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Re: [802SEC] FW: [802-11WG] Confidentiality Notices



Geoff -

I had an offline conversation with Dave Ringle in which he asserted that the 4.1.1.5 text you quoted was intended to apply only to the SB and its committees (RevCom, NesCom, etc). So just to make things crystal clear, I believe that we should explicitly include that (or closely similar) text in our P&P. I would be happy to propose a P&P change to that effect. I believe it should also be worded to cover the non-inclusion of copyright statements in materials presented at meetings.

Regards,
Tony

At 17:07 04/04/2005, Geoff Thompson wrote:
Mat-

I believe that we absolutely should get a read from IEEE legal counsel on this one. Especially since there is a new person in that seat.

I am strongly suspicious of any assertion by a company that such a notice is "a requirement being imposed
to ensure compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002."

Rather, as Tony Jeffree asserts in his note, it is an effort to "place the onus on the recipient to make a determination of what they can legitimately do with the message."

I do not doubt that company lawyers would like to duck the responsibility for taking ownership of what their company's employees send out to the world. But it is not appropriate for them to do so, nor is it appropriate to place that burden on our volunteer officers.

(This issue actually arose many years ago because a volunteer's company lawyer specifically required that the volunteer not accept the burden.)

It is equally inappropriate for us, as officers, to:
        1) Ignore a legal notice, either individually or systematically.
        2) Make a determination of what some company, who is not our employer, holds confidential

TIA handles it differently, they require a cover sheet on all "submissions" that specifically disclaims confidentiality and further states that if the submitter alters the standard disclaimer the disclaimer reverts to the text in their P&P. The result is that (effectively) TIA participants can't say anything of substance in the body of an e-mail.

While I believe that we should get a new read from IEEE legal on the policy, it has been vetted in the past and the text is in the current version of the SASB Operations Manual. The requirement is that:
4.1.1.5 Confidentiality Statements and Copyright Notices on Communications
The IEEE-SA Standards Board and its committees operate in an open manner. To that end, no material submitted to the IEEE-SA Standards Board or its committees will be accepted or considered if it contains any statement that places any burden on the recipient(s) with respect to confidentiality or copyright. Any communication, including electronic mail, containing language with such restrictive wording will not be accepted or considered.

We believe that this requirement trickles down to ALL of the routine business of our Working Groups and sub-groups and should thus apply to all reflectors owned and/or managed by those groups. That should be sufficient to provide the final word on the debate in 802.11.

Geoff




At 10:04 AM 4/4/2005 -0400, Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
Folks,

This is a lively debate that is ongoing with the 802.11 reflector.
There seems to be an implication that confidentiality disclaimer are
becoming legally required on corporate e-mail.  Yet, many of our
reflectors currently forbid such disclaimers.  Should we get a read from
IEEE legal support as to what our position should / could be on this
stuff?

Thanks,

Mat

Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
Senior Member Technical Staff
BAE SYSTEMS, CNIR
Office: +1 973.633.6344
email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Foegelle [mailto:Michael.Foegelle@ets-lindgren.com]
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 9:37 AM
To: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA); STDS-802-11@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: RE: [802-11WG] Confidentiality Notices

I just thought I'd point out that this type of notice (which I just had
to delete from my signature below myself) is a requirement being imposed
to ensure compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.  (You can
thank Enron et. al. for another piece of corporate headache that we all
have to deal with.)  I suspect that more and more companies will be
requiring such a message on e-mails in the future, and currently I'm
breaking company policy by deleting said notice.  There's even
discussion in our company of increasing the penalties for not putting
the notice on messages (i.e. it could become a dismissible offense).  I
try to remember to remove the message before posting (since it's
automatically added), but I don't always remember to do so.

And before anyone suggests that I go get a private e-mail account to
work on the reflectors, the reality is that even though we're all IEEE
members as individuals, I do this work as part of my job and my company
foots the bill for all of the IEEE activities I'm involved in.  The same
is likely true for most everyone else on these reflectors.  If I can't
use my company e-mail address to carry on this work, then it's just not
practical.  I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel that way.

So, given that this problem is only going to get worse, I think we need
to take a more corporate friendly approach to resolving this issue.
Rather than installing a filter to remove any message that might contain
a problem restriction notice, why not add a filter capable of removing a
footer that starts with a standardized message footer that we could all
attempt to incorporate.  Thus, if the notice started with something like
"-------------Legal Notice------------", a filter could automatically
remove it.  That may not be the best solution for everyone, but I think
it would resolve my issue here and give us a standardized place to start
as other companies begin requiring these notices.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Michael D. Foegelle


 ---------------------------------------------------------
 Dr. Michael D. Foegelle          | 1301 Arrow Point Drive
 Senior Principal Design Engineer | Cedar Park, TX 78758
 ETS-Lindgren, L.P.               | (512) 531-6444


-----Original Message-----
From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
[mailto:matthew.sherman@BAESYSTEMS.COM]
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 8:02 AM
To: STDS-802-11@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: [802-11WG] Confidentiality Notices


--- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Reflector ---

Ivan,

I like the concept, but I think we will need a more complex filter.  The
word confidential is sometimes used in our dialogues, and I'm not sure
it always occurs in the footers of concern.

Mat

Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
Senior Member Technical Staff
BAE SYSTEMS, CNIR
Office: +1 973.633.6344
email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com

-----Original Message-----
From: ***** IEEE stds-802-11 List *****
[mailto:STDS-802-11@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG] On Behalf Of Ivan Reede
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 8:52 AM
To: STDS-802-11@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: [802-11WG] Confidentiality Notices

--- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Reflector ---

I hope this will be a constructive suggestion...

I suggest that the IEEE listserv admins place the word "confidential"
into
their spam detector...
That waym we will not have to lose all this time and effort in the
futur..
after all, it's a banned word for standards that are open.

Any such message in the futur would simply get canned by the spam filter
and those messages would never get relayed.

Ivan Reede

==============================

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Jeffree" <tony@JEFFREE.CO.UK>
To: <STDS-802-11@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 5:45 AM
Subject: Re: [802-11WG] Confidentiality Notices


> --- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Reflector ---
>
> Mike -
>
> I think that you are missing the point here. Confidentiality notices
> attempt to place the onus on the recipient, rather than the sender, for
> correcting the sender's mistakes, and also place the onus on the recipient
> to make a determination of what they can legitimately do with the message.
> Regardless of how valid or otherwise these kinds of notices might be if
> tested in law (and I suspect they would actually fail on a number of
> grounds, even when not used in private communications - but lets not go
> down the armchair lawyer rat-hole here), they have no place in an open
> communication forum such as this.
>
> And actually, the "please disregard..." etc. statement in the message that
> sparked off this thread is IMHO of very dubious relevance, as it cannot be
> clear to the recipient as to whether the sender had the authority to make
> such a statement on behalf of his employer, so I believe that the only
> valid treatment of that message (and other similar messages) is to delete
> it from the email archive and disregard its content until such a time as
> the sender re-sends it without any attached disclaimer.
>
> Regards,
> Tony
>
> At 09:16 04/04/2005, Mike Moreton wrote:
> >--- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Reflector
---
> >
> >Clint,
> >
> >Maybe the IEEE should pay for a legal opinion on this one.  Seems to me
> >that if you intentionally send an email to a public list with an open
> >archive, then the "intended recipients" could plausibly be argued to be
> >the entire world.
> >
> >Surely this clause would only kick in if you clearly sent something by
> >accident (such as internal company plans), in which case it would give you
> >a good justification for asking for it to be removed from the archive.
> >
> >Or to put it another way, this clause would only be applicable if a
> >recipient of an email could be reasonably expected to determine that that
> >email was sent by accident.  Clearly this wouldn't apply to email exploder
> >programs.
> >
> >Mike.
> >
> >P.S. I have to use an external email address because my IT department
> >manages to mess me up in a completely different way...
> >
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: ***** IEEE stds-802-11-tgn List *****
> >[mailto:STDS-802-11-TGN@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG] On Behalf Of Clint Chaplin
> >Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 8:42 AM
> >To: STDS-802-11-TGN@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> >Subject: Re: [802-11TGN] Reasons for No Vote on TGn Sync Proposal
> >
> >
> >--- This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Task Group N Technical
> >Reflector ---
> >
> >If you cannot straighten out your IT staff, may I suggest getting a
> >gmail account and using it for your IEEE work?  That's what I am
> >using, and I like it very much.  If you want, I can extend you an
> >invitation.
> >
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
____
____
> >
> >IF YOU WISH to be Removed from this reflector, PLEASE DO NOT send
your
> >request to this CLOSED reflector. We use this valuable tool to
communicate
> >on the issues at hand.
> >
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> >Point your Browser to -
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your
> >subscription on the form provided.  If you require removal from the
> >reflector press the LEAVE button.
> >
> >Further information can be found at:
> >http://www.ieee802.org/11/Email_Subscribe.html
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
____
____
>
> Regards,
> Tony
>
>
________________________________________________________________________
____
___
>
> IF YOU WISH to be Removed from this reflector, PLEASE DO NOT send your
request to this CLOSED reflector. We use this valuable tool to
communicate
on the issues at hand.
>
> SELF SERVICE OPTION:
> Point your Browser to -
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your
subscription on the form provided.  If you require removal from the
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>
> Further information can be found at:
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>
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________________________________________________________________________
_______

IF YOU WISH to be Removed from this reflector, PLEASE DO NOT send your
request to this CLOSED reflector. We use this valuable tool to
communicate on the issues at hand.

SELF SERVICE OPTION:
Point your Browser to -
http://listserv.ieee.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=STDS-802-11 and then amend
your subscription on the form provided.  If you require removal from the
reflector press the LEAVE button.

Further information can be found at:
http://www.ieee802.org/11/Email_Subscribe.html
________________________________________________________________________
_______

________________________________________________________________________
_______

IF YOU WISH to be Removed from this reflector, PLEASE DO NOT send your
request to this CLOSED reflector. We use this valuable tool to
communicate on the issues at hand.

SELF SERVICE OPTION:
Point your Browser to -
http://listserv.ieee.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=STDS-802-11 and then amend
your subscription on the form provided.  If you require removal from the
reflector press the LEAVE button.

Further information can be found at:
http://www.ieee802.org/11/Email_Subscribe.html
________________________________________________________________________
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Regards,
Tony
---------- This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.