Oh I don't, but unlike management, I don't feel the need to keep them under continuous surveillance. ;)

That's funny, I used to know somebody who had a similar anecdote to yours. He worked with a major accounting firm called Anderson...

Let me offer you a personal anecdote of my own which is that one of the things I've noticed is that out of all my friends and people I've met in various industries over the years, the biggest difference between the people I know who came out of situations like this relatively unscathed (be it from Enron or something as recent as Solyndra) and those that didn't, is that the people who didn't take a hit from it were the sort of people who never really trust the people running the companies they worked at.

Only if the people you're reporting aren't corporate officers, a.k.a. the people who facilitate/actually perpetrate most major FRAUDULENT activities. :P

Nice straw man you built there, but I was actually responding to the ENRON reference in the original post by ArhcAngel by making the point that a good IT staff ensures compliance but ideally not at the expense of the major efficiency losses incurred by saddling the employees with technology that inhibits their ability to do their job.

To be clear, as somebody who has done consulting for various IT compliance regulation auditing preparations in the past, I completely understand that companies have to do it, despite the idiocy of the fact that if you try to reprimand a corporate officer that way, you're pretty much guaranteed to get canned so it really doesn't do anything except give the federal government a reason to come down on you for the stupid little things you mention while most of the time the higher level management who facilitate the major FRAUDLENT activities are guaranteed to be able to keep going until a news report comes out, the stock price tanks and the feds show up. :P

All that aside, however, what I have absolutely no patience/sympathy for are the admins who try to blame SOX and other compliance standards for not doing their primary job effectively, which is ensuring that they provide and implement the best technical solutions to meet as many of the individual needs of their fellow employees as they can as efficiently as possible.

Wow, I'm honestly surprised they haven't let you go already for making waves, but I suppose since it sounds like it doesn't happen that often at the company you're employed at, it's probably taking them longer to build a solid documentation case against you.

So just to be sure I understand this correctly, you're arguing that inconveniencing people by placing restrictions that prevent them from getting their work done as efficiently as they could be by facilitating their use of devices and technologies of their choosing is supposed to be a safeguard against fraudulent accounting and business practices which are almost always perpetrated by top management? ;)