njdube's Journal: Hippocratic Oath for the IT Community

I'm sure you've heard on the news or at least read somewhere on the Internet about the issues customers have been having with computer repair shops copying their customers private data for latter "enjoyment", cough-geek squad-cough. Then I thought to my self, would a doctor start telling everyone about a certain rash in a area you might not want other people to know?! Would a Priest tell everyone in the their church what you confessed last Sunday?! So why should IT people be able to browse through people's private data, especially when it's not needed to fix most computer issues?! The only time I can see going through someone's data is when data recovery is involved. Even then, data recovery software could be designed to restore data with out the technician seeing the data them selves.

If we can't trust Priest or Doctors (mental or physical) with our issues, a lot of us might be less likely to see them to resolve those issues. And we'll just end up with a lot more pissed off sick people in the world with unresolved problems. This is the 21st century and computers have become almost a necessity in our daily lives. We use them to hold all kinds of secrets about our selves. And should this wonderful device decide to fail, we will have to trust in someone to fix our "box" of secrets. But how can we do that with out the trust?!

And so, I'm calling on all ethical minds in the IT community to help me come up with our own kind of "Hippocratic Oath". This document could even be considered a legal contract that we sign to protect our customers from our selves. I haven't decided on a draft yet. So I'm asking that you submit your ideas and we all vote on a final draft. It is time now that we the IT community take an oath to do no harm to those who entrust us with their "box" of secrets.