[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Legal obligation to report

[Nathan]

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 at 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
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