An article which was publish in one of the leading english dailies few days ago and was pointed out by one of the senior Administrators at my Workplace went like –
They are usually invisible but they exist. They are called by many names in an office, like network administrators, computer guys or security people. They install software, clear massive old files and attend to problems. They are the guardians of office computers and they stand in the gateway between the office and the world wide web. They haunt the virtual spaces of the office and they know what you are typing, what you surf and probably even your passwords. So much personal information is so easily available to them that they are increasingly becoming powerful.
Of course, someone at our workplace needs to have that power to as a Google official said few days back defying its access to almost whole online information of World (when there was big time scream about Google extending access to the private holdings of its users) –
Even God knows everything about us but then we trust HIM.
The same article says –
Namita Chander is a systems administrator with a software services firm in Bangalore. The company policy required her to keep tabs on employee-surfing habits and block pornographic sites. But, as it turned out, one of the directors of the firm was addicted to surfing porn. “It takes a huge amount of self control to keep a straight face every time he comes up and asks me to look out for people surfing porn when I know he spends half his day watching x-rated stuff,” she says.
That’s a situation where any administrator can find oneself restricted and not speaking out, what one wants to. But is it justified? If administrator is taking that much big responsibility of handling everything (just like God), why should he refrain or be afraid of Big Fish guys!!
I would strongly criticize those people who favor above approach to keep your mouth shut for senior executives and outspokenly taking action against poor ground level staff.
The article proceeds saying –
Snooping into the lives of colleagues has become an addictive hobby for some administrators. “In fact it?s no longer just the administrator who has the power. What?s most scary is, be it a multinational or tiny organisation, you see the master password going around like popcorn these days. This means that absolutely anyone in the IT department has the power to snoop on employees,” says Altaf Halde, country manager (India), Utimaco Safeware, a German MNC
It reflects the other side of system administrators – they can be as a devil as much as an angel. Does that mean, you should maintain good relation with Administrator? I don’t agree.
Secondly, if you find yourself hindered behind Firewall (may be because Administrator found it simplest way to restrain those Big Fish people as described above), there shouldn’t be any point for you to be monitored specifically. Sometimes you find that without any activities, you are made to be restricted out of everything you used to visit – the usual news feed aggregators consuming small bit of bandwidth, just because you don’t have good terms with Monitoring guy.
That itches :roll:.