As a coder, I modified the snoop command to take an extra argument, namely a string representing the reason for the snoop, it was not allowed to be empty, and ALL imms were told that ALL snoops are logged with,
It also logged the time(s) and date(s) when the snoop ended. Imms are considered to be trusted members of a muds community, and they ideally should trust other imms as well, if they have a good reason to snoop, alls well, but nonsense reasons, or repeated long snoops to no result are something to look into.
So far, it has gone well, the imms realise they cannot just snoop because they are bored, and the players are aware that imms might snoop them, and hopefully accept that an imm who is doing something dodgy with it will be caught (fingers crossed)
It is something to consider, I know people who feel paranoid that "big brother" might be listening to their phone calls, but if you think about it, alot of countries need(ed?) a court order to set up a tap (a bit painful to do with a mud, always going to top admins for permission), and there should be a record of every tap set up. It seems a reasonable enough model to me, if the police went around randomly tapping calls, just cause they were bored, they would get caught out, and they would get punished. So that is what I tried (am trying) to acheive.
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