools and web pages need to be accessible by the
> community. Same as wheel chair access, and just the same set of
> reasons that cause ballots to be printed in eleven languages in
> California.  Public documents will need to be equally accessible to
> all as technology permits.

Which we're working on.  Right now we have a bunch of "Cool Stuff[tm]" out
there.  Since I've come on board, I've been educating my folks on the joys
of checking web pages with links/lynx, validating them with
http://validator.w3.org/, etc.  We're getting there.  But again, our public
web presence is on the outside of our firewall, and our CCU is on a
physically seperate LAN.

> You as a 'manager' will need to be vigilant for such interoperability
> and accessibility in your work ;-)

 We try to homogenize our workers' desktops as much as possible, for support
purposes.  We have several hundred users and only four folks in the support
branch.  Having a heterogenous environment is just too work-intensive.

Ben