[vcf-midatlantic] Culpability and Provenance

[m simons]

 I'm interested in preinstalled software I might not have access to, and cool/useful data (media files such as music, art and photos, etc.) or source code for programs, etc. that might be cool to have.  Apart from that, why would I care or want to preserve other data that may only be useful for one person?  I mean, if this was historical data, such as might be helpful for genealogical records, or for a historian, or something... or the files from an old BBS or other online system, okay.. but in most cases, it's just mundane nonsense.  If I'm going to use the computer, I probably need all the free space I can get.  Why do I care about John Q. Public's resume or his emails about his hernia? 

--MS

    On Thursday, January 14, 2021, 11:13:59 AM EST, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:  
 
 I can empathize with the provenance aspect of retaining the files. I deal
with data privacy and retention issues professionally and they can be
tricky to navigate. There are many more personal and medical data privacy
laws these days, and those may vary state-by-state.

You may desire to archive those files, either for posterity, research
purposes or perhaps to try to contact someone to whom you may think the
files hold some importance. However, by doing so you accept the
responsibility of being a custodian of that information and should act
accordingly. If you feel you cannot, or are not willing to do so, then the
responsible action is to destroy the data.
My default is to ask the person I’m acquiring computers and media from if
they would like me to return any data found, and if not, I assure them I
will immediately delete any existing personal files (I don’t necessarily do
this for OS or application files.) If I am unable to ask, then I use my
judgement.  As an example, I picked up an Atari 800 from a gentlemen in San
Diego that was owned by his brother (sadly passed.) His brother had been a
programmer and EE and there were many files with BASIC, ASM and other code
in them. I didn’t find out until I returned home with the system, and it
was too late to contact the brother as it was a Craigslist listing, by then
removed. I deleted what appeared to be personal writings, a resume and some
other text files that had no technical information in them, but I kept the
code snippets.



On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 10:42 AM Jeff Salzman via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Hello group,
>
> Recent discoveries brought me to post this mostly philosophical message and
> question about what we do as collectors when we come across data stored in
> or with our acquisitions.
>
> For example, I have owned my Kaypro 10 for about five years. I bought it
> from a fellow collector in Chicago when I was at VCF MW at the time I
> acquired it. Since that time, I have only powered it up about 10 times.
> Each time was more for just making sure its hard drive would still spin up
> and boot, and for poking around my only operational CP/M machine.
>
> Just recently, I decided to actually look at the files that were stored on
> it. It had WordStar installed, and the drive was cluttered with many files
> without extensions on their names. Assuming they were WordStar files, I was
> able to open up a number of those files. Most of them were actual Will and
> Testament documents for a number of people in the Chicago area around 1990.
> I assumed this Kaypro was once owned and used by a lawyer at that time.
>
> Another thing I discovered, and this one has some interesting impact on the
> device's potential provenance, was a file called RESUME. The file was a
> WordStar document in that it started with several lines of "dot-commands"
> identifying it as such. The interesting part is that it was a resume of a
> U.S. Robotics co-founder and V-P, as discovered in the work history listed
> in the resume. Yes, THE U.S. Robotics company that made the modems many of
> us drooled over owning back in the day.
>
> So I asked myself... why would this file be on this computer, in WordStar
> format, if the machine wasn't also owned by the person in question? That
> leads me to wonder if this Kaypro was also owned by said Founder of USR.
> This Kaypro may have changed hands several times before I acquired it. It's
> still a bit of a mystery. After all, it's not like people simply emailed
> files between CP/M machines as readily as we do now. Plus, someone as
> computer literate as a computer hardware tech founder might actually be one
> to write their own resume in a word processor on a CP/M system. Besides,
> you can certainly understand my feelings and thoughts over the potential
> provenance of the machine.
>
> Those two examples aside, I want to address the opinions of others about
> the possession of random and potentially personal data found on machines we
> acquire.
>
> This Kaypro has a number of Will and Testament files on it, a few legal
> drafts, and of course, that resume. So this brings up the philosophical
> discussion of culpability. Do we, as collectors of these systems, have a
> certain responsibility to the disposition of data found on our
> acquisitions? While many laws have been made over the decades governing
> personally identifiable information, how much of the responsibility to
> identify and "secure" sensitive data falls on us collectors who acquire our
> computers through sale or trade vs. the previous owners who decide to get
> rid of their computers.
>
> Before I go on any further about my thoughts, I'll end the intro of the
> discussion here, for others to offer their input, before I get any deeper
> into my thoughts on what I have and what I could/should do with it.
>
> Looking forward to your respective opinions.
>
> Jeff Salzman
>