Email Monitoring and ethics

Ruffled a friend's peace of mind by emailing some pictures of our group from the Master's days accidentally to her office email ID. There wasn't anything wrong with the pictures themselves, but I forgot that her company monitors all email traffic so the folks who do that got pissed I guess.

Should companies monitor email? If you are talking about outbound email, definitely. You don't want corporate secrets going out. Should they establish an email policy? If you want to avoid lawsuits, definitely so. Check out these links if you feel interested enough:
http://www.email-policy.com/
Is Email Monitoring Legal?

Of course, then there's the other issue of privacy. The fellow reading the emails becomes privy to all personal and corporate information flowing through the mail server. That person or set of people would know the pulse of the entire company. Would they use the information for any unethical or illegal purposes? Would they start telling the higher-ups that the people under them are exchanging complaints about a certain manager and his policies? Would some higher-up start harassing these people for more information? Its a scary situation.

Coming back to the case I mentioned at the start of this post, the monitoring folks took exception to an inbound email. I could never understand why. Monitoring inbound mails does not make sense at all. It seems more a waste of resources and maybe shows a weird taste for details in people's personal lives. I would not care is my employees received MP3s in their email as long as my company bandwidth was not bogged down.

Add to that the issue of long work hours. Employees in the IT field today work for anywhere between 12 to 16 hours. Of course they cannot spend a lot of time calling up people on the phone, while they are at a job. Its never possible to call all the people you know on a weekend. Email is a boon in these situations, it allows people the luxury to carry a dialog over days, at their own leisure. A "hi" sent on Monday may receive a "how are you" response on a Wednesday, and everyone's happy. So whats wrong if these people receive emails from their near and dear ones? It keeps them happy, and a happy employee is a good employee.

My company realises these things, and just to protect company secrets and network integrity, they have an outbound automated filter on attachments, and an inbound virus checker. Hopefully, other companies start realising these things and start releasing their strangle-hold on employee communications.

Keeping the water out...

When I was in Bombay, I attended a personality development session by the kids' favorite, Anant Pai, aka Uncle Pai, of Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha fame. I learnt quite a few good lessons about life from that session. Many of those I do not remember exactly to cite here, though I subconsciously follow them. And there are a couple that I continue to remember to this day.

He put it very simply. "Water that can drown a ship is all around it. But the ship floats, because it does not allow that water to enter it."

Yes, yes, I can hear the naysayers saying thats its easier said than done. Its too simplistic. Life's not that easy, I do agree. But what do have to lose by being positive? Rather, what do we gain by allowing the negativity to creep in? Maybe we should try to condition us, our minds, to stop the negative thoughts and things that surround us from entering our mind.

Think of the times when someone told you something was impossible or when conditions seemed pretty hopeless. Did you get discouraged, and brood over the hopelessness, or did you simply shut off those thoughts and decide to go ahead and give your best shot anyway? Maybe you still did not achieve what was seemingly impossible. But did you not atleast benefit from the experience of trying?

Bad news is there's water all around. Good news is that you can float on it if you dont let it in.

The other lesson I learnt was on discipline - "A river that flows without bounds causes flood, misery and destruction. Put a dam accross that very river, and you will be able to spread prosperity."

The human mind's worst emotions and desires are very much like a river. Unrestricted, they can leave a trail of destruction, not only in our lives, but also in the lives of others. Words once uttered in anger cannot be taken back, actions once committed cannot be undone, hopes once shattered cannot be repaired. Every time we have a rush of blood, we have the option to hold back those feelings, to channelize those emotions to fuel our efforts. Every time we feel like damaging something, we have the option to hold back and think "Can I put my time and energy to better use, to remedy this situation?".

Its not possible to always follow these principles, else the world would have been a much better place today. Yet, we can always try..

Just a thought, as we end one day, and get ready for another.

Social Security

Social Security.
Two words, that can be twisted and mauled into any meaning. Or can by themselves imply any one of numerous meanings.

My mind went off on a tangent when I saw an article on TIME magazine's web site, about the US President's plan to overhaul Social Security (http://www.ssa.gov/).

So first off, a little SocSec 101 (thats what they call or number an introductory course in a university. Like MSWord 101, English 101 etc etc.). In the USA, every working person pays about 6.2 % of their income to the social security system. The funds from this system are used to pay checks (cheques) to the elderly who have retired and the qualified young who are unemployed. I am not aware of who qualifies for the SS checks (also called SS benefits), but in one line, its basically how the younger (working) generation / group contibute to the welfare of the less fortunate ones or disabled / elderly people who are no longer capable of performing any physical or mental labour to support themselves. Hence the term Social Security.

Or is it really? Have we really come to a phase where people are no longer supported by their own family, and rather have to rely on the government to pay them money? I come from India, and we have a similar system. Its called Pensions. But its applicable only for retired employees of the Government. However, my question still remains. Why do the elderly or the disabled have to rely on the Government so much for living their lives? I do understand that many people lose their means of support in tragedies, and yes, they need a helping hand surely since they have no one else. But that should be a minority. What about the numerous other people who have sons and daughters who earn enough money to spread around a little? More pointedly, have we, as a society become selfish to the point where we no longer have enough charity in our mind to even take care of our parents? Have we become so fiercely Individualistic, that as soon as we get married or grow up, we have to leave the nest, never to return back to it, and in fact, create a new nest elsewhere and devote all resources to it? And then the people who created us have to resort to retirement funds and social security checks ?

I do not grudge anyone their happiness or their ambitions. Yes, its everyone's privilege. But, dont we also have duties? Arent we also bound by ethics to take a pause at some point and start looking back upon life and start trying to make the lives of our parents or disabled siblings a little more comfortable? Giving up a slice of our pie, so that those very people who made sacrifices for us can live a little better?

I am not saying no one does it. The sad part is, the majority does not do it. Or else, we would not have such a large majority of people depending on social security or pensions. Many people do realise this. Some realise it too late, when they start getting their checks.

Hopefully, the current generation of working people starts making a difference. Maybe start creating an "internal security" fund, save a certain percentage of income each month for parents, maybe not maintain big huge independent houses, but get smaller homes closer together, for you, your parents and your spouse's parents too.

Definitely not one home, because different people have different ways of living life, and 3 families cannot stay together. But its always possible to stay in the vicinity. If I were to get married someday, I would certainly want not only my parents close to me, but also my wife's parents. Because the way I see it, when you marry someone, you also marry their family, and any problems they may have, big or small, are your problems too, and I would stand by that.

Yet we see people going the other way. Why so much individualism, that parents and their children do not stay closer in the long run, when the lives of the children are stable? Could someone explain this to me? Most people need to start reflecting on how we can really start making a difference - by making the lives of the elderly and disabled within our own family a little more secure..

Treat those two impostors just the same..

For long, I have always been inspired by the lines on the huge sign on the door leading to Centre Court at Wimbledon. These lines are from Rudyard Kipling's "If"..

" If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;"

Yes, that would be the holy grail of life. The final reversal of the master-slave relationship where you control your emotions and not the other way round. I stumbled upon the poem again while reading an Inormation Week article (http://www.informationweek.com/816/16uwbe.htm), and felt it would be relevant to in this blog.

For the interested, here's the entire poem by Kipling.
(www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html)
[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

The spice of life

Change is the spice of life, or so they say.. I certainly like variety. Nothing like a bit of marinara sauce after having tasted Heinz tomato ketchup for weeks on end. Or a trip to Florida after having shovelled bundles of snow during winter. Its all good and welcome, except when there's too much of it, and when its in the places where you least want it. Like too much spice, you start getting ulcers some day. Especially when the changes all kinda jump on you at the same time..

Thats when you need to start learning how to sidestep some things and take others head-on.
My life is currently in such a phase. Changes everywhere I see them. In my software (I am a developer), in my life (I am changing apartments, I am also changing room mates, but thats a story for another day), in my food (I am not sure what I can eat any more. Being an obese fellow, I have started watching my diet) ..

Some days you just wind up saying "Oh what the heck. I am fed up", while on others you say "Hmm. lemme see what my pal ABC has to say about this". The former is when we go deeper into the quicksand of frustration and the latter is when we atleast get some relief. A pressure cooker would burst if it couldnt atleast let off some steam. All my life, my friends have been that outlet for me. Not that I scald them with my internal stress and pressure. Just that speaking to them makes me cool down and think more about whats really bugging me. Is it the food that was eating till yesterday until I found it had 1500 cals per serving? Or is it my apartment's leasing office dragging their feet in assigning me a new place to stay. Or maybe, its the uncertainty of the fact that I dont know where I will be living next week. And with whom. Maybe its the fact that while I am juggling these balls in my head in my evenings, I am also redesigning some of my software in the day time when I work in the office, thus leaving practically no time for my poor brain to rest.. Maybe that is it.. Maybe my brain's yelling out at me, "For heaven's sake man, cut me some slack"..

All I hope is this changes soon.

As they say too, the only constant is change...