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stds-802-mobility: Claims of Confideniality in E-Mail messages



All, 
 
Some of you have been sending messages to the various 802.20 reflectors with notes like the following appended to your email: 
 
"The information contained in this electronic mail message is privileged
and confidential, and is intended only for use of the addressee.  If you are
not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure,
reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication is strictly
prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please notify
the sender by reply transmission and delete the message without copying or
disclosing it."
These statements have no place in IEEE 802 reflectors.
1) All of our email is posted on publicly accessible websites.  Therefore, the email will certainly not be restricted to the "intended recipient".
 2) It would be highly inappropriate to divulge any confidential information on the reflector.  In fact, any confidential information should be formally turned down and denied a place in 802.20 proceedings and archives.
 3) Our processes are open specifically to avoid any appearances or practice of collusion and price fixing.  Statements like the above are counter-productive to maintaining both the fact and the appearance of openness in our Standards Development process.
 
I realize that it may be a pain for some of you to get your company to not automatically append such a notice on every email you send out.  However, you have an obligation in your work with IEEE 802 to neither provide nor imply that you are providing confidential information.
 
Therefore,
 
1) Those of you that have sent messages with such a statement, please send an email formally stating that the Confidential statement that has appeared or may appear on your future notes is incorrect.
2) Please work with your company to find some way of sending notes to the reflector without such clauses.  If necessary, send notes using a separate non-company email address, such as hotmail.
 
Thank you.
 
Best regards,
 
Robert D. Love
President, LAN Connect Consultants
7105 Leveret Circle     Raleigh, NC 27615
Phone: 919 848-6773       Mobile: 919 810-7816
email: rdlove@ieee.org          Fax: 208 978-1187