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By "Richard Hemingway"

May 21, 1999 | Earlier this week the Boston Globe reported that Harvard University had asked the dean of its Divinity School to resign after "thousands of pornographic images" had been found on his home computer, which was university property. It seems that during a transfer of files, tech-support technicians noticed the pornographic material and told their supervisors. In other words, these support staffers took it upon themselves to decide that whatever was on his computer was fair game as long as that computer was the property of Harvard Divinity School.

I am a former tech-support employee of Harvard's Divinity School. In my work there, and in other tech-support jobs, I have been privy to some incredible things, including private files like admissions records. But I knew it was accidental that I had access -- and so I learned how to "look without seeing."

Admissions records are confidential information. But what of personal e-mail messages and hourly visits to Ebay to check on the status of an auction? At what point do an employer's legal rights end and an employee's privacy rights begin? And should tech support people be serving as arbiters -- or as snoops?

Most people don't realize how much of what they do at their desktop is visible. I have watched the most graphic of file names flash across screens during everything from disk copies to backups. It could be that the users didn't care -- but the truth is, they didn't know I could see what they thought was some obscure code hidden deep within the system.

The "Documents" choice on the Start menu of Windows 95 offers a sort of natural history of a day in the life of a computer. There are shortcuts to the most recently accessed documents, including picture files and videos, even Outlook's memo cards. Sometimes the most innocuous things are the most revealing: Copying files from one hard drive to another can display file names with explicit labels and e-mail message subject lines. If you are "looking," Netscape's cache and Window's Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files folder are a storehouse of information. Even when the latter is completely emptied of Web content, the names of cookies that are stored there are incredibly revelatory. Most people don't realize how many sites actually send cookies, even when you offer no login info or check any box.

Any tech support person is liable to encounter such stuff at any given time, no matter how obsessive they may be about discretion and privacy. But there is a way to look without looking, to help someone with a Word document without actually reading it, to troubleshoot a system for every conceivable problem and not notice the things on a hard drive. This requires a carefully honed attitude, a way of thinking that what is yours is yours and mine is mine. Not everything you do all day long is my business -- and if I happen to see something you would rather I didn't, I extend you the same courtesy I want extended to me.

The Globe article suggests that such courtesy was not extended to the dean of Harvard Divinity School.