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<But what I am trying to say, one time and I will shut up about it, is that
by carrying that proprietary document to an unauthorized location and
revealing it without the owner's explicit permission you have violated law,
ethic, moral and policy and trust.>
Even if that document is for sale by your previous employer, and all you
have ACTUALLY done is use your own copy rather than order a copy via
commercial channels?
<It does not matter that you flashed it under their nose for five seconds
and
put it back in your locked attaché...the violation (trivial though this may
be in America I have worked in environments where you could conceivably be
shot for this).>
Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes. I have never, ever, accepted a job
where I had to be vetted for security, because those jobs tend to involve
working with the military and I won't do that. I can understand that if you
are working on documents that are not publicly available and include
classified information, then you have a real problem, since you can't show
them to ANYONE not cleared to read them, and this is not likely to include
most interviewers! I can't believe, however, that these jobs represent the
main area of work for most technical writers!
<And, how can you then expect that employer to trust you when you have shown
him right up front that you won't return materials and will violate
confidentiality?>
You're assuming that employers think that you HAVE violated confidentiality.
If a document is available to the general public, obviously you haven't. And
there are degrees of confidentiality even in internal documents that are not
for sale: a guide to how the phones work, handed out to every employee and
visitor, is in no way as confidential as detailed documentation of phone
monitoring software that isn't even available to most employees and is
absolutely not for sale.
Base rule: if it's for sale to the general public, it's not company
confidential.
Jane Carnall
"This is a lighthouse. Your call."
Apologies for the long additional sig: it is added automatically and outwith
my control. Home: hj -dot- carnall -at- virgin -dot- net
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