The newest profession these days is computer servicing and repair, and — you guessed it — I'm suggesting that the newest profession needs to observe, in the real world, the same ethics about clients' privacy that Mary Renault's character, a former member of the oldest profession, observed in fiction. 

An excellent case study in computer privacy recently came from that supposed bastion of freedom of thought, Harvard University. (I went there, so I can trash the place in print.) It seems a dean (of the Divinity school, no less) had trouble with a computer that belonged to the university, which he used at home. He called the university computer repair service, and somebody worked on it. In the process, they replaced or at least backed up the hard drive, and noticed some erotica/pornography/adult material/dirty pictures/. . ./whatever you want to call it. Perhaps accidentally, word of this reached the president of the university, and the dean eventually resigned under pressure over the matter. 

Should that have happened? Obviously, I don't think so, or I wouldn't be writing about it. I think a person should have a right to privacy in his "papers," including the contents of his computer's hard drive. I think this right should exist even if the computer technically isn't his, as in this case. One could argue that since the hard drive belonged to the university, they had a right to inspect it, but I think that's balderdash based on a technicality. If the school was that worried about a hard drive, they could charge the dean whatever it cost; I don't believe the university had any right to the information on that drive. I feel the same about the question of to whom the repair person owed allegiance — I'd say it should go to the school if the faculty member were stealing something of value, but to the faculty member regarding privacy of his information. “Anything of value” conveniently excludes a reasonable number of floppy disks, data CD's, and a reasonable amount of paper for faculty members who still push a pencil. 

The juicy tidbit about the Divinity School dean's cheesecake collection may have leaked out accidentally, precisely because it's so juicy. If it had been girlie magazines in the football players' lockers, or even the coach's office, it might have evoked only yawns. As a doctor, I've had a chance to learn that it's not that there is a high percentage of strange people out there: in one way or another, we're all pretty strange. Some of us just hide it better than others. Psychologists who try to "measure" personality struggle with dozens of independent variables, like extroverted or introverted, pessimistic or optimistic, thrill-seeking or risk-averse, and so on. It would probably take fifty or more such variables to begin to get a thorough description of a personality. When you consider that in medical statistics anything outside the 95% limits is considered "abnormal", you should expect that a typical person will have two or three "abnormals" in his hypothetical "personality inventory" if we ever get to the point of measuring such things. "Strange" is normal — chew on that thought a while. I've also had a chance to learn enough juicy tidbits about prominent people that it's lost its kick. (It just takes a few of those secrets before you get jaded.) 

Computer experts have only recently been running into those tidbits as part of their job, so many of them may not yet be so jaded, but it's likely to happen frequently now that lots of folks who are not technically oriented are using computers to write and store documents. 

I urge anyone whose job involves handling the information in other peoples' computers to be very tight-lipped about what happens to be on those hard drives. It won't take long before the urge to tell the world dies down, and some discretion will do wonders for your career, and for client loyalty.