Where Will You Begin To Address This Potential Problem--The Seed or The Fruit?

This potentially, controversial page discovered on Google today and all of the links as well have been already made available for public consumption since January 24, 2005.

Should it be banned somehow, considered off-limits, or not further acknowledged like bastardized information?

Like I mentioned before within a blog entry entitled "A Defining Fork in the Road", the integrity of 2 specific mailing lists have already been compromised through carelessness, bureaucratic thinking, and a whole host of other potential reasons.

But now that the information is already within Google's cache, is it illegal or unethical for the page and links to be brought to the attention of other potentially interested parties (among the Bond and/or nonmembers) within a blog such as this one or any other online distribution method where it can be potentially viewed by anyone?

Will I become villified somehow for exposing the truth that I did not create? Is Google somehow at fault?

Is the webpage to be considered fraternally pornographic and not permissible to be forwarded or sent within an e-mail as an URL?

Could you possibly violate some level of protocol yourself for possibly sharing even this blog entry with someone else as a result?

Will everyone else who also recognizes that the emperor is not wearing any clothes become a part of someone's incompetent blame game?

Will anyone care to hold the leadership of the online distribution methods accountable for not fully managing their operations as stringently as possible? If this was any other endeavor, then someone should either be fired, resign, or recalled.

One fundamental reason that such statements ultimately appear online (right or wrong) is that as the above blog entry mentioned that at least two Kappa-oriented mailing lists:

have been compromised by the integrity of its 2-man team leadership. Both mailing lists are controlled by the same parties.

Power in the hands of a few is truly a dangerous thing.

Since both online endeavors have somehow gotten focused on being controlled by the smallest imaginable minority by its current leadership, then its potential for abuse was left totally exposed.

No Kappa online or offline appears to know the hows and whys the current one-man ownership and 2-man leadership obtained absolute control.

Where is the supposed "development team" that I kept reading and hearing about and that was formed and existed after Brothers first congregated and fellowshipped at the Grand Conclaves in Philadelphia in 1995 and Detroit in 1997?

I still hold Grand Chapter via the Grand Board responsible for its hands-off activity for not fully protecting its members through some form of internet policy that I have previously recommended online and offline.

I for one always thought that there was a DEVELOPMENT TEAM that guided the list with continual oversight and implementation of decisions made by a vote somewhere and somehow.

Now that I have discovered that ownership has been restricted to a single individual and management extended to only 1 additional person (2 people total), I know that this situation is essentially the same as a doctor allowing a patient to drive home after being heavily medicated.

The liability goes through the roof for both the doctor (owner and moderators of the lists involved) and the hospital (Grand Chapter) for not taking the steps to insure that such an event could not occur.

Clearly if you check Google, no infractions or potential steps toward the gray area or out of bounds ever took place when the creator of the original mailing list was managing it.

But with bureaucratic leadership, you get bureaucratic results!!!

At a minimum, all mailing lists should be either at two ends of the spectrum: wide open (where it does not matter if the content is further distributed) or totally closed (where the leadership and management of the list continually educates the membership and implements guidelines to ensure that information "leaks" are kept non-existent) than we have seen with this incident of "sleeping at the wheel".

The largest list that I personally manage has over 1000 subscribers and I protect the integrity of the list by either approving every single message or moderating new members to prevent spam from being sent to the list.

On another list that I created (both are nonKappa-oriented), I searched for and promoted a subscriber to the list to a moderator status and she is just as efficient at managing the list as I am.

But it is ultimately foolish for someone to jockey for position and then demonize someone else (the Brother who created the page with good intentions as you shall read from his own words) for doing the unthinkable when the original power-hungry person was the one who left the gate open for the wolves to get into the hen house in the first place!!!

Every other fruit or result can only be traced to the original seed/lapse in judgment by the list ownership and management!

Nothing esoteric was revealed but clearly changes have to be made and it should start at the top of the online distribution method that created the problem and has proven itself to be worried about the wrong things, the wrong people, and the wrong concepts of moving the Bond forward!

What will happen when the truly esoteric or confidential is revealed online?

If the desire of the list is truly to maintain a closed list, then appoint more owners and moderators to the list from every province, approve every message being sent to the list, make the needed changes to the list through educating the subscribers and the technical changes that can be made indeed and then resign from the list yourself because you have truly failed like the former FEMA director!!!

Do not allow your bureaucratic pride to further get in the way of the organization!

Furthermore, if a list could be considered to be a closed list, then why allow members to subscribe to the list from their places of employment?

Every company that has an IT department has the capability to read employees e-mail (sent and received) without a doubt.

One potential recommendation is that only companies that have willfully restricted external access to an user's e-mail like Yahoo!, Google, Hotmail by past precedent would be used to subscribe to a supposedly closed mailing list.

At this point, I am even personally wondering if any internet service provider that actually provides internet access to a desktop computer should be really used for subscribing to a closed mailing list since other people (such as a spouse) are more likely to gain access to e-mail versus a member being required to go to a website (open or closed), receiving a RSS feed, reading a blog, or using the e-mail service of one of the above companies.

Did anyone forget that I was fired in 1995 while attending the Grand Conclave in Philadelphia from a company whose former CEO is going to serve a prison sentence eventually FOR SUPPOSEDLY RECEIVING NON-WORK RELATED E-MAILS (which were from the same Kappa list) VERSUS SENDING THEM?

Although there was another still, unknown reason in play for my dismissal, I could not dispute the reason that was used even though it was not enforced among other employees.

But let's throw out the question that I know will undoubtedly be thrown out by someone: how do you prevent someone from forwarding the messages or copying and pasting the messages somewhere else like a web page or e-mail?

The answer to this is too simple: You cannot and you do not try.

To try to prevent such messages from being distributed elsewhere is futile within the internet era and attempts to suppress information probably ensures that it will get further distributed.

The best thing that you can do is to educate members not to say or distribute anything esoteric, confidential, or that can be directly traced identify someone intentionally (if the message references someone indirectly between the lines) to harm someone's character.

I say this both as a student of communications and as a person who has been the targeted object of someone trying to intentionally assassinate my character through the internet.

If you do not moderate every message sent to a list then as owner or moderator of such lists, you are clearly partially responsible (as is the creator and sender of such messages) for the distribution of the messages if they are intended to harm an individual or lower their perceived value to the other subscribers of the list.

You are entirely responsible if such messages are not fully removed from the archives of the list.

Intent plays a huge role within communications. I compose messages intentionally versus randomly and would quickly apologize for any unintentional acts of lapse of judgment where proven beyond opinion.

I would not allow potentially damaging messages to be sent via a mailing list to prevent them from being possibly forwarded elsewhere if the integrity of the list requires that it is a truly closed list.

With an open list, such security concerns can be implemented successfully as well but are often not needed.

The only risk that I see is being unable to stop someone fully focused and intent on distributing esoteric or confidential information when the sender fully knew that such information should have been known or previously classified as esoteric or confidential in the first place.

Again, if the information is not truly esoteric and central to the documented history of the organization, then the information cannot be fully considered esoteric and confidential regardless of what individual opinions, past traditions, or past protocol has considered it to be.

Within this day and age, there is only expressed confidentiality and not implied confidentiality.

This is why I know without reservation or doubt that I personally have not disclosed anything confidential even with my blog entries that address the operations and politics of the Bond which are evident to anyone paying attention.

I still request that someone clearly identify the URL AND the specific law or regulation that was viewed as violated.

Protocol is not law or confidential no matter how one may feel.

Just check Google for some things that you feel should be considered esoteric or confidential and your head will clearly spin. Someone else has already made the information available somewhere.

But if I were to own or moderate a truly closed list, I would recommend that no one identify or respond to a perceived information "leak" or disclosure of confidential information.

To quickly retaliate or ask questions such "Where were you initiated" and other such questions validates the disclosure RIGHT or WRONG if the angered responses were forwarded somewhere else.

The person who forwards the messages would more than likely report "Why did they get so heated if the news was not true? There must be some truth contained within the message somehow."

It would be better to get angry over FALSE information than to show heated emotions online over TRUE ESOTERIC or CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.

Now as these words proceeded into my mind, I now fully realize that within the situation that I faced last month that the heated display and accusations hurled my way were not related to the issue being raised at all.

It was never about whether esoteric or confidential information was being distributed as it was that I did not choose to silence my own voice through this blog or choose to express myself exclusively under the accuser's control.

But as any fan of "The Matrix" trilogy will recognize that every closed system can be hacked from the scene where Morpheus almost fainted as the ship under his control was being destroyed piece by piece by the machines.

I guess that after 10 years of being Bonded online that we all realize that the original forum achieved its objectives and will live on within a different incarnation and that the present course does not serve anyone purposefully. Simply put, there are too many alternatives to meet the needs of the international, collective body than to focus exclusively on an e-mail solution.

Meanwhile, I will keep checking Google and putting the various URLs within the search bar to see if the discovered pages are still available, although I know that there is one website that will always keep such content available anyway and I know that inquiring minds will want to know the ongoing results of my further research and discoveries!

So I am truly obligated to do my part within the process.

Yours in the Bond!

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