On Tue, 11 Jan 2000 18:46:11 EST, Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]>  said:
> One reason is that it keeps taking longer and longer to rebuild the web
> interface, during which time LISTSERV isn't responsive.  Also, there

Amen.  I can sympathise with this.  However, a carefully written 'find'
command will suffice for fixing THIS issue.

> are strong legal reasons to not want archives for some closed, private
> lists to stay around forever.  The Microsoft case is just the most
> recent example of stored email being used against its owner in court.

Remember however - Colonel North got strung up based on PROFS notes
recovered *from backup tapes*.  Also, on most systems, deleted files
are merely freed, not actually cleared, allowing disk scavenging.

It is *well* outside Listserv's responsibilty to impose security
policy on unwanted archives.  In fact, under most Unix systems,
the 'listserv' userid should *NOT* have the system access privileges
needed to truly do this correctly. (For instance, under AIX, using
the "compressed file system", you can't even re-write the file
and be sure of re-writing the same blocks.  If your patterns compress
differently, different disk blocks may be allocated - you need to
actually grovel around in the inodes and find the allocations and
write to the raw disk - a scary prospect indeed).

That's overlooking the fact that they can still subpoena the files
out of the recipient's message stores - I know *I* have some mail
that dates back to 1986 or so....

                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech