I have sent the following letter regarding the sanction of Brian De Moray to the Society Seneschal, the Board Comments address, and the Ombudsman for IT, with copies to the Society IT Manager, Society Webminister, East Kingdom Webminister, and Brian De Moray himself. As always, I included my modern name and member number. Receipt was acknowledged less than two minutes later; I suspect they’re having a busy weekend over there. I will update if further action is taken.
To the Society’s Seneschal and Board of Directors, greetings from the East.
I write to you today to ask you to reconsider the January 2020 sanction of Brian De Moray, as the information available in the public record suggests that this decision may have been made in error.
Notably, the impression this case has created is having a real chilling effect on the community of technical volunteers that make up the webministry and the “back office” of other kingdom-level functions that depend on IT infrastructure.
I have laid out the public record and my interpretation of the matter here:
https://creativeadministration.org/the-sanction-of-brian-de-moray/
If there are additional facts relevant to this matter that put the decision in a different light, even if you can not make them all public, I urge you to make a clear statement to that effect, so that those of us who spend hundreds of hours every year doing unpaid technical work for the Society can stop worrying that we might just as easily be subject to a capricious sanction based on a twisted reading of an offhand comment to our friends, as it currently appears happened here.
Alternately, if the public record accurately reflects the circumstances of the sanction, it is incumbent upon you to redress this error by acknowledging the mistake, expunging the sanction from Brian’s record, and issuing an apology. Doing so would begin to remediate the chilling effects this situation is having on the community of technical volunteers, and would be seen as a positive step in the eyes of a broad swath of the populace which has lost its faith that the Society’s leadership is able to recognize missteps or change course.
Thank you for your consideration of this issue. I know that your time is limited and there are other issues competing for your attention, but I believe that addressing this topic is worth the effort.
In service to the dream,
— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin, Herald Extraordinary, Companion of the Silver Crescent
[Update:] I’ve sent a follow-up message to Society leadership making it clear that I’ve now done precisely the same thing that Brian did, but more flagrantly; we’ll see if they take any action as a result.
Hello,
To help bring this all into sharper focus, I’ve written a Python script that uses my username and password to retrieve my membership data from the new Neon-based SCA members website.
This is precisely what Brian De Moray did back in 2020, except that he didn’t publish his code at the time, as I have done here:
https://creativeadministration.org/accessing-sca-member-information/Obviously there is no “hacking” or “vulnerability” or “exploit” here, just as there was not in Brian’s case.
Again, I urge you to promptly correct the unjust actions that were taken in his case..
— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin
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