It is not irrelevant if the most up to date AF regulation permits some personal use of the government resource. ****** Agreed: it's quite relevant to see what the current AF regulation is. It would also make sense to determine whether that branch of service provides recreational computer labs. If it does then it's probably safe to assume the editor was using one unless specific evidence indicates otherwise. Edit time stamps aren't necessarily indicative because military working hours can be variable.
The editor who made these allegations cited an outdated version of an Army regulation, misidentified it as UCMJ, and supposed that a member of the Air Force was in violation. I really think the obligation rested with that editor to research the matter better before making statements that worried the rest of us.
-Durova
Ok - he claims to have been referring to an Air Force regulation, and in any case he's provided an Air Force regulation now (in addition to UCMJ articles). He claimed at the time that the UCMJ required him to report it, not specifically (IIRC) that it was a UCMJ regulation prohibiting personal use. This is borne out by the UCMJ articles he quoted.
Additionally, there are other issues involved - if it turns out there is no Army regulation, no Air Force regulation, and the UCMJ is struck down by the Supreme Court (uh, unlikely) then there is still the issue that he made a good faith warning of his obligations as he saw them and was attacked for violating policy.
I'm drawing a distinction here between OM, who just got involved recently, and Jim62sch who sent the original e-mail here a long time ago. I don't know what Jim was relying on for his belief that he needs to report infractions, and it doesn't seem to be a very strong basis unless its the Secret Service he works for in the Treasury department.
I don't accuse VO of any wrongdoing, and frankly I'm not interested either way. Mike Godwin has answered the question of what we should do if it were categorically illegal for US military personnel to edit Wikipedia on government computers - nothing.
I don't think it serves us to continually question the legal basis of OM's assertion - we are not, any of us, lawyers and it doesn't help to cite articles and paragraphs as 'proof' that it was a baseless or well-founded assertion without a professional opinion in either direction. This is why I think sourcing the various policies and regulations is irrelevant - we aren't equipped to evaluate their effect anyway, so what we need is an opinion from Mike on the conflicting issues of NLT and affirmative reporting requirements and an opinion from a military lawyer (and this is less important) on the requirements themselves. Without either of those things, there appears to be nothing else to discuss here.
On Jan 2, 2008 10:28 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
It is not irrelevant if the most up to date AF regulation permits some personal use of the government resource.
Agreed: it's quite relevant to see what the current AF regulation is. It would also make sense to determine whether that branch of service provides recreational computer labs. If it does then it's probably safe to assume the editor was using one unless specific evidence indicates otherwise. Edit time stamps aren't necessarily indicative because military working hours can be variable.
The editor who made these allegations cited an outdated version of an Army regulation, misidentified it as UCMJ, and supposed that a member of the Air Force was in violation. I really think the obligation rested with that editor to research the matter better before making statements that worried the rest of us.
-Durova _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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